A deep dive into remote work

As the pandemic drags on, one thing has become clear: most employees really, really like working from home. 

Dozens of surveys conducted by companies and analytics firms over the past year reveal just how strongly workers feel about the new WFH lifestyle. Nearly half of workers will quit their jobs if they can't have at least a hybrid option, they insist. 

On the other hand, those in managerial roles have been slower to embrace the remote work revolution — to put it mildly. More than one-third of small business owners said they'd fire remote workers who don't return post-pandemic. More than two-thirds consider remote workers more replaceable, according to a Society for Human Resources Management survey. 

With tensions between the two groups of workers running high, HR Dive spoke with sources who work directly with employers and workers to get some sense of what the future might hold.

Demand remains high

While the tight labor market is projected to moderately slow soon, competitive hiring continues apace and remains one of the big job market stories. Employers currently require greater flexibility and greater speed of onboarding to avoid new hires getting scooped up by the competition, Max Wesman, founder and chief operating officer of employment screening company GoodHire, told HR Dive. 

With such intense competition and the lingering pandemic, companies that used to only consider local talent have broadened their reach. "We're getting a lot more inquiries from companies saying, 'Hey, help us adjust our hiring processes and our background screening processes, because we were used to only having to focus on people in Arizona,'" Wesman said.

Assuming companies aren't asking workers to sign contracts that necessitate eventual relocation, the step seems to be a semi-permanent one, suggesting many companies are embracing the reality of ongoing remote work for at least part of their workforce.

While tech companies have been on the vanguard of the permanent remote work movement — Twitter and Spotify were early adopters during the pandemic, while companies like Basecamp had adjusted to remote work even before the pandemic — they aren't the only or even the majority of companies hiring remotely, Wesman said. GoodHire's base of company clients has a "very horizontal distribution," he said, with healthcare making up the plurality, at 15% of users. In addition to tech companies, GoodHire works with a variety of industries, including manufacturers, financial servicers and even retailers. 

In other words? The shift is happening across the economy.

Evan Hock, co-founder of product at MakeMyMove, a website that connects remote workers looking to relocate with towns that offer relocation incentive packages, similarly believes the remote-work shift is here to stay. Pre-pandemic, there were only a handful of relocation incentive programs available. When he started the site, Hock said, there were 23; now, there are nearly 50. 

Remote workers bring tax dollars and spending to rural areas, often revitalizing communities that were previously economically depressed. When it comes to the trend of incentive packages, "It's not a matter of whether the communities see value in these people," Hock said. "It's more just [a matter of] how they are going to fund the program," he said.

Hock referenced a study from Upwork, which predicted that 36.2 million Americans will be remote in 2025, a doubling of the number that worked remotely before COVID-19.  

Cultural shifts

If most people like working from home, it stands to reason that managers and supervisors are among at least some of those people. What accounts for the resistance surveyors are encountering?

It's "the managers [who] were used to being in an environment where they could walk around and check in on people and see that they're not slacking off," Wesman said. "It's more of the old-school type of managers that are missing having that opportunity."

That "old-school" culture is industry-specific in some ways, Wesman said. Traditionally, financial services valued having people in seats, in front of their computers for a certain number of hours per day. "That's why you saw a lot of the firms in New York, for instance, forcing people back into the offices early on in the pandemic — because that was part of their culture," he added. 

Additionally, according to qualitative data from a survey employment law firm Littler, many managers fear the HR dysfunction that could come with allowing employees to work remotely (or in a hybrid manner) on a permanent basis. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they were "moderately or extremely concerned about maintaining company culture, collaboration and employee loyalty in a remote work environment," for example; respondents also worried about potential liability and equity issues related to the allowance for hybrid and remote work. 

Wesman addressed the first concern, noting that "companies that embrace collaborative technology and are good at putting together processes and controls for being productive using technology are going to be more effective." 

The concern of how varying remote work policies will impact compliance is legitimate and remains to be seen in many ways, though employers can start ensuring they're up to date by learning where their employees are working and familiarizing themselves with those local laws.  

'Fully remote' is not the future

While companies can keep employees productive and keep their work culture alive through high-quality, collaborative technology, Wesman noted that he doesn't anticipate "fully remote" will ever be the "pure future." 

