Remote work opportunity might be slipping away

Updated on: 15 June 2022

Jurgita Lapienytė
Chief Editor

remote work opportunity — Image by Shutterstock

Remote work peaked during the pandemic, but the tide is about to change.

Employees who got an opportunity to work from home during the pandemic might be reluctant to return to the office. Amid skills shortages, some companies have no other choice but to give their employees the freedom of working from anywhere.

However, a couple of recent reports show that the window of remote work is about to close. That might be good news for organizations that still haven’t figured out how to secure their perimeter.

Remote work offers declining

Recently, Elon Musk urged Tesla’s employees to work from the office. "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned," he allegedly wrote.

It seems that he is not the only business leader thinking that way.

After analyzing 40 million public job postings, business data provider Coresignal concluded that the remote job trend among new white-collar job positions had acquired a negative tendency.

In October 2021, almost 18% of job postings globally were remote work offers. In 2022, it acquired a slightly negative trend, confirming various reports that more and more companies are resisting the remote job model.

Compared to Europe, North America has a slightly higher remote work share, hovering around 12%. In Europe, less than 10% of postings offer remote jobs.

“The interesting aspect is that California, Texas, and Florida are the largest states by population, but they are also some of the primary states for tech hubs. It is a widespread opinion that remote jobs are most common among tech companies, as the job specifics allow employees to change their work location easily. And if the early suggestions in the media that the COVID-19 pandemic might change the work market permanently seemed quite possible, the remote job posts’ data shows that it may not be the case,” Coresignal said.

“Awareness isn’t being put into action”

In its recent report, Digital Shadows noted that the volume of account takeover attacks has been skyrocketing since the start of the pandemic. Organizations with unsecure methods of authentication have become victims.

Hybrid work environments increased cybersecurity awareness, but only some small and medium businesses (SMBs) took action, digital identity management firm Dashlane concluded after surveying more than 600 employees and managers and over 300 IT decision-makers.

83% of all survey respondents realize that stakes are high, but only a small group of organizations have translated realization into action.

38% of organizations increased usage of their existing password manager, 37% increased cybersecurity training, 36% adopted new security policies, and 23% said their organizations started using a password manager.

“Our research shows awareness of cybersecurity threats among leaders has increased substantially, but organizations need help and education to make the right decisions when it comes to security. We're seeing awareness increase in a world that has employees going remote, but this awareness isn't really being put into action,” said JD Sherman, CEO of Dashlane.

SMBs usually don’t have a full-time dedicated IT person, let alone a security team to protect an organization's perimeter.