As a result of the twin forces of the Fourth Industrial revolution and the COVID-19 recession, day-to-day digitalization has leapt forward, with a large-scale shift to remote working and e-commerce, driving a surge in work-from-home arrangements and a new marketplace for remote work. However, it has also brought about significant well-being challenges as workers have struggled to adapt to new ways of work over a short period of time.

In the COVID-19 context, workers have been segmented into three categories: 1) ‘essential workers’ such as delivery personnel, carers and health workers, food shop workers, agricultural workers and manufacturers of medical goods; 2) ‘remote workers’ who can work remotely and are likely to keep their jobs; and 3) ‘displaced workers’ who have been displaced from their jobs in the short term and potentially in the future, and who fall disproportionately into the sectors most negatively affected by the pandemic—Hospitality, Retail, Service work as well as Travel and Tourism.

All three types of workers are facing a wholesale shift in working practices, which now require new types of resilience and entail a reskilling or upskilling agenda. For essential workers, physical safety remains a paramount concern. Displaced workers are facing significant job uncertainty, and a short-term or permanent need to shift roles. Remote workers are faced with potential well-being and mental health challenges due to extensive changes to working practices as well as new areas of exclusion such as access to digital connectivity, living circumstances and the additional care responsibilities faced by parents or those looking after elderly relatives.¹⁶

New evidence from Chief Human Resource Officers completing the Forum’s Future of Jobs 2020 Survey indicates that, on average, 44% of workers are able to work remotely during the COVID-19 crisis while 24% of workers are unable to perform their current role. This estimate indicates an aspiration to expand the availability of remote work. The current theoretical share of jobs that can be performed remotely in any given economy has been approximated at 38% of jobs in high-income countries, 25% in upper-middle income economies, 17% in lower-middle income economies and 13% in low-income economies.¹⁷ When adjusted to account for disparities in internet access by economy, the same figures decrease to 33.6% of jobs in high income economies, 17.8% of jobs in upper-middle income economies, 10% of jobs in lower-middle income economies, and just 4% of jobs in low income economies.¹⁸ Figure 8 plots the estimated share of workers unable to work remotely against the GDP per capita for each country. According to such estimates around 60% of workers in high-income countries such as the United States and Switzerland are unable to fully work from home. This figure rises to more than 80-90% for economies such as Egypt and Bangladesh.

Sectoral differences underpin the estimates shared above. A larger share of roles in the Finance and Insurance and Information and Professional Services sectors can be performed remotely, while Accommodation and Food Services, Agriculture, Retail, Construction, Transportation and Warehousing offer fewer opportunities for remote work.¹⁹ Figure 9 presents one estimate of the associated risk to employment across different sub-industries: 47% of workers in the Accommodation and Food Services sector, 15% in Wholesale and Retail Trade and 15% of the workforce in Transportation are at risk of unemployment.

Despite the limitations listed above, demand from employers for remote-based work is increasing rapidly across economies. Insights from the Glassdoor online platform show that access to working from home has nearly doubled since 2011, from 28% to 54% of workers mentioning that they had the opportunity to work from home.²⁰ The industries with the largest opportunity to work from home are the Information Technology and Insurance industries, with 74% of workers in those industries reporting having access to remote working. But there are also industries such as Finance, Legal work and Business Services, which could, in theory, perform more remote work.

Data shared by the LinkedIn Economic Graph team demonstrates that, in addition to established patterns of working from home and the theoretical potential for at-home work , there is actually an emerging marketplace for remote work–as evidenced by both strong demand from jobseekers ²¹ as well as an increasing demand from employers for jobs that are based remotely.²² The index of job searches and job postings displayed in Figure 10 show that the amount of workers looking for remote job opportunities has nearly doubled, while the number of job postings (controlling for shifts in hiring rates) has gradually increased—with peaks of a two-fold increase in mid-April and a three-fold increase in mid-June.²³ In addition, workers in those industries surveyed for the LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index believe there is potential to expand the use of remote work beyond what it has been historically to match the theoretical potential of working from home.²⁴

The pandemic has shown that a new hybrid way of working is possible at greater scale than imaged in previous years, yet business leaders remain uncertain about the productivity outcomes of the shift to remote or hybrid work. Overall, 78% of business leaders expect some negative impact of the current way of working on worker productivity, with 22% expecting a strong negative impact and only 15% believing that it will have no impact or a positive impact on productivity. Such scepticism is likely to reflect a number of factors: 1) the switch to remote work is occurring during a period of additional stress and concern caused by the risk to life and health of the COVID-19 virus; 2) those caring after young children are faced with additional pressures—needing to take on more unpaid care work due to the intermittence of school and nursery arrangement; 3) while companies with established remote work practices are accustomed to a range of approaches to maintaining a sense of community, of active collaboration and ensuring a flow of communication, newly remote companies are still establishing these ways of communicating and coordinating in the new, post-pandemic world of work.

The Future of Jobs Survey indicates that company adaptation to the newly remote and hybrid workplace is already underway. Ensuring employee well-being is among the key measures undertaken by business leaders looking to effectively shift to remote work. In particular, 34% of leaders report that they are taking steps to create a sense of community among employees online and looking to tackle the well-being challenges posed by the shift to remote work.