Decline in remote jobs risks shutting disabled people out of work, study finds, The Guardian

[OrganicChilli]

Decline in remote jobs risks shutting disabled people out of work, study finds

Research project warns fall in homeworking roles could undermine efforts to reduce unemployment

www.theguardian.com

A decline in the number of jobs for people who need to work remotely, including those with disabilities, could undermine the government’s efforts to reverse rising unemployment, according to a two-year study.

More than eight in 10 respondents to a survey of working-age disabled people by researchers at Lancaster University said access to home working was essential or very important when looking for a new job.

Almost half (46%) of the participants in the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study wanted to work remotely all the time, with disabled women and disabled carers more likely to want to work fully from home.

The needs of disabled job applicants run against the trend for employers to reduce hybrid and remote working, the study found.

Analysis of Adzuna job vacancy data showed declining levels of remote job opportunities. In the financial year 2024-25, only one in 23 job adverts on Adzuna (4.3%) were fully remote – half the level seen during the pandemic peak of 8.7% in 2020-21.

“Growth in the availability of hybrid jobs appears to have stalled, with only one in seven (13.5%) job vacancies offering hybrid work in 2024-25,” the report said.

The findings followed official job figures earlier this week covering the three months to December, which showed one in 11 disabled people were unemployed (9.2%), double the 4.4% average.

 

[Creekside]

Is there a known reason for the trend against remote working? Less work accomplished, or something like that? Maybe managers are getting fewer bragging rights among peers when their employees aren't visible? Fewer opportunities for sexual harassment of employees? I'm just curious about it.

 

[Midnattsol]

Is there a known reason for the trend against remote working? Less work accomplished, or something like that? Maybe managers are getting fewer bragging rights among peers when their employees aren't visible? Fewer opportunities for sexual harassment of employees? I'm just curious about it.

High sick leave for psychological reasons, which is interpreted as a need to be more social since the increase in sick leave started during the pandemic and thus obviously is due to how people isolated themselves. So to reduce sick leave people need to be forced to the workplace to increase their psychosocial wellbeing.

Or so the media headlines tell me in Norway.

 

[Peter T]

Is there a known reason for the trend against remote working? Less work accomplished, or something like that? Maybe managers are getting fewer bragging rights among peers when their employees aren't visible? Fewer opportunities for sexual harassment of employees? I'm just curious about it.

I was also wondering at the reasons for reduced remote working. Is it just part of the post pandemic return to the previous status quo, part of a political pressure, particularly on the right both in the UK and the USA, against home working, or something different?

At risk of becoming political and breaching forum rules, owners of commercial property are concerned that increased remote working will reduce both demand for and rental income from office accommodation.

[added - had not seen @Midnattsol ’s post until after I had posted.]

 

[Kitty]

From the employers' side there's a lot of suspicion about it. That people aren't "fully productive", as it was put to me. (I'm sure some aren't fully productive, but they're usually every bit as lazy when they're at work.) There also seems to be a fashion for extreme micromanagement, which is more difficult when people work at home.

From the employee side, some folk just don't get on with it. They feel isolated and they miss out on a lot of informal but important background information, which is laborious to replicate formally and never complete. They may also miss opportunities and promotions, as managers don't get to observe how they function in a work environment in the same way as people who're in their eye-line all day.

If I'd been allowed to continue with it, though, I could have worked considerably longer than I managed. I love being with people, but more socially than professionally. I work much better on my own (busy offices are exhausting environments for people with autism), and being at home meant I could do the work when I was at my best. Even if that's in the small hours, which it quite often was.

 

[Utsikt]

Most research in business management is quite bad, so even the ones that try to make «evidence-based» decisions end up with nonsense.

From anecdotes, popular reasons for requiring people to be at the office are: better culture, easier integration of new employees, less time-waste from personal activities at home.

If any of those are actually true is probably very case specific, and my personal speculation is that it comes down to managers not being comfortable with managing remote workers and therefore prefer having them onsite. Especially because lots of people work on the site of the clients or travel a lot for work, and we managed to do that just fine before lockdown.

 

[Yann04]

There also seems to be a fashion for extreme micromanagement, which is more difficult when people work at home.

In a sense this is true.

But the Microsoft Teams 1984 dystopia some workplaces have set up genuinely tracks basically everything on your computer when you’re remote.

 

[Felis Catus]

If I'd been allowed to continue with it, though, I could have worked considerably longer than I managed. I love being with people, but more socially than professionally. I work much better on my own (busy offices are exhausting environments for people with autism), and being at home meant I could do the work when I was at my best. Even if that's in the small hours, which it quite often was.

I'm not autistic but I hated open plan offices with a passion. I don't know what's worse - a big office for 30-40 people or a floor with offices for 10-20 people each with no doors on any of them. Too much noise from people talking about Netflix, pardon, brainstorming next grand work project. Chicken farm vibes.

 

[NelliePledge]

Agreed about open plan it is only somewhat beneficial when the people around you all work on the same or similar projects. I’ve been in open plan situations where people were largely on separate projects so you’d be sitting opposite people doing something else all spending a big chunk of the day on meetings with remote teams (teleconferencing in those days before zoom/teams calls came in) everyone sitting with headphones like a Tower of Babel. Doing the same calls at home was a lot easier in the quieter environment and saved a lot of wasted travel to work time. Also easier to concentrate on analysing information, report writing in quieter environment too.

Also agreed distance working requires managers to trust people to do the job and requires people to be accountable for meeting timetables.