🧮 The remote productivity argument, and a monthly jobs update

Good Morning,

Week 1 of Monitor May is almost done! The first winner will be drawn today at 5pm CT.

The next drawing is one week from today and will be for the VisionOwl 15” Portable Monitor, with a near-perfect 4.9 star rating on Amazon.

If you haven’t yet, enter here just once and you’ll be eligible for all monitor drawings this month!

Jobs Update

Some highlights from the last month in jobs data:

• April job growth beat expectations by 40% (CNBC)

• Job openings are now at their lowest levels since 2021 (ABC)

• The unemployment rate remained about the same last month, at a historically low level, even though job growth has slowed (US Bureau of Labor and Statistics)

• For employees with the ability to work from home, ~20% are fully remote, ~46% are hybrid, and ~35% are fully onsite (WFH Research)

Slightly more people have jobs now, but fewer companies are adding job openings.

A smaller supply of open jobs shifts bargaining power to employers, some of which are eager to enforce office attendance, forcing employees to make sacrifices they don’t want to make.

For our part, the total openings on the Remote Source Job Board have not seen much change aside from a slight drop during April - though we’ll add several more companies with remote openings later this week.

As a reminder, our job board has more remote openings than any other remote-only job board in the country. Share it with your friends, family, or colleagues looking for remote jobs. And let us know if your company is hiring remote roles and would like to be featured!

Need to Know

Productivity is a major component of almost every WFH vs. RTO conversation, and it’s used by people on both sides of the debate to justify their beliefs.

But the perception of productivity is entirely different than the measurement of productivity, and according to this Vox article by Rani Molla, most managers have a difficult time defining and measuring productivity for their employees.

The truth is, productivity measurements are never going to be one-size fits all, and will vary by company, division, role, and rank.

So unsurprisingly, citing productivity as a reason to bring employees back into the office hasn’t been sitting well.

And while employee engagement has decreased in the last few years for all employees, it’s worst for employees who are required to show up in person.

Gallup’s Chief Scientist of Workplace Management, Jim Harter, theorizes that the lack of autonomy given to workers who could do their job remotely but are required to be in the office is likely a big contributor to their reduced engagement. It shows management doesn’t trust its employees, which is core to successful remote work.

And perhaps the most important point to take away - especially for those in remote management roles - is that measuring outputs, rather than inputs, is the key to ensuring productivity is being accurately tracked.

Otherwise, employees are incentivized to juice the numbers they need to increase - like emails sent, time spent at a desk, or meetings held - instead of the ones that have direct benefit to the company’s goals.

Elsewhere

• Home co-working: the people creating collaborative workspaces with friends (BBC)

• This retiree thinks Gen Z and Millennials are smart to push back on RTO policies (Insider)

• How to become a digital nomad in 2023 (Goats on the Road)

• Intel pushes for more hybrid work, without a firm mandate (Oregon Live)

• DocuSign touts report about remote benefits while requiring employees to return to the office (GeekWire)

While I like and understand the concept of hybrid work, most companies using it as a policy are still figuring out how to best implement it well.

This hilarious rant by Matt Buechele captures the frustration with that perfectly - while hinting that maybe we’re better off just embracing remote work when it’s been proven to be effective.

Can’t say I disagree!

Cheers,
Grant