Giving Compass' Take:
- Angelica Puzio examines how offices may become whiter, more male-dominated, and less accommodating to working mothers post-pandemic.
- How can organizations respond to their employees’ needs as opposed to simply mandating return-to-the-office plans?
- Learn about supporting workplace accountability to build racial equity.
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If you started working from home in the last 16 months, you’re in good company. Over 100 million Americans transitioned from in-person to remote work during the pandemic. And if you hope to continue working remotely, at least part time, once the office becomes relatively safe again, about 52 percent of people agree with you.
But certain groups prefer to continue working from home more than others, meaning there might be a snag in companies’ “return to the office” plans beyond the threat of the delta variant. If there are disparities in who opts in (or out) of in-person work, physical offices run the risk of becoming whiter, more male-dominated, and more unfriendly to working mothers than they were before the pandemic.
FiveThirtyEight examined the results of a survey of over 10,000 global knowledge workers recruited by Future Forum, a research consortium run by Slack. The survey included over 5,000 respondents from the U.S., plus approximately 1,000 additional respondents each from Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.
We wanted to see which groups, if any, want to return to full-time in-person work. Participants were asked a variety of questions, including how working remotely compares with office work, how satisfied they were with their workplace and where their sense of belonging stood at this point in the pandemic. We then looked at the workplace experiences of groups that experts have already identified as having been most affected by the switch from in-person to remote work: those who experience workplace inequality due to their race, gender, or both; and those who provide the majority of their family’s childcare or eldercare.
The group most enthusiastic to return to in-person work is white men — 30 percent want the office to be the only place where they work. Roughly half as many Black men — almost 16 percent — feel the same. White and Black women are in the middle, around 22 percent each.
Read the full article about post-COVID office demographics by Angelica Puzio at FiveThirtyEight.