Kerry E. Hannon - Great Pajama Jobs

This spring, in what felt like a blink of an eye, remote work suddenly was thrust onto many workers and employers who had never wished for this to be the only work option. And there were millions of workers like me, logging into the office without the commute, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.

The coronavirus has radically changed our workplaces. Unprecedented, unprepared, and uncharted, working from home became the norm. Adjust and get on with it. Kids scrambling underfoot, teenagers sitting at the table beside us engaged in their online classrooms, ramping up tech skills to make virtual connections, feeling isolated. Oh boy, all of the above became a stark and somewhat frightening reality for many workers.

Everyone in the world has been impacted by this pandemic. And our workplaces may be changed forever. As I finish this manuscript, there is no way to predict our future. But this I do foresee: An increasing number of employers will become remote-friendly and probably institute a formal remote work policy. During the mandated time with offices shuttered, they'll have recognized the benefits of having remote workers.

“An ongoing, formal shift in the way people can work will happen in stages as it becomes increasingly clear a return to ‘normal’ won't happen overnight,” says Cali Williams Yost, chief strategist and futurist at Flex+Strategy Group. “After a year to a year and a half of remote and flexible working, it will be part of the ‘way we work here’ cultural DNA, and there will be no going back,” she says. “Then the flexible work genie will be officially out of the bottle, and all employees will benefit beyond the crisis.”

Not surprisingly, in a Gallup national poll conducted in April, three in five U.S. workers who had been doing their jobs from home during the coronavirus pandemic said they would prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible, once public health restrictions are lifted.

And a study from economics professors Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago estimates that while less than a quarter of all full-time employees worked from home at least sometimes before the pandemic, 37 percent of jobs could be done entirely from home.

That said, industries where telework is a practical option at the moment tend to employ better-educated workers—fields like professional, scientific, and technical services, as well as finance and management, according to the report. Among the ones least flexible for telework: retail trade and food service, which typically employ sizable numbers of low-wage older workers.

“I don't think there will ever be a company again that doesn't consider that some element of emergency preparedness has to be made and working remotely in some form needs to be addressed and hopefully turned into a formalized policy,” Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of the job boards FlexJobs and Remote.co, tells me.

“It is the tipping point for work from home as a valid and important component of a healthy organization and not just good for the worker. Having a remote component is never going to be doubted again, or looked at as fringe.”

Meanwhile, the enforced work-from-home scenario, for those of you who have never considered it, may have triggered a desire to keep it going after the pandemic resolves itself.

I have never before talked to so many workers who adapted to using communication technology like Zoom conferencing and are embracing it, no longer intimidated or frustrated by screen-to-screen meetings and virtual meet-ups to chat with co-workers. They feel empowered.

My goal in writing this book is to help workers find a great remote job. Many of you may now have one—whether you opted in or not. If that's the case, skip to my workshop in Part IIIfor advice on how to succeed as a remote worker over the long haul.

Each of us has unique work requirements and personalities, so use my advice as motivation. You will ultimately develop your own remote work recipe that suits you and, importantly, your manager and your employer's needs.

I work for several employers, but it's all virtual, and I have for a long, long time. How it works for me will differ from what works for you, but there is a spine of wisdom that you will find here that you can mold to make your own secret sauce.

Even before the COVID-19, working from home was steadily gaining a head of steam for workers of all ages. Over the last five years, U.S. workers working remotely grew 44 percent to around 4.7 million, according to research by job board Flexjobs.comin partnership with Global Workplace Analytics.

Gallup research conducted before the onset of COVID-19 showed that 43 percent of employees worked remotely in some capacity. In a study conducted by Condeco Software, 41 percent of global businesses surveyed said they already offered some degree of remote working. Upwork's “Future Workforce Report” predicted that 73 percent of all teams will have remote workers by 2028, a percentage that may even be on the conservative side in the aftermath of the 2020 stay-at-home mandates.

Fueling the trend pre-COVID-19: In a survey from global outplacement and executive and business coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., 70 percent of employers reported they were having trouble finding applicants with the necessary qualifications. To attract talent, 62 percent were offering remote work options.

“Employers are having trouble finding workers with the skills needed to perform their duties,” says Andrew Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. “If this continues, it could hurt the bottom line and limit expansion. As employees, especially Millennials and Gen Z workers, demand more work/life balance, employers will find they must respond with these offerings.”

Who doesn't yearn for flexible work schedules, a shuffle to the next room as a commute, and the fundamental joy of working away in the most basic of business-casual clothing—our pajamas.

In all seriousness, though, autonomy is one of the key components of loving a job, as I found when I wrote my book, Love Your Job: The New Rules of Career Happiness . Working remotely is an important way you can capture the elusive psychological feeling of freedom and personal independence. And there's a bottom-line benefit as well—it saves money that you might spend on commuting costs for transportation, meals and coffee out, work clothes, and the list goes on.

“More and more people are working remotely because they want flexibility over their schedule and where, when, and how they work,” Dan Schawbel ( danschawbel.com), author of Back to Human and a Millennial and Gen X career and workplace expert , told me, again before the workplace shifted this spring. “And corporations benefit from a recruiting and retention standpoint by offering it, plus they save money on real estate costs. Both employees and employers win.”

This year, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, “has been the ‘grand remote work experiment’ where people who have never worked remotely are for the first time and are benefitting from it,” Schawbel told me. “During this time, companies were being forced to allow their employees to work remotely for health and safety reasons, so they are developing the policies they should have had years ago.”

Technology has enabled people to work from Bali to Boston, regardless of where their boss is situated, and this year's cataclysmic necessity has borne that out. Importantly, they can hold on to a job when a partner or spouse is transferred to another posting, which is particularly germane to military spouses. (More on employers offering remote positions aimed at military spouses in Chapter 8.)