In particular, younger workers are likely to want those in-person opportunities in spite of their desire to (mostly) work from home, Wesman said. "I remember early in my career, a major part of my career was not actually the in-office camaraderie, but also the after-office [moments], the happy hours and socializing with fellow employees. That's where a lot of my early work and personal relationships started."

Hybrid work is more likely than fully remote, Wesman said; "I think people are going to create some type of in-person interaction at some point. It's going to be needed." 

Survey data bears this out as well; while many managers may be pushing against a future of work that happens at least partly outside the office, the majority (55%) of respondents to the aforementioned Littler survey still said they expected to offer workers such a model.

Needless to say, many (if not most) non-office jobs simply don't allow for remote or even hybrid work; retail stores, restaurants, hospitals and many other physical, on-demand service jobs require in-person workers. 

Where employers benefit

While the remote work discussion tends to be framed in terms of benefits to employees, employers can also gain from the arrangement, Wesman said.

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, for example, employers who have a fully remote staff — or who, at least, are not requiring workers to come into the office and are implementing safety measures for those who do — are able to avoid the potential health- and safety-related litigation that could arise from workers getting sick. "It actually is in an employer's best interest to keep more people at home because of the increased liability of potentially the whole workplace getting sick," Wesman said. 

In addition, companies that downsize their office space, move to a less expensive area or switch to co-working spaces could save big on their overhead costs over time. Wesman, who used to provide consulting services to companies that were looking to shift to hybrid arrangements, believes this approach to office space will become the norm.

So, while some managers bristle at the idea of a permanently remote workforce, remote work is likely to remain a big piece of the puzzle in the future — even if it isn't the whole thing. "I think it's going to be ultimately more the employers that have to cater to the employees," Wesman said. "Not that it's going to be a free-for-all, where employees can slack off and not get their work done. I think productivity and action and accountability are still going to be important. But at the end of the day, the pendulum is swinging a bit more towards employees, especially right now, with so many job openings."

Of all the industries that have embraced remote work, perhaps none have done so more rapidly and enthusiastically than the tech sector.

Digital product companies InVision and Automattic were remote for years before the pandemic struck. Project management software company Basecamp literally wrote the book on remote work, having operated as such for more than 20 years. And as companies around the world set and reset their return-to-work dates, Twitter, Spotify and others announced remote work would be available permanently for employees who preferred it.

That has translated to a whole lot of empty buildings in downtown San Francisco. 

"What I hear anecdotally from friends is that it's pretty much a ghost town now," Max Wesman, founder and chief operating officer of employment screening company GoodHire, told HR Dive. GoodHire is based in Redwood City, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, and Wesman remains a resident of the area. "Usually in downtown San Francisco at night, things were pretty dead. But during the day, things were more vibrant. Now, without office workers there during the day, things are going under." 

The tech exodus isn't hard to understand. According to a recent Rocket Mortgage report, San Francisco is the most expensive real estate city in the country, with a median housing price of $1.3 million. While plenty of workers live outside San Francisco, nearby markets like San Jose and Fremont are nearly as hot. (And in Palo Alto, home to Stanford University, the median home costs $3.3 million, according to Redfin.) Even a generous tech salary only goes so far.

Wesman said he knows people who have left, due primarily to "the cost of living and, in particular, the desire to buy a home and have a comfortable life to raise a family."

As the pandemic drags on, the trend only seems to be accelerating. According to data provided by LinkedIn, from March to July 2021 compared to March to July 2020, "San Francisco was among the cities losing, on net, the most people," with a population loss of 16.6% — coming second only to Minneapolis. 

Arrival gates

Where are people relocating to? Well… everywhere. 

MoveBuddha investigated a widespread flirtation of tech workers with sunny Miami, a conversation that largely took place on Twitter among prominent tech investors. The discussion even drew the interest of Miami's mayor, Francis Suarez. 

The talk was apparently more than just that: Miami topped the list of migration destinations in LinkedIn's analysis (though the research was not limited to tech). Miami saw a population inflow increase of 18%.  

Other Sun Belt cities like Tampa (+12%), Jacksonville (+16%) and Greenville (+15%) also saw population growth, suggesting what seems obvious enough: The remote work revolution may go hand in hand with people increasing their time spent outdoors, a reported side effect of the pandemic. 

