A survey of 3,301 international workers who were either fully remote or part of hybrid teams were questioned by Deloitte Insights. The impact of remote work was analysed according to gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, disability, income, caregiving status, and age.
“This paper highlights emerging challenges for less examined groups – disability, income, caregiving status, and age,” says the report.
“Our research corroborates that remote work creates opportunities for both employers and workers but also presents unique, perhaps unanticipated challenges.”
Who was involved with the study?
In August 2022, 3,301 professionals were questioned – who were working either fully remotely or remotely as part of hybrid teams. Workers from the US, Canada, the UK and Australia were involved in the study.
What is different about this research?
The paper is most interested in analysing emerging challenges for less examined groups – age, disability, income and caregiving status. The researchers looked at the impact of remote work based on seven ‘key identity characteristics’ including the above as well as previously examined groups of gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.
What are some of the benefits of hybrid and remote working the report has found?Successful flexible working arrangements could help improve job satisfaction long term, suggests the researchers. Other findings may not come as a surprise – time and money savings, flexibility, convenience, physical and psychological safety, encourage feelings of authenticity, greater access to diverse talent, help “break departmental silos” and allow easier discussion of sensitive topics.
What about benefits for people with disabilities?
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has reduced from 12 per cent pre-covid to 6 per cent in November 2022. Full employment in the US is considered to be 5 per cent.
Advancement in technology as well as remote working has contributed to this, which is good news. However, the report noted that challenges for people with disabilities in the workplace don’t disappear if working at home. Professionals are twice as worried compared with their colleagues with no disabilities about proving their ability to do their job successfully.
Questions included ‘It’s more difficult for me to demonstrate my performance when working remotely’; ‘I am worried I might not progress as easily in my career due to me currently being away from the office’ and ‘I am worried my manager might not consider me for promotion if I am not in the office’.
Other concerns are that virtual collaboration can be difficult – for example, one visually impaired respondent said their colleagues would start sharing their screen and they cannot follow the discussion. Neurodiverse employees can be more distracted at home, said another respondent. “We’ve got one application for email. Then, we have three different applications, all of which are interchangeably used by folks to send messages, schedule meetings, etc. There are too many things that I have to check.”
Does the report contain any practical advice to support colleagues?
Deloitte Insights has made some useful suggestions:
1 Think about career progression strategies that cater for people with disabilities working remotely – such as upskilling, growth opportunities, learning and development programmes suitable for virtual environments.
2 Training for hiring managers and leaders – such as refreshing disability awareness and sensitisation sessions, and training on language and respectful behaviour for remote and hybrid working teams.
3 Make the most of technology to embed accessibility – such as meeting notes can be immediately transcribed to help those with dyslexia and other neurodiverse diagnoses. Meetings can be made more accessible with lip-reading recognition and captioning, image recognition and text summarisation.
4 Does your organisation have hot desking as part of its hybrid work practice? Think about the productivity impact this may have on colleagues with disabilities such as their need for accessibility tools or preference for consistency and routine.
5 Information overload can be a real issue for some colleagues – consider streamlining communications.
The report is packed with lots more useful measurement and metrics about how hybrid working is being experienced by older and younger workers, those with caring responsibilities and lower income earners and is well worth a read.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/value-of-diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-and-inclusion.html
