Determining if Your Community is Remote Work Ready

There is a hidden asset in your community that can enhance your community and economic development efforts by creating new jobs, helping local businesses and increasing tax revenues.

As discussed in Chapter 1, there is a “new geography of work” initially created in 2020 by the necessity to work remotely where possible due to the pandemic. However, for many companies and employees, the necessity has become a preference because of newly discovered benefits to both parties. Chapter 1 of How to Build Prosperous Communities cites a McKinsey study estimating that almost one-third of the US workforce can be as productive or more productive with remote work. Chapter 1 also cites a recent Prosperous Places survey on Economic Development in the “New Normal,” in which nearly all the responders believe that COVID-19 will have a permanent effect on remote work. Recent surveys and other evidence after the initial pandemic indicate that this new geography of work will be long-lasting. As noted in a recent edition of the California Bay Area’s Mercury News:

“When the COVID-19 pandemic first reared its head in the U.S., scores of well paid employees who had been tethered to an office environment were suddenly afforded the luxury of working from home. The change has allowed workers to avoid long commutes, spend more time with family and generally achieve a better work/life balance. A new report from Ladders, a career site for high-paying jobs, says things will likely stay that way. In fact, Ladders predicts that 25% of all professional jobs that pay $80,000 or more will be remote by the end of 2022.”

As discussed in Chapter 1, this shift to remote work means that in many cases there is no longer a need for companies and their employees to locate within commuting distance of each other. Therefore, many highly paid professionals and companies can be more “footloose,” moving to areas that offer lower operating and living costs and/or a preferred quality of life. Chapter 1 documents that this trend has already begun, and points out that this is a new opportunity for communities to attract these companies and professionals.

However, a community will be more attractive to these companies and professionals if it is more conducive to remote work. What does this mean? To answer this, Prosperous Places teamed up with Michael Dziak, a noted telework consultant, author and trainer. Michael’s years of research and consulting with leading companies and their employees have identified key aspects of a community that make it attractive as a place for remote workers to live and more footloose companies to locate. These aspects include specific strengths of telecommunication infrastructure and service, local companies trained in and supportive of telework, and communities supportive of it. Prosperous Places and Michael Dziak, have developed a detailed checklist and assessment procedure for determining how “remote work friendly” a community is, and how to obtain certification to demonstrate this.

Becoming a Prosperous Places Certified Remote Work Friendly Community can provide a competitive edge in attracting desirable employers and skilled workers in our new, new normal. Expanded remote work practices can also provide other community benefits, including reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality, and balancing work and family life, and making a community a more desirable place to live, work and play.

You may already have many key attributes of a Remote Work Friendly Community. Because of the COVID pandemic, there are more individuals in your community who have learned to work productively from home, and many of them and their employers now prefer the flexibility of remote work. regard.

Worksheet 1.3 provides a first step in assessing how remote work friendly your community is, and also a strengths and weaknesses assessment in this regard.