Smaller tech hubs are cropping up, too. Wesman said he'd heard most often of Austin, Nashville and San Diego as other cities that are attracting tech workers away from the Bay Area, with regions in Arizona, Utah and North Carolina growing as well. 

Another trend from Wesman's perspective is tech workers moving outside Silicon Valley — but not too far. He knows plenty of people who "haven't necessarily moved out of state, but they've moved to lower-cost areas outside of Silicon Valley that are still within a driving distance." 

Marin County, Sonoma County, east of the Bay — many people are relocating to areas where the housing market is a touch cooler but the office headquarters can still be accessed once or twice a week by a long, but manageable, commute.

"I think that there still is a perception that once COVID is behind us someday, there still will always be some element of an office or in-person meeting," Wesman said. While hybrid work will likely be the norm and most companies will probably shift to adopting smaller offices or co-working spaces, he believes certain traditional ways of seeing the workplace won't die so easily. "I think there is an implicit assumption that if you have more face time with senior management, your odds of moving up [in the company] improve, even if you're spending a lot of time on Zoom calls," he said. 

A tale of two San Franciscos

Tech may be the sector for which the Bay Area is known, but what of all the other jobs that typically support those and other now-remote workers? The dry cleaners, grocery delivery workers, baristas, retail clerks and servers?

As Wesman noted, many small businesses have been closed to the public or strictly limited in service throughout the pandemic, putting them on the financial brink. And while capacity limits for businesses expired this past June, Randy Shaw, editor of progressive Bay Area media site BeyondChron, noted recently that many state and federal buildings remain closed along with so many of the private office buildings based downtown. "How can restaurants and other small businesses plan work schedules when they don't know if their customer base is returning this year?" he posed. 

The situation has become even more perilous as a moratorium for rental evictions timed out at the end of September, with no plans for renewal. While "property owners are desperate to keep their spaces filled" and lease renegotiation is likely, according to sources who spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle, many small businesses fear they won't be able to resolve rental disputes due to their current state of financial precarity. 

While small businesses in the Bay Area have been hit hard by the work-from-home transformation, some in the government and private industries are offering programs to help keep the heart of the city pumping. San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workforce Development offers loans to help shepherd businesses through the pandemic. Salesforce, a downtown San Francisco mainstay, recently launched a million-dollar grant program for small businesses, which they can use for basic needs like rent, salaries and hiring. 

Meanwhile, essential workers have grown frustrated as well. In March, Bay Area organizers launched the Essential Workers Council, made up of a diverse group of workers from the South Bay. According to the San Jose Spotlight, the group "hopes to lobby elected leaders for more essential worker protections during and after the pandemic, such as higher wages, more widespread hazard pay, rent relief, stronger eviction protections and affordable childcare."

And if tech workers are struggling to buy homes in the Bay Area, it follows that the thousands of lower- and moderate-income workers in the region may be as well. Housing affordability has been regarded as a crisis in the region for years, and despite a draining population, the market continues to appreciate. 

With tech workers fleeing, essential worker pushback and the rumblings of broader labor unrest across California and the U.S., an interesting future may be in store for the Bay Area. 

The conversation around how employers should compensate a remote workforce has shifted — again.

After the COVID-19 pandemic closed offices and enabled many to work remotely, some workers hit the road. Relocations spiked in 2020, with approximately one-fifth of U.S. adults participating in a June 2020 Pew Research Center survey reporting that they either moved due to the pandemic or knew someone who did.

While remote workers did not make up all of the individuals who have moved, migration was significant enough for some larger companies to make broad changes in response. Leaders including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signaled that their firms could introduce "pay localization" policies, which adjust workers' pay according to the cost of living and cost of labor in their new locations.

For a time, the idea of geography-based pay appeared to be catching on. Per the results of a survey of U.S. employers by World at Work, more than 60% of respondents said they utilized geography-based pay policies, and 44% said they were considering or had modified their policies in response to increases in full-time remote work.

Now, a shortage of available talent is leading employers, like human capital management software firm Isolved, to choose a different approach: salary portability.

The salary portability concept is fairly straightforward, according to Amy Mosher, Isolved's chief people officer. It is the method by which an organization determines an employee's salary when the employee moves to a location where a benchmark for compensation has not been set up.

