How the Internet Can Become a Universal Way to Increase Employment Rates in the UK

02/03/2021

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How the Internet Can Become a Universal Way to Increase Employment Rates in the UK main

Author: Alex Bozhin, CEO smart automatic social network marketing platform Postoplan

According to a study conducted by Global Workplace Analytics, the number of active remote jobs has increased by 140% since 2005. The growth in the number of the remote workforce increased by 1,000%, while the growth of the rest of the workforce was no more than 20%. As we can see, the difference is enormous, and the labour market has never been like that.

After the outbreak of the pandemic, it is hard to deny that telework has become the new trend for the next decade. And numerous studies support this. Here are a few more facts that HubSpot has collected about the popularity of remote work over the past 5 years:

In the US, 4.7 million employees (3.4%) work from home for at least half a week.
62% of people aged 22 to 65 work remotely at least occasionally.
44% of employers report that part of their team works remotely on a permanent basis.
The number of people working from home at least once a week has grown by 400% since 2010.

The internet allows us to work anywhere in the world, whether at a sunny resort or from a cosy home—and I was convinced of this from my own experience. My company’s employees work remotely from 9 different countries. This allowed me to involve specialists that I would hardly ever find in my region.

The Internet and digital technologies have a direct impact on the labour market: you can work anywhere, anytime, and have a flexible work schedule.

UK residents prefer to work from home

Thanks to digitalisation and the Internet, the number of jobs that have a higher capacity to become remote is increasing. According to We Work Remotely, 71% of remote workplaces belong to companies based in English-speaking countries: the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

According to Owl Labs, 85% of American companies work partially or completely remotely, which is 29% higher than the world average. Companies registered in the USA own 56.3% of the total number of jobs. The UK is in second place after the USA—6.1% of jobs.

Digitalization in the United Kingdom has already reached significant levels. Without the internet, it is almost impossible to apply for a job or report taxes, use mobile access to a bank account, or connect digital television.

Almost 1.5 million people work as freelancers of the 30 million working population of the country. Even after the restrictions on leaving home have been lifted, many UK residents are in no hurry to return to the office.

According to The Times, only 34% of Britons will return to work in office compared to about 75% of Germans, Italians, and Spaniards.

And only 50% of office workers still work five days a week from home, while 25% returned only for part-time work.

How the internet is blurring boundaries in the UK

The development of the internet improves the quality of life of people, as well as equalizes the standard of living in developed and poor regions. Thanks to it, the population of small towns and villages in the UK has the same opportunity to earn income using their own skills. Yes, it may be necessary to acquire the skills (that is, to learn), but this will bring good results in the long term.

It is beneficial for UK employers to have remote employees, as it saves on office rent, wages, taxes, corporate expenses such as parking, office equipment, etc. The benefits for the employees are that they don’t have to spend hours getting to their place of work and that they can work in a place with better air quality and health care, a healthier social environment, and better schools for their children.

Remote work doesn’t mean you need to hire from other countries. The UK has a large number of qualified employees and, for example, a company from London cannot rent a large and expensive office, but hire remote employees from Manchester, Leeds or Sheffield.

My English friend is an entrepreneur who changed a large office in the skyscraper, 20 Fenchurch Street, London, for an office 4 times smaller and further from the center. However, he didn’t reduce the number of hired staff but even recruited new people. What he did:

– he moved all employees who live more than 30 minutes from the office to remote work with the need to visit the office once a week to resolve administrative issues;

– he organized online training courses for future employees, where more than 40 people from different cities in the UK study;

– based on the training results, he took 7 people from 3 different cities in the country to work remotely and continued the selection process with the professional reorientation of the UK residents.

As a result, even with 7 more people in his company, he reduced total costs by 23%. Upon that, the new 7 employees become more and more experienced and bring more and more new contacts to his company. Thus, people who until recently were without work at all and would never have gotten a job in their specialty in their city – were retrained and got employed.

A number of studies, such as those conducted by Google, FlexJobs, and the IWG, show that people who value autonomy and creativity are reaching new levels of productivity in a remote environment.

The internet provides the opportunity to receive a stable income for women on parental leave, people with disabilities, and other groups of the population who find it difficult to fully work. Therefore, the provision of equal access to the Internet for all residents is the most important task of all states.

Having analysed the results of my employees’ remote work, I’ve found that telework is our future. Despite the fact that there are a number of problems, for example, communication with employees in a virtual meeting is not always of high quality; the positive results far outweigh the negative ones for both employees and employers.