Remote Workers on the Rise
From 2005 to 2011, remote work in the United States increased by 73 percent to 3 million workers. A Gallup report found in 2016 that the number of people who worked remotely at least part of the time had risen to 43 percent.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, became a very public advocate for remote work writing on his company’s blog back in 2013: “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they are at their desk or in their kitchen. Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will.”
Several years ago, the Society for Human Resource Management found that “telecommuting benefits have seen a threefold increase over the past two decades, from 20 percent in 1996 to 60 percent in 2016.”
In other words, attracting top talent doesn’t just mean offering the most competitive salary — especially in an increasingly digital world. Tyson Way, of Bourbonnais, Illinois, who works in the financial regulatory sector, says his firm’s pilot work-from-home program was employee-driven.
“I think we were losing people to places where they allowed people to work from home,” he said.