Like other methods, salary portability considers the local pay rates of employees' new locales, Mosher said in an interview, but it also combines those figures with the employer's own compensation survey data and internal benchmarks for a given role to determine how employees should be paid in a given part of the country.

Mosher illustrated salary portability through the example of an Isolved employee who recently moved from Denver to a suburb of Dallas. The employee moved to a lower-cost area voluntarily, but the salary differential for her role in the new area was not "significant" — the company's definition being 15% to 20% lower than the employee's existing salary, Mosher said — meaning the employee was able to maintain her same level of pay.

If the differential would be significant, Isolved may make a change, Mosher added, and that includes cases in which the company asks an employee to move to a location with a significantly higher cost of living than their current one; "very often we will make the change and will increase their salary," she said.

A more comprehensive approach to remote worker salary benchmarks could be more appealing in a world where flexibility is less an emergency response to the ongoing pandemic and more an attraction and retention tool for employers, according to Catherine Hartmann, managing director and North America rewards practice leader at Willis Towers Watson. The uncertainty posed by the delta variant has only strengthened the case for remote work.

"This return to work is not going to look the way that it did prior to the pandemic for most organizations," Hartmann said. "They want to keep that idea of remote work and flexibility if they can. They think it's right for their cultural situation."

Extension of remote work has gone beyond being a safety protocol, she continued, as employers face the threat of attrition. HR industry observers have dubbed the current wave of organizational attrition, marked by increasing retirement rates and job changes among skilled workers, the "great resignation."

Whether taking a career pause or considering new career paths, the demands of talent are forcing employers' hands on flexibility, be it in the form of hybrid, remote or other forms of work arrangements. "I've seen a lot more creativity in thinking about how we keep people," Hartmann said. "That means retention bonuses, more flexible work arrangements … that in some cases can be tied to equity."

Employers also may explore programs such as sign-on bonuses and tuition reimbursement, the latter becoming a particularly common employee benefit. That is indicative of a strategy that emphasizes having many tools in the retention toolbox, to borrow Hartmann's analogy.

"All of these things are about this idea of, how does my program balance affordability with what is going to engage and keep the employees that I need to get our work done," she continued. "I feel like the pandemic, in some ways, was a jolt to the system."

The idea of equity is key for Isolved and its remote operations, because it may not be possible to keep the employment experience precisely equal for on-site and remote workers, Mosher said; "You can't bring pizza to remote workers on Fridays."

Beyond ensuring transparency in setting pay, employers that seek to expand remote work operations need to be able to offer virtual options so that employees can still engage in the employer's culture, she added. Isolved has continued to offer virtual comedy hours, "free lunch Fridays" and other events that allow remote workers to connect with co-workers.

"I really feel like it's not necessarily about salary portability," Mosher said; "it's about the culture of your business and how you want employees to feel about their experience."

Mobility's long-term implications

Mosher described the process of working to help the company's leadership grasp the importance of maintaining salary portability, explaining that leadership needs to understand the costs of letting an employee go versus finding a skilled replacement who is potentially from a geographic area that is also different from the current employee's location.

"If this person leaves, where is that location going to be? Anywhere? Then what's the difference?" Mosher said. "There's never an answer that fits everything, but for us, it's what does this person need for this role to be successful."

However, Mosher said she is thinking about the broader implications of voluntary relocation. Based in the Bay Area, she has seen many workers move from higher-cost locations close to the San Francisco Peninsula out to the region's eastern portion, where home prices are lower. The resulting salary creep in formerly low-cost areas may not only increase those home prices, but it also may make it more difficult for cash-strapped employers to benchmark employee salaries in a given area.

"I am excited to see what happens there and a bit nervous as well," Mosher said, adding that even employers that expand remote work "need to be economical and spend [their] money wisely."

A return to the office is still a long way off for many, driving some employers to shift out of crisis mode and work to instill a sense of normalcy into operations.

For some, that will include performance reviews, a staple in many businesses. Often, reviews give employees feedback to improve job performance and provide the manager and employee an opportunity to create career development plans. They can allow employers to adjust performance goals or switch strategic direction as needed — something that may be especially critical in today’s business environment.

But performance reviews were challenging enough in "normal" times. Now, with many employees working remotely, it can be even harder for managers to do this well, sources told HR Dive.

