Remote work for recovery?

the recent Decoding Global talent survey by Jobstreet has revealed some interesting employment trends amid the pandemic. for one, there is a global downtrend observed in people’s willingness to work abroad. Where in the 2018 edition of the survey 57 percent of respondents said that they were willing to work abroad, this had fallen to 50 percent in the recent round. Interestingly, the drop is a lot more pronounced in the Philippines. Where willingness among filipino respondents to migrate for employment was 75 percent in 2018, in 2020 this had fallen to 54 percent.

This overall slide isn’t that surprising considering the mobility restrictions the pandemic has imposed on the world. But for a country like the Philippines that has long suffered from brain drain, the drop may be heralding a sea change. But while it would be preferable if more of our people choose to stay, this comes with its share of challenges.

As it is, many Filipinos working abroad have already come home. Last January, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported that out of the 520,000 or so Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWS) who have been displaced by the pandemic, more than 400,000 of them have been brought home while another 40,000 are waiting to be repatriated.

Their repatriation plus the decreasing

willingness of Filipinos to work abroad only intensifies the urgency of generating the jobs that will sustain and keep them all here—considering that the pandemic is only causing unemployment and underemployment to rise.

There is no single way of addressing this issue. But for sure, an avenue worth pursuing entails going digital— and in particular, digitally enabled remote work. The Jobstreet survey found that 49 percent of some 15,000 Filipino respondents said that they are willing to work remotely for a foreign employer, with Australia, Canada, and the United States being the top 3 choices for remote employment.

In many ways, such work setup is not entirely alien to the Philippines. Prompted by the lockdowns last year, many companies started implementing their own work-from-home (WFH) and telecommuting arrangements, and continue to do so today. Currently, there are some 12,000 remote work listings on Jobstreet available for job seekers.

But even before the pandemic, Filipino online freelancers had already experimented and proven the viability of a remote work setup as a form of employment. According to Paypal’s 2018 Global Freelancer Insight Report, our country has one of the highest numbers of freelancers per capita, with roughly 2 million Filipinos engaged in freelance work. Meanwhile, Payoneer’s 2020 Gig Economy Index stated that the Philippines was the fastest growing freelancing country in the world—with us being ahead of India, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, and Mexico in this regard.

One upside to remote work is its flexibility, allowing online workers to be anywhere in the country so long as their Internet connections are fast and reliable. Such flexibility has allowed for “workation” packages to prop up across the tourist areas such as Boracay Island and Bolinao, Pangasinan, where remote hostels and homesteads have converted themselves to co-working spaces with assured Internet connections.

While such innovations were born out of the pandemic, one can’t help but think about how such flexible setups can be leveraged as a way to decongest our urban spaces and spur economic growth in the countryside. Remote work might in fact be a way for the government to achieve its Balik Probinsya objectives.

Obviously, remote work comes with its fair share of challenges—not least of which includes our spotty Internet connectivity. Hopefully, with some of the regulatory roadblocks to building towers and cell sites freed up because of the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (RA 11494), we will see some connectivity improvements in the coming years.

A recent survey commissioned by Asus found that Asia-pacific companies are not attuned to the “work from anywhere” trend, with only 28 percent of business owners on average expecting employees to continue working remotely after the pandemic, and with almost 40 percent expecting a return to office.

Meanwhile, some have also complained about how telecommuting has blurred the boundaries between work and home, with the lack of distance between the two causing unprecedented levels of mental stress.

For sure, remote work will need some getting used to—which is why earlier this year upon our suggestion, the DTI ecommerce Office in collaboration with Workremote and Microsoft, held an online Work Remote Conference as a way of mainstreaming the idea among professionals and business owners. All the same, we feel the idea deserves some consideration.