Bosses aren't the only ones pushing back against remote work: American workers are tiring of the debate, too, according to a recent survey for Bloomberg News.
The survey — conducted for the publication by the Harris Poll, and reported March 2 — revealed that 74% of Americans believe employees need to stop complaining about in-office work.
A smaller majority — 57% — agreed that companies are out of touch for focusing so heavily on return-to-office policies.
Critics of flexible work say that it's primarily a privileged "laptop class" complaining about in-office work. As of January, only about 11% of American workers over age 16 were fully remote employees, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nick Bloom, PhD, an economics professor at Stanford (Calif.) University who researches work-life balance, told Bloomberg that most remote workers are college-educated urbanites earning at least $70,000 per year, which has helped to politicize the issue.
"These folks are heavily Biden voting," Dr. Bloom said. "If you look at employees who cannot work from home — typically front-line workers, often non-college, paid hourly and working with customers, equipment or materials — they are more likely to vote Trump."
Indeed, Bloomberg's survey revealed that different political parties had different opinions on remote work. Democrats were 16% more likely than Republicans to say that remote work helps equalize inequities in the office. Republicans were 10% more likely than Democrats to say that remote work is detrimental to career advancement.
There's also an element of fairness involved, according to the publication. Regardless of party, two-thirds of survey respondents said it is unfair that some workers can be remote while others with similar jobs cannot due to differing company policies; 53% said it is unfair that the nature of some jobs does not allow for remote work at all. Nearly 70% of Democrats said it is unfair for firms to require in-person work for jobs that can be done remotely, while just over half of Republicans said the same.
The debate itself is growing tiring to the majority of Americans, most of whom are not working remote or hybrid schedules. Two-thirds of respondents told Bloomberg the topic has become unnecessarily politicized.