👩🏻‍💻 WFH benefits women

Good Morning,

I’m lucky to be writing this from a great cafe for remote workers while on a trip outside the US. It’s down the street from a nomadic hotel chain (though I didn’t stay there), and it has a full coffee + food + drink menu where sandwiches are referred to as “sandies.”

Any guesses which cafe I’m at? First to get it right will get some Remote Source drinkware shipped to them this week.

Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

Rackspace: 97 remote jobs
Penumbra: 13 remote jobs
PNC Bank: 20 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

🛒 Walmart ends most remote work
The country’s largest employer announced last week that most of its remote workers now must work from offices, which may require relocation.

It’s part of a broader set of cost-cutting initiatives, which includes laying off hundreds of employees and requiring employees in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto satellite offices to relocate to larger commercial offices, such as those in Bentonville, AR or Hoboken, NJ.

While there aren’t published reasons for the shift away from remote work, Walmart has been under financial pressure lately, and this isn’t their only recent strategic restructuring.

It’s inevitable that by requiring a return to office, some employees will quit and Walmart won’t be on the hook for as much severance or unemployment insurance.

And this is just personal speculation, but if you relocate an employee from their choice of city to Bentonville, the chances of them leaving for another regional employer simply aren’t as high — and surely leadership will use this to their advantage. (Wall Street Journal)

❓ How to ask about remote work during your interview
It’s an unfortunate truth that remote work is still a gray area for many companies. Sometimes remote policies are less generous than expected, but sometimes companies are willing to give more remote days than they advertise.

This article sheds light on conversation tactics you can use to ensure you’re asking for remote work in ways that aren’t going to work against you during interviews. (CNBC)

🎓 Nobel Prize winner: remote work is a win for women
Harvard professor Claudia Goldin was the first solo female Nobel Prize of economics winner, which she earned for her research on women in the workforce.

She says remote work is an overdue evolution that should continue to be embraced for all its benefits to society. Specifically, it has directly led to more women in the workforce, which is a benefit to society in its own right (no matter what that one Chiefs kicker says).

She also shares that even though remote work has technically been possible for decades, it now finally has “a coordinated equilibrium” — a term that essentially means a concept has definitions, rules, etc. that don’t need to be repeatedly explained.

Remote work, hybrid work, Zoom calls, and more are now part of the normal workforce lexicon, which leads to less friction in the adoption of remote policies. (PCMag)

🇨🇦 Canadian federal workers push against return to office
The national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Canada’s largest public sector union, worked with several other union leaders to announce their opposition to return to office.

Most Canadian government employees are currently required to work from an office at least two days every week, a move that was part of the reason behind a 15-day strike last year. But recently, an internal memo was leaked that said the requirement will move to three days a week beginning in September.

Professor. Linda Duxbury — who has studied remote work at Carleton University in Canada for many years — points out that while businesses have the upper hand in this policy debate, they’re focusing on the wrong thing. Companies in the private sector with successful policies focus on the type of work performed and its general requirements — not an arbitrary number of days. (New York Times)

👩🏼‍💻 Remote work has accelerated “domestic offshoring”
The ADP Research Institute found that remote work has supercharged the trend of larger and more expensive cities increasing their concentration of employees in management roles — primarily because (1) remote workers with lower salaries can choose to live in more affordable locations, and (2) leaders in decision-making roles want to interact with each other more frequently in-person.

Further, companies today are more likely to be incentivized to look for remote workers when hiring for roles that have lower stakes or roles that can be performed by more candidates. E.g., salaries are lower in Tennessee than California.

One more interesting data point is that “interconnectivity” between cities — defined as the share of manager-employee relationships that occur across cities — has increased substantially. For managers, interconnectivity increased by about 31% from 2020 to 2023, and for employees reporting up, this figure increased by about 35%.

The biggest takeaway from this is that companies no longer need to establish major hubs in order to get work done; in fact, it’s often financially more beneficial to employ a workforce that is at least partially remote.

Who wants to send this to Walmart’s leadership team? (ADP)

Stuff We Like

📝 FlowCV: for Resume, Cover Letter, Website
This AI-driven career resource site provides a number of tools that can make the job search easier and more efficient. It can provide you with a resume, cover letter, job tracker, personal website, and email signature, depending on your needs.

There’s a free tier that provides one resume creation, an online resume, one cover letter, and one personal website hosted on the FlowCV URL — other options require paid tiers. (FlowCV)

📥 Dear CEO Newsletter*
It’s one of the few management-oriented newsletters I trust enough to keep in my inbox; I’d recommend this to anyone responsible for overseeing teams or strategy at work. (Dear CEO)

💰 WFH gigs that can make more than full-time jobs
GOBankingRates compiled some ideas for those who want to work remotely but may not want the commitment to — or capped financial upside of — a full-time job, and spoke with experts who have found success using the methods below:

• Social media management

• Virtual assistance

• YouTube content creation

• Building passive income sites

• Freelancing in your field of expertise

While these aren’t a perfect fit for everybody, it could be worth exploring some of these options given today’s tight labor market. (Yahoo! Finance)

*Denotes a sponsored or affiliate link. Any paid sponsorships, products, or services are thoroughly vetted by us before we make recommendations to readers.