Remote reviews are complicated

"When you’re not in the office, there’s a level of trust that has to be there to ensure that performance expectations are met, and people are remaining productive," said Shelli Holland, vice president of human resources for Phone 2 Action, a digital advocacy startup.

Employers need to consider how they usually conduct performance reviews and determine if that still makes sense, added Steven Starks, senior manager of career counseling services at the University of Phoenix. If they are metrics-driven, that can be difficult; if employers can't monitor certain activities closely, they may want to consider qualitative measures in performance, he said.

However, qualitative measures have their challenges too. Some aspects of work, such as quality, are harder to assess numerically. Employees need to collaborate, but that also becomes difficult to measure, Starks said. Collaboration becomes much more prominent in a remote environment, he said, and "that’s a little more nuanced and subtle." If an employee collaborates with another department on a project, the employee’s supervisor may not be aware of the employee’s specific role or contribution, he said.

During the performance review, the manager and employee may brainstorm ideas for new projects or development, Holland said, but brainstorming online can be awkward. "It’s something you have to train. It’s not something that naturally happens," she said. With an in-person review, it’s easier to read body language to gauge when someone is going to speak, or what they might say, she said. Now, taking those social cues online, waiting for pauses and anticipating video call delays can interrupt the flow of thought and conversation. 

Making remote reviews work

HR leaders can help employees and managers improve performance reviews with practice, the sources suggested. Managers should schedule a monthly or quarterly brainstorming session with employees to discuss what can be accomplished now and identify some stretch goals, Holland said. "Setting aside time to brainstorm or to build that relationship, whether in person or remote, is important. Don’t skimp on time."

If a lack of metrics makes it challenging to judge an employee’s performance, ask for feedback from those the employee works with, Starks said. For example, his career coaching team interacts with marketing and PR teams on projects, and while Starks sees some of the output, it doesn’t give him a complete picture, he said. "I rely on feedback from the actual marketing or PR department."

Communication between the employee and manager is crucial, Starks added. In an office, a manager can casually connect with an employee or follow up on a project. When employees are remote, that contact must be more intentional, he said. "In general, I’m interacting with the team every week to make sure we’re on the same page, know the goal and priorities. This is necessary because of how fluid the business is," he said.

Assessing performance during a pandemic

When conducting a performance review, the pandemic may need to factor into a person’s assessment. Leaders should be flexible when possible, Holland said. Workers have been under extreme and unusual circumstances, both at home and at work. "This goes back to how effectively people are communicating and maybe re-prioritizing what the goals are. Is there leeway that needs to happen?" she said. People want to be successful. When possible, managers can try to adjust goals and metrics to give a struggling employee time to ramp up and focus on the most immediate tasks, and save the nice-to-haves for later, she said.

Whether a review occurs quarterly or annually, it provides a summary of performance and managers should frequently give employees timely and specific feedback, Starks said. If an employee struggles to stay organized or manage time, he will ask for more details: "Do that now, not six months from now." Talking with employees often is the key to identifying problems while they are still small, he added.

With more businesses increasing their comfort with employees working remotely, it follows that leaders will need to do more performance reviews from afar. And, while both managers and employees must make adjustments to become proficient, it’s possible, said Holland. "It’s just learning a new way of doing things and having that growth mindset — which, at the end of the day, I think performance management is all about."

As WFH lovers, in-office champions and hybrid work advocates all lobby for their ideal work arrangements, HR pros should keep in mind that mental health is at the core of many employees' desires. For some, remote work can be a safe haven against microaggressions or other external discomfort. And for others, the home office is a prison tower of loneliness.

In a survey by OnePoll and email service Front, 63% of respondents said the cons of working remotely outweigh the pros. As reported by the Miami Herald, one third of poll respondents said they considered quitting because of remote work. Within that group, a lack of team connection (14%) and poor handling of the transition to remote work (14%) kindled their urge to quit.

Remote work loneliness has been a longstanding issue. Psychologists have been studying the effects of WFH since the 80s and 70s. In a 2003 study by University of Manchester's Lynn Holdsworth, 67% of remote respondents said they felt lonely, compared to 0% of in-office workers. Similarly, 100% of teleworkers reported feeling irritable compared to 83% of in-office workers; 67% of teleworkers said they felt worried compared to 17% of in-office employees.

