Remote work sparks polarisation as employees resist, companies push back

The remote work debate has become a cultural flashpoint in the U.S., pitting employees against employers and sparking political polarisation. A Bloomberg News-Harris Poll reveals that two-thirds of Americans feel the issue is needlessly politicised, with 74% urging employees to stop complaining about returning to the office. As companies target remote workers for layoffs and the job market wavers, the emotional connection to the Covid pandemic intensifies the debate. With views split along socioeconomic and political lines, the future of work remains a complex, nuanced discussion in an era of heightened polarisation.

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By Charlie Wells

It’s a simple question that has transformed into a lightning rod: Where do you work from?

Nearly four years after pandemic-induced office shutdowns, the fight over working remotely or showing up in person has become a cultural flashpoint as bosses increasingly summon employees back to the office and workers resist the loss of a popular perk.

Two thirds of the country thinks the subject has become unnecessarily politicized, according to a nationally representative survey conducted for Bloomberg News by the Harris Poll. Seventy-four percent think employees need to stop complaining about having to go back in office. Meanwhile, 57% say companies are out of touch for focusing so heavily on “back- to-office” protocols.

The findings come as large companies have been targeting remote workers for layoffs and the white collar job market sputters. Remote work has long pitted workers versus management, white versus blue collar, left versus right. Yet these days, when polarization is turbocharged by social media, seemingly everyone has a hot take.

“When you’ve got any issue that is emotional and that has a strongly held opposing view, that’s a strong recipe for polarization,” said Bobby Duffy, a professor of public policy at King’s College London.

As often happens with complex issues, much of the nuance in this debate has been lost. One irony is that remote work is really only relevant to a fairly small segment of the US. Only about 11% of American workers over the age of 16 were fully remote workers in January, the latest month for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has data. And many never went remote at all. Plenty of companies, meanwhile, have embraced flexible schedules and used remote options to attract and retain talent.

Emotional Issue

But what makes the topic kindling for heated debate is its connection to the emotional height of the Covid pandemic, Duffy said. Back then, so-called knowledge workers rapidly embraced a new normal of working from home. Bosses were encouraged to embrace it. And as lockdowns eased, attempts to snap back fueled a sense of job perks being snatched away.

“It really speaks to the issue of power,” says Flo Falayi, an associate client partner in consultancy Korn Ferry’s Atlanta office. “To take away that power, it seems disenfranchising to some people.”

It also raises questions of fairness. In the Harris poll, two thirds of Americans said it is unfair that some workers get to work remotely while others with similar jobs cannot because of differing company policies. And 53% said it is unfair that some workers in different jobs can work remotely while others cannot due to the nature of their work.

This has emboldened critics who say remote-work debates are simply the “laptop class” of white-collar professionals complaining. That may explain why some experts find the issue cleaving along a familiar divide. Hybrid or remote workers are typically working-age, college-educated, urban employees who earn around $70,000 or more a year, according to Nick Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who researches remote work.

“These folks are heavily Biden voting,” he says. “If you look at employees who cannot work from home — typically front-line workers, often non-college, paid hourly and working with customers, equipment or materials — they are more likely to vote Trump.”

Bloom notes populist politicians have been quick to push back on remote work because it aligns with their voters’ views. Knowledge workers are an easy punching bag for voters whose jobs may never have been remote.

But white-collar bosses have been pushing back, too. There is mounting frustration that staff who insist on staying remote are being selfish, cherry picking data on the benefits of at-home productivity while ignoring the drawbacks. Employees retort that it’s the bosses who are the selfish ones, picking their own data on the perks of spontaneous interaction without focusing on personal productivity or the fact that for some workers, particularly parents of young children, flexible work is a godsend.

Different Dimensions

Adding to the toxic mix is that all the iterations of flexible work — fully remote, hybrid, structured hybrid — make a straightforward, apples-to-apples debate even harder.

“Remote work isn’t a single thing that affects only one dimension,” says Mark Mortensen, an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. “The big challenge is the two polarized sides are generally arguing for different elements on different dimensions.”

Read More: Majority of Americans View Working Remotely as a Career Risk

Still, recruiters warn that no matter which side employees find themselves on in the remote work debate, they need to be aware that some firms have started using a willingness to come in as a proxy for whom to lay off and whom to hire, warns Adam Kail, founder and CEO of Harrison Gray Search and Consulting in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“I had a client tell me this week he’d rather have someone that’s a 7/10 who wants to come into the office for that direct mentorship versus someone who is a 9.5/10 on paper but wants remote,” he said.