How 2020 Forever Changed the Way We Work

In 2017, professor Robert Kelly, better known as the BBC dad, went viral after his kids interrupted an on-air interview. Three years later, Kelly is all of us struggling to balance the demands of work and home in 2020. More specifically, Kelly's work-from-home experience reflects the 42% of the U.S. labor force that has been able to do their jobs remotely this year. As a result of that blurring between office life and personal space, work for nearly half of Americans changed dramatically. Look no further than the video conferencing platform Zoom, which grew from 10 million to 300 million daily participants between December 2019 and April 2020. As we head into a new year with the prospect of a fresh start—and perhaps even some normalcy at long last—plenty of questions remain about how and where digital professionals will do their jobs in 2021. Here’s a closer look at some of the answers from industry professionals. Who is hiring? And who’s not? Dana Siomkos, CEO of the recruiting firm You & Them, expects to see continued demand for digital talent in 2021. “I can't think of a single industry where [digital skills are] not important right now,” she said. After the pandemic hit, her clients—which are primarily agencies, brands and tech startups—put job searches on hold for "almost everything across the board … except digital product and social media,” Siomkos said. That’s because “the smart companies were very quickly pivoting to ensure their digital presence was as strong and as meaningful as their in-person presence because … that's where they had to engage with their consumers,” she added. Katy Tynan, an analyst at research firm Forrester, agreed demand for digital skills will continue. “The pandemic, generally speaking, was good for digital talent across the board, especially when companies … had to increase the ability to do business through technology because they could not do business in person anymore,” she said. In particular, Siomkos said she has gotten a lot of requests for business development positions in the last few weeks. “It leads me to believe … people want to come out of the gate like gangbusters in 2021 with a strong new business development strategy … to ensure they're up and at ‘em, getting new clients and rejuvenating the business,” she added. Thanks to increased consumer appetite for ecommerce, Anindya Ghose, professor of business at New York University, cited tech startups as having the wherewithal to continue hiring. Specifically, she pointed to ecommerce and DTC firms that enable online and mobile sales as strong drivers of employment. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Marsten, senior director of strategic marketplace services at performance marketing agency Tinuiti, said she’d add any retailer that had a great year in 2020 to the list, including Target, Kroger and Home Depot. Similarly, increased digital consumption has put added pressure on marketers to deliver ROI. In turn, Juan Pacheco, director of performance at creative agency Mekanism, said performance-based media agencies and tech companies that serve online ads should see headcount grow. On the other side of the coin, companies battered by the pandemic, like brands in the travel industry, are going to struggle to retain their digital talent. “I would say any company that's in survival mode is at risk of losing their digital talent even if they really, really, really, really need them,” Tynan said. While companies in growth mode will be able to attract digital talent because they have the resources for now, Tynan questioned whether they will be able to retain that talent long term. That’s because talent will presumably be wary of companies that could shrink after the pandemic. When will we go back to the office? Even for the businesses that have been able to operate remotely in 2020, it’s unclear when or if employees will work from the office again. Some employees have discovered they’re as productive—if not more so— at home, Tynan noted. Many companies may simply decide not to return to their pre-pandemic models. For now, Big Tech firms including Amazon, Facebook and Google have announced their employees will work remotely until at least July 2021. “What we're seeing is right now those norms and standards are being decided. And, as is typical, those norms are being decided in public by big tech companies,” Tynan said. In the meantime, Forrester’s expectation is we’ll continue to see a higher percentage of remote workers in 2021. “But we do think that once the pandemic has passed in late 2021, maybe 2022 … many organizations are going to go back to having a lot of office workers and collaborating in person when it is safe to do so,” Tynan said. There are a few reasons for this. For starters, there’s the home office, which is typically less optimal than an actual office with “ergonomic chairs [and] private spaces for conference rooms,” Tynan said. And, in offices, employees don’t have to worry about kids or pets. “There are reasons from a working perspective … why a physical office can be … a more consistent workspace for people to be effective and productive at work,” she added. Can we work remotely forever? What’s more, 2020 has proven employees don’t have to be in close proximity to be creative and collaborative. “As a former creative director and entrepreneur, I passionately believed that people had to be in the same place, and what I've learned both professionally and personally is that we don't,” said Adam Bleibtreu, CMO of recruiting and consulting services company Creative Circle. Siomkos agreed. “I would say, overwhelmingly, the feedback from my clients of all shapes and sizes has been that they feel like remote is working—they think that they're just as productive if not more so,” she said. Remote work as the norm has also benefited employees who live outside big cities. “Really great creative people in Kansas City or Austin, Texas are finding opportunities out of their market without having to leave their market,” Bleibtreu added. “And that did not happen with the frequency or regularity that it has now.” In turn, companies can tap into a broader range of talent beyond their local market, Siomkos said. Nevertheless, she’s skeptical we’ll see a mass exodus from cities to smaller, more affordable markets. “As someone who's lived in New York for over 20 years, I highly doubt that New York City is changed forever,” Siomkos said. “I mean, New York is New York … I think it's just inevitable that things are going to return to normal.” Plus, full-time remote work comes with drawbacks. Even prior to the pandemic, Tynan noted employees who worked remotely “experienced a negative impact on their career advancement opportunities.” For the meantime, however, workers have parity. But, she asked, what happens when employees go back to offices? “Will those people be advantaged in terms of their career development, their accessibility to leadership, all of those things? And if so, will that have a knock-on effect of causing the people who are remote to say, ‘Gosh, I better get my butt back to the office because that's where all the opportunity is’?” she said. What will the office of the future look like? But the solution likely is not one or the other. “I believe because we're social organisms, we're going to want to go to an office and hang out some of the time, but not all of the time,” Bleibtreu said. In fact, he expects to see a hybrid model in which offices are structured around less than 50% capacity. “You'll find offices where some people may come two days a week, some people may come three days a week,” he said. This, in turn, would help balance the benefits of working in both setups. For her part, Tynan said she hopes this becomes an opportunity to reimagine how offices work. “There are ways in which working alone can allow you to have the focus time [and] there are cost savings to not having to fly to meetings with people when you can do it through a video conference,” she said. “But there are also things … where you might be able to … create an environment that's better for the employee experience and better overall for the way that we work.” The best move for businesses is to solicit feedback from employees about how they want to return to normalcy, Siomkos said. “I know some people who are desperate to get back into the office and miss … their coworkers and the collaboration and the brainstorming in person and the things that have suffered due to the remote setup,” she said. “And then there's others who are like, ‘If I never have to go back into my office, I would be thrilled.’”