Obviously providing adequate insurance that helps cover therapy and psychiatry costs is important. But according to workplace wellness professionals, employers can be doing even more to nurture company-wide mental health.

Jessie Wisdom, co-founder of digital learning system Humu, also emphasized the importance of centering mental health at work. Wisdom feels that Humu, which invites employees to brush up on soft skills through "nudges," has helped her clients' workforce through feelings of despair. "Especially when we're now all kind of isolated, you don't have that serendipity of random conversations," Wisdom told HR Dive.

Wisdom, who leads Humu's people science team, points to feedback she's received about Humu's nudges creating "feelings of belongingness" in the pandemic. The employee told Wisdom they'd participated in a team event and remembered a nudge they'd received to the effect of, "If you're in a team situation and you notice some people aren't able to get their input in or able to speak up, pause for a minute and ask if anybody in the group has anything to say that they haven't been able to say before."

This had left a lasting impression on the employee, especially since a co-worker who hadn't spoken up before ended up contributing a competition-winning idea. Beyond nudges, Wisdom highlighted the importance of an experimental mindset. In many ways, the collective novelty of experiencing the pandemic for the first time is an "advantage," she explained.

Jada Jackson Hill, VP of Care Management at peer-to-peer support platform Listeners On Call, spoke to HR Dive about how mental health challenges (depression, anxiety, adjustment disorders and the like) are "bleeding over into the workspace." Listeners on Call, she said, was designed specifically to give people a place to vent — particularly about work concerns. "We provide a space for people to feel heard and to feel connected, and to be able to thrive," she told HR Dive.

From her perspective, HR professionals can adopt that same ethos. Understand "that basic fundamental human need of connectivity. This looks like asking straightforward questions such as "How are you doing today? How's your family doing? How can I show up for you in this moment?" Jackson Hill said. "Do you have time to talk? I just want to catch up with you and see how things are going."

During the pandemic, Tara Ataya, the chief people officer at Hootsuite, tripled her employees' benefits package. She also secured employee subscriptions to Headspace, a meditation platform and app. "It's important that organizations realize: Mental health is a muscle that people have to build. For that, you need to create a safe space for employees to talk openly about their mental health," Ataya told HR Dive.

Ataya's advice for HR pros is lean in and listen. "Teams and leaders must lean into those conversations in order to destigmatize mental health, make employees feel safe and encourage them to bring their true selves to work, and lead with empathy," she said. "A workplace must provide the space, time, and resources employees need to take on the complexities of life, via effective leadership and mentorship, time off, and flexible benefits."

The rise of remote work has allowed employers to expand recruiting operations to become more inclusive when it comes to talent, offering benefits for both sides of the employment equation.

For example, job seekers with disabilities may benefit from the adoption of virtual recruiting processes that reduce barriers such as transportation concerns, according to sources who spoke to HR Dive.

Remote work presents "a great opportunity" for employers, too, opening up the labor market to candidates who live in different states, cities and countries, said Kevin Doherty, partner at management-side firm Greenwald Doherty.

But there are obligations that come with expanding operations to different locales, he noted, and companies must be mindful of the risks involved when employees begin working remote. Such concerns run the HR compliance gamut, from local wage and hour laws and leave ordinances to notice posting requirements.

Leave laws

Leave continues to be a fast-evolving area during the pandemic, thanks to a number of new and existing laws at each level of government, said Andrew Scroggins, partner in the labor and employment department of Seyfarth Shaw.

In addition to the federal paid leave provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, at least 13 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that require employers to provide varying degrees of paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Moreover, such laws generally apply to employees who are working in a given area, which could include remote workers who are temporarily or permanently working in states or localities different from those to which they used to commute, said Daniel Kadish, associate at Morgan Lewis.

For example, an employer based in Florida would need to account for the fact that an employee who relocated from Florida to work remotely in Chicago may have access to paid sick leave due to the city's ordinance allowing employees to accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked.

The pressure on employers to be proactive about leave — among other compliance obligations — is not solely provided by regulators. "Employees are more engaged and taking a more proactive approach to determining what rules apply to them," Scroggins said. Managers may be unfamiliar with local ordinances impacting remote workers who work from other locations, he added, meaning employers have mostly responded to such issues reactively during the pandemic.

