Art 1: The Work from Home Debate
As a young professional woman who has recently entered the workforce, I have not known work without the ability to do it from home in my sweatpants. According to Zippia (2023), 50% of the U.S. labor force currently works remotely from home, and 9 out of 10 employees plan to continue working from home in the future. This newfound ability to perform our daily tasks in the comfort of our own homes is still hotly debated among company leaders, as the benefits and challenges of telework are still being discovered and questioned. But for the young professionals who have just entered the workforce post-pandemic, this type of hybrid environment is all we know— one with new rules and expectations that we have had to navigate ourselves.
I wanted to discover what young professional women actually think and feel about work from home (WFH), if they are even doing it at all. Are these women truly enjoying working from their bedrooms, or are they secretly hoping for more in-person gatherings with colleagues? Or are they perfectly content with lighting a candle, throwing in a load of laundry, and cozying up with their favorite blanket during a work call? Lastly, I wanted to discover some of the most effective tactics these women use to have their best work-from-home days. To find out, I conducted a survey of fifty-three young woman aged eighteen to twenty-nine in a range of professional industries and asked them various questions on their WFH ideas and habits.
It turns out that young professional women are currently working from home at high rates—and many are enjoying it. Working from home all ten days was the most common response (30.2% of participants) when asked how many days out of ten (two standard business weeks) they typically WFH. The average response was 6.5 days working from home, which a little more than three days each week. Young women are clearly engaging in telework, but are they choosing to do so? A whopping 75% of respondents expressed that they highly enjoyed or mostly enjoyed working from home. This means that this demographic's views are in line with the rest of the workforce, as 77% of employees feel more productive when working from home (Zippia 2023). My survey also revealed a positive correlation between working a higher number of days from home and greater enjoyment of working from home.
So most young professional women are working from home and enjoying it. However, all companies across the U.S. have been navigating hybrid policies differently. For example, some allow only one day to be at home on a certain day of the week, while others give their employees complete control to WFH any number of days. How much are employers dictating their WFH schedules?
According to the survey results, most companies seem to be rather torn on how much control to give this demographic. Having complete control over one’s work schedule did rank the most common answer at 43.1%, but a close second (at 29.4%) was having some control (ability to choose which weekdays to go in, but not the number of days). Not far behind, 27.5% of respondents reported having no control over how often they could WFH. In spite of this, most companies do appear to encourage employees working from home, as the top answer was “highly encourage” at 26.9%, and the lowest ranking answer was “highly discourage” at 9.6%. There was also a positive correlation between an increased number of days working from home and increased company encouragement to WFH. This suggests that if young women feel that their company supports employees working from home, they will take advantage of this opportunity by working more days from home if they prefer doing so. There was a similar situation with increased control over their schedules: when young women had more control over their work schedule, they opted to WFH more frequently. Women are clearly choosing to WFH when allowed the opportunity and encouraged to do so by their company.
But we are missing the why. Why is
working from home so popular among this demographic?
According to my survey, the leading advantage for working from home was the ability to complete personal tasks, with 68% of young women claiming this fell in their top three benefits. This number one response also tracks with the national top response from a survey in 2022, where 67% said that “Flexibility in how I spend my time” is the biggest benefit to working remote for the average worker (Statista, 2022). The second most beneficial gain according to young professional women was a lack of commute (58.5%) and the third was comfortability in their own space (54.7%). These responses indicate that these women are very interested in being efficient while working from home; for example, by being able to complete household tasks (like the rest of workforce). They enjoy saving time and money by eliminating a commute and appreciate being able to work in a place that feels safe and secure– somewhere that they can do their best work.
I also looked at some drawbacks this
group felt they faced by working from home. The number one disadvantage to
working from home was feeling like they were spending too much time at home or
inside, as 66% claimed this was in their top three challenges. The second-highest
disadvantage was feeling isolated (49.1%) and the third highest was overworking
(45.3%). This suggests that young women do not like to feel constrained to
their homes the whole day and they are seeking more social interaction to make
them feel less alone while also struggling with separating their work lives
from their personal. Even though nationally, over one third of respondents
answered that they experienced no struggles when working remotely in 2022 (Statista, 2022), none of the young female
professionals from my survey indicated facing zero difficulties working from
home.
In order to combat these downsides that are faced by remote work, I also asked what this group does to make their work-from-home experience as effective as it can be. In order to not feel like they are spending too much time inside, women are taking frequent breaks throughout the workday and trying to get outside at least once for a breath of fresh air. Taking walks was a common response, as well as making sure to take full advantage of their entire lunch break. Respondents reported that making sure to set up a clear workspace for productivity helps them stay focused on work during business hours and following to-do lists or time management apps keeps them on task.
To stay focused, women also suggested having clear routines for workdays, including getting ready for work in the morning by changing into more formal clothes and eating healthy meals throughout the day. In order to feel less isolated, the top suggestion was interacting with colleagues as much as possible through video calls or online chatting, and also having an after-work activity to get out of the house like heading to the gym or meeting up with friends in person. At the end of the workday, it is also important to set up boundaries to prevent overworking by shutting down work computers or closing laptops and moving to an area where work is not normally done to focus on something new and rejuvenating.
As we head deeper into 2023, it is becoming more and more apparent that hybrid work may never leave us. And young professional women clearly don’t want to leave it either, as they now mostly prefer to WFH for a majority of the work week. The most surprising survey finding to me was learning that the most common number of days worked at home by this demographic was all ten days. This is because typically workers with a higher salary are able to do more remote work (Zippia, 2023), and a high salary can be uncommon for many young professionals starting out in their careers. However, many of my survey respondents reported they work in industries that are more likely to offer remote work, like Business and Financial Operations, Computer and Mathematical, and Legal (US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2022), so that could be a contributor to the high rates of WFH. Nevertheless, it was an exciting statistic to read that most companies are “highly encouraging” of working from home, since so many young women prefer that method of work. As telework has evolved to become a major part of many industries, it is clear that young professional women have learned to use the many benefits it brings to their advantage and are implementing their own tactics to ensure an effective work-from-home experience.
Thank you,
Lauren E. Fedor
Additional Survey Results:
New Terms:
Center of Excellence (COE)- A center of excellence (COE or CoE), also called excellence center, is a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, best practices, research, support or training for a focus area. Some larger companies have COEs instead of offices to encourage the sharing of ideas and practices among employees in person.
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