Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Remote work

The term remote work became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the majority of office and knowledge workers to work from home. Prior to that, the practice of working full days from home or somewhere nearer to home than the office, was largely known as telecommuting.[1]

The term telework has been commonly used as a synonym for telecommuting, but the 1973 originator of both words, Jack Nilles, intended the latter to mean any substitution of technology for travel to and from the office. Thus, he described telecommuting as one form of telework.

Many terms, have been similarly confused over the years. These include remote workdistributed workwork-from-home(WFH), mobile workagile workhome working (primarily used in the U.K.), smart working (primarily used in the U.K.),flexible workwork from anywherehybrid work, and others.

The confusion in terminology is not simply a matter of semantics. Many have very real labor law and tax implications.[2]

History[edit]

In the early 1970s, technology was developed that linked satellite offices to downtown mainframes through dumb terminals using telephone lines as a network bridge. The terms "telecommuting" and "telework" were coined by Jack Nilles in 1973.[3][4] In 1979, five IBM employees were allowed to work from home as an experiment. By 1983, the experiment was expanded to 2,000 people. By the early 1980s, branch offices and home workers were able to connect to organizational mainframes using personal computers and terminal emulators.

In 1995, the motto that "work is something you do, not something you travel to" was coined.[5] Variations of this motto include: "Work is what we do, not where we are."[6]

Since the 1980s, the normalization of remote work has been on a steady incline. For example, the number of Americans working from home grew by 4 million from 2003 to 2006,[7] and by 1983 academics were beginning to experiment with online conferencing.[8]

In the 1990s and 2000s, remote work became facilitated by technology such as collaborative softwarevirtual private networksconference callingvideotelephonyinternet accesscloud computingvoice over IP (VoIP), mobile telecommunications technology such as a Wi-Fi-equippedlaptop or tablet computerssmartphones, and desktop computers, using software such as ZoomWebexMicrosoft TeamsGoogle MeetSlack, and WhatsApp.

In his 1992 travelogue Exploring the InternetCarl Malamud described a "digital nomad" who "travels the world with a laptop, setting up FidoNetnodes."[9] In 1993, Random House published the Digital Nomad's Guide series of guidebooks by Mitch Ratcliffe and Andrew Gore. The guidebooks, PowerBookAT&T EO Personal Communicator, and Newton's Law, used the term "digital nomad" to refer to the increased mobility and more powerful communication and productivity technologies that facilitated remote work.[10][11][12]

European hacker spaces of the 1990s led to coworking; the first such space opened in 2005.[13]

In 2010, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 required each executive agency in the United States to establish policy allowing remote work to the maximum extent possible, so long as employee performance is not diminished.[14][15][16]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of workers began remote work for the first time.[17] Cities in which the population of remote workers increased significantly were referred to as Zoom towns.[18] According to a U.S. Labor Department study published, millions of Americans ceased working from home by 2022, and the number of employers reporting teleworking decreasing to the level before pandemic levels. From August to September 2022, approximately 72 percent of private-sector businesses reported little to no telework among workers, compared to roughly 60 percent from July to September 2021.[19] In 1996, the Home Work Convention, an International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention, was created to offer protection to workers who are employed in their own homes. During the Information Age, many startups were founded in the houses of entrepreneurs who lacked financial resources.

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