On a related note, employers with large numbers of hourly employees may need to note state and local regulations around timekeeping, including requirements to track meal and rest breaks, Kadish said. California, for instance, requires employers to report time records beyond the beginning and end of each work period, including meal periods, split shift intervals and total daily hours worked.

Expense reimbursements

States may have different requirements as to what work-related costs employers are required to reimburse. Both California and Illinois specify that employers must reimburse employees for expenditures incurred during the course of work.

During the transition to remote work, expenses such as an office chair or laptop may qualify under such laws, Kadish said. He added that another common reimbursement item inquiry from clients concerns the installation of an internet connection.

Robust communication with employees can help ensure there are clear expectations on where and how employees will work while remote, as well as what they may need from the employer to make a remote transition, Kadish said.

Employer-provided remote work items can pose compliance concerns outside of the reimbursement context as well, he noted. For example, if an employee is injured due to the use of a company-provided chair, such an injury may be applicable to certain workers' compensation laws.

Tax issues

Employers are also taking a second look at their tax obligations now more than ever as employees relocate, Doherty said.

According to sources who previously spoke to HR Dive, employers generally must file corporate income tax returns within the states in which they have "nexus," i.e., a connection such as a full-time employee working in a given state. While some states, including New Jersey, have issued guidance around tax withholding in the context of temporary remote work arrangements, this may not be the case in every given state or locality.

HR teams will need to determine whether organizations must register with states in which they have remote workers, Scroggins said. Employees who require state-granted licenses to do their jobs may also need to ensure that they are properly licensed in the state(s) in which they work remotely, and employers may also need to note state-specific laws around data privacy.

Posting requirements

In an article on the subject of remote work compliance obligations, Doherty and Keli Liu, associate at Greenwald Doherty, wrote that employers may need to note state and local requirements around notifications concerning areas such as wage, leave and benefits.

Different jurisdictions may have more robust requirements around notification obligations as well as penalties for non-compliance, and others may require postings in the workplace disclosing certain laws and provisions. But employers may be able to address these requirements by issuing posters via email or an electronic portal, according to the article.

How to stay 'vigilant' on compliance issues

Efforts to comply with local laws and regulations have been made more difficult by the fact that official guidelines often have not kept pace with the current remote work trend, Doherty said. Though he said that states and local governments should update their guidance for employers in the coming months, "unfortunately, usually the government lags behind a little bit."

It is also difficult to parse through the information that some states have provided to employers. "There is just a fire hose of information out there, and the quality of communication of that to employers varies right now," Scroggins said. "I'm loath to suggest that employers do this on their own."

Kadish said Morgan Lewis is advising employers to identify and pay attention to jurisdictions that may be "problem areas'' for compliance. Consulting with legal counsel can help, but employers can be "vigilant" about remote work compliance issues in part by ensuring they have a full understanding of how geographically diverse their workforce is, Kadish added.

For example, employers can conduct a regular survey that asks remote workers where they are working from, whether they are experiencing technology or connectivity issues and how they are reacting to programs rolled out by the employer. Employers also may be able to devise an IT solution to track the locations from which employees log in, though there may be privacy requirements in some jurisdictions that could limit such monitoring, Kadish said.

Alternatively, some may opt for training that prepares managers to conduct performance management while remote, with an emphasis on documentation. Managers, Kadish said, may not be documenting as frequently as they may have been prior to the pandemic because of the challenges remote work poses to team engagement.

Above all, employers might need to devise a process by which employees disclose where they will be working from moving forward. Managers can confirm this information with employees and, depending on the design of the process, pre-approve employees' moving plans ahead of time to keep expectations consistent, Kadish said.

As employers evaluate whether to maintain or change the level of remote work assumed during the pandemic moving forward, they need to manage expectations, Scroggins said. He described the continuum of remote work on which companies need to determine where they fit, ranging from a full embrace of remote work for all positions to a very limited application of remote work to none at all. Whatever employers choose, "they need to make sure their policies reflect that," Scroggins said.

In recent years, businesses have inched toward allowing employees to work remotely. But with the outbreak of COVID-19, companies have leaped into the work-from-home world.

The transplant of the U.S. workplace has caused serious upheaval. As freshly remote work environments create new sources of discrimination, harassment and other types of misconduct or the perception thereof, experts say HR departments will need to strategize to stop and correct misconduct.

