Working Remotely: From the Few, to the Many, to the Most (Infographic)

It’s common practice that most of us spend some time each day working with remote team members and colleagues, but it’s a reality that is very different to 10-15 years ago. The idea for the infographic was to try to show the movement over the past decade from remote work being a rare event to its current status as a common event. It proved more difficult to find numbers that worked together in a coherent way, but I think that the infographic tells the story it needs to tell.

In terms of the green bars and statistics (“More and more of us are working remotely from team members), the data is drawn from:

• 1999: Few of us (see Mastering Virtual Teams by Duarte and Snyder)
• 2005: Many of us (see the same book for the general idea. The 2006 number is from the HBR article, Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?)
• 2009: Most of us spend some time working virtually every day (that’s my summary statement based on various research studies. See the EIU’s Managing Virtual Teams report, and Brandman’s Virtual Work Environments in the Post-Recession Era)

For the teal bars (“Working remotely is expected to keep increasing each year”), see:

• 2003: More managers will have to build and run teams where members rarely work face-to-face (Teams That Span Time Zones Face New Work Rules)
• 2010: Among HR professionals, 22% expect greater use of virtual teams by 2011 (The Rise and Staying Power of Virtual Teams)
• 2011: Among the Fortune 500, 56% expect to make more use of virtual teams by 2013 (Brandman University and Forrester Consulting research study on virtual work)

Finally, the IBM figure is taken from Telecommute Statistics.

With respect to the tools used to work with others, see How We Work from Plantronics.

Does this transition reflect your reality of work?