In a Gartner poll, 76% of HR leaders said their top employee complaint was managerial concern about productivity or engagement for remote teams. That's a typical employer worry, Dana Barbato, CEO at InvestiPro, told HR Dive in an interview. Employers may think: "Gee, I can see they were logged in, but what were they actually doing?" Barbato said.

But the issue of time theft isn't as big a problem as employers anticipate, she said. On the contrary, employees appreciate being able to work from home because of the added focus time and the chance to get back to the normalcy of the work they feel good about, she said. Numerous studies indicate that remote employees are more productive than those who work on site. Such research, of course, does not account for the current conditions, which may bring remote workers additional distractions in the form of partners, roommates and children.

But employers face a more pressing issue than productivity, Barbato said: communication. "Our biggest problem comes from the quiet," Barbato said. When employees work from home versus in the office, it can take longer to get questions answered about projects or procedures. That delay can make employees feel confused or worse —intentionally left out of the loop, Barbato said. "What we're hearing is that it creates a perception on the part of employees of discrimination or favoritism."

Within this new work environment, employees must adjust to newfound autonomy — a freedom that some leaders worry could lead to misconduct.

Remote misconduct can vary

The types of misconduct that can occur within a remote environment vary drastically depending on the type of employer, Shayna Balch, Fisher Phillips partner in Phoenix, told HR Dive via email. "Inappropriate behavior such as violation of anti-harassment policies or cyberbullying can certainly occur — especially with the current politically charged environment and exceedingly different views on COVID-19 [shelter-in-place] orders," she said.

The less formal nature of the work-from-home environment can make it easier for employees to slip into inappropriate behaviors, Nancy Castro, director of HR & business operations, JoTo PR Disruptors, told HR Dive in an email. 

"The main challenge I face these days [is that] remote workers are having too much of a relaxed approach when attending meetings," she said. "Even though we are working from our homes, it does not mean we are all at a social gathering. There still must be a level of professionalism. Employees must still keep their comments, jokes and political opinions to themselves."

This informal environment also can contribute to unintentional misconduct, Barbato said. Sometimes, interactions can be perceived as cyberbullying. "With noises, spouses and kids, it can come off more harshly," she said. And misunderstandings become more frequent as workers' stress levels continue to rise.

Set the stage: Prevent misconduct

Employers should periodically remind employees of workplace expectations, Balch said. Also, update workplace policies and procedures if needed. "Try and keep messaging as positive as possible, and if any negative feedback or workplace counseling needs to be communicated, be as fair and transparent as possible," she added. 

Castro, whose company has been 100% remote since 2015, keeps specific ethics policies in place with organizational guidelines that include an employee manual, documented processes for each position, quality control checklists and continuous spot-checking of work.

"We continuously train our teams so they have a clear understanding of what our policies are and how they should be following these policies," she said. "Staff are monitored by statistics — keeping 'personality' or arbitraries out of true production," she said.

For Barbato, prevention lies in communication. Find a means for open communication, she said, such as a chat room where employees can connect with managers at any time. "The more [employees] can talk with you, the less likely things will spin into an issue."

Show remote complaints the speed and gravity of in-office offenses

HR should take any complaints of remote misconduct just as seriously as if they originated at the office or worksite, Balch said. "With workforces that are working remotely, investigations can get a bit tricky. But the framework is still the same."

That framework, Balch said, includes:

• Promptly look into all allegations and, depending on the severity and the identity of the alleged offender, consider if an outside investigator should be hired.
• When conducting an internal, remote investigation, always start with a clear understanding of the alleged misconduct.
• If possible, obtain a signed and dated written complaint from the complaining party.
• Identify witnesses to interview and evidence to consider. 
• Try to conduct witness interviews via video conferencing, as opposed to interviews via audio-only phone calls. One of the critical responsibilities of an investigator is to assess the veracity of employees involved, and body language can be telling.
• Once interviews are completed, document investigation findings and take any appropriate disciplinary action.

The shift to working from home is forcing people to take a look at their processes for addressing misconduct, Barbato said. HR leaders are navigating other ramifications of the pandemic, so to avoid delaying investigating claims, HR may ask departmental managers to perform interviews as part of a structured investigation process, she suggested.

"Don't let the situation fester," Barbato said. "It opens the door for liability."