Talk:Remote work

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 May 2020 and 3 July 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ANTTONNY.

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Requested move 11 March 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerm (talk) 15:25, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Telecommuting → Working from home – "Telecommuting" has quickly become a dated term. Google search trends for the last five years are pretty clear that "telecommuting" is not the common name for what's being described here, varying forms of the word "telecommuting" lose out in large to massive margins to "work from home" and even "remote work." The search engine also shows ~4.9 million hits for "telecommuting" vs. ~165 million for "work from home."

For reliable sources, Google News shows ~104,000 results for telecommuting vs. ~33.3 million for "work from home." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. BD2412  T 20:06, 18 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose for now, as I think this move would seek to change the area of focus of the article. People have "worked from home" for centuries, but this topic is largely limited to recent decades by focusing on aspects of working from home accomplished means of modern technology (telephone, internet, personal computers). I don't see much focus within the article at present which indicates coverage of working from home prior to these technologies. For example, an architect that works on drawings in their home study would be "working from home" in 1930 but "telecommuting" today. Google search engine WP:HITS are highly-susceptible to several biases.  For example, many of those hits could be about the topic of home-based business rather than telecommuting. Here is a Google ngrams search that might be more reliable. It shows that "work* at home" has a long history of use, but "telecommut*" and "work* from home" are recent, with telecommuting being used more. -- Netoholic @ 13:10, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I explored that same ngrams link before proposing this, but as the data ends in 2011 (nine years ago, and there are questionably steep decreases in every term leading up to that year), I took those results with a major grain of salt. Any ambiguity in the title could very easily be resolved with a hatnote (e.g. "this article is about the modern practice of using technology to work for an organization outside an established office" or similar, I'm sure that could be simplified more) or a sentence in the lead. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:25, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Every term would show those "steep decreases" because the data set tapers off and then ends in 2012 (for example, cats vs dogs. It doesn't represent a real drop in usage. Instead, just compare the level of the recent peaks for relative usage. -- Netoholic @ 21:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm aware that it doesn't represent a real drop. ;-) I'm sorry that I didn't make that clearer in my message. What I meant is that I saw and discounted the ngram prior to creating this request because it's at best nine years old—and even that data isn't reliable for our purposes here, which is looking at the common name of a thing in 2020, not 2004-ish. I hope that doesn't come off too strong. I mean no malice! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. Does anyone actually call it telecommuting? We still invariably just call it "working from home" in the UK. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:11, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * In sort of everyday conversation, that could be. But what do you call the people who are working from home? In that case, "telecommuters" is still the most common term as there really is no other word for them. The terminology could be in flux, but "telecommuting" is still valuable as a way to distinguish the very similar phrases "work from home" (telecommuting) and "work at home" (as in the case of home-based business). -- Netoholic @ 14:00, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * "Homeworkers"! I believe that is the formal term in the UK as well as the common one. But is that relevant to the article title anyway? -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:52, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * "Remote work" is another possibility. The fact is that a tiny number of people use the term "telecommuting" to describe this work, and per WP:COMMONNAME we should adapt to modern usage. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:25, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems regional, as that term here would be confused with homework (ie student assignments done at home), so "homeworkers" to mean doing jobs at home hasn't caught on. -- Netoholic @ 21:54, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * We use the term in the UK too but we would never refer to students doing homework as homeworkers or as working from home. We'd just say they were doing their homework! -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:04, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose: The topics seem different. As noted by Netaholic, people have been working from home for a lot longer than they have been telecommuting. Telecommuting implies the use of telecommunication as a substitute for commuting to an institutional setting, rather than just any home-based work. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:PRECISE, as noted people can work from home without telecommuting. In any case, "work from home" is a verb and is a redirect that already targets here. 94.21.219.87 (talk) 17:15, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked the proposal to "working from home," thank you! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:25, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose because telecommuting and working from home aren’t necessarily the same thing. Some people work remotely but not from home—they work from a remote office or at a telecommute center or similar. While I work from home, if I were to work out of an office near where I live, I would still be telecommuting because my actual office is located about 250 miles away. (I say "telecommute," but the higher-ups at my workplace say "telework." The latter term is especially preferred by the US government.) At my previous job, I worked in downtown Washington DC but was using electronic means to work on some material located halfway around the world, so you could certainly say I was telecommuting or teleworking even though I definitely wasn’t working from home. 1995hoo (talk) 22:48, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose They are not necessarily the same thing.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 07:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Exploring a move
Something has changed. Maybe there should be a new article, or maybe this one should be renamed.

"Telecommuting" is a term from when the Internet was new or maybe earlier. Now it is common for everyone to have phone and Internet access. Everyone "telecommutes" to other locations continuously through the Internet by having voice and video chats, sharing files, and every other kind of electronic communication.

We have no particular Wikipedia article for "working from home", which is a different concept. With COVID-19 workplace behavior changed somehow. I am not sure what sources call it, but something globally is different and we need a place on wiki to describe that.

Any move or new article development should address the concerns above, which are good thoughts.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  18:43, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 3 August 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved to remote work with no prejudice against a new request. Hoo boy, this is a classic WP:NOGOODOPTIONS close. Almost everyone disregards the title we have as not being common. It is correctly pointed out that the proposed title (which of course should be Working from home, not Working From Home) is technically a rescoping, since not all telecommuting is from home necessarily. Of course, requested moves involve rescoping all the time (one editor commented that remote work also implies a rescope, since it technically includes people running mail order services), and it seems like the consensus didn't really form (which makes sense because the nomination wasn't about the rescope at all). So the solution to me is to not rescope yet, since no consensus developed to do so. However, a consensus surely did develop that the current title is bad. No consensus EXCEPT that there IS a consensus to move it... somewhere. Classic NOGOODOPTIONS.

Since WFH requires a larger rescope, I rejected that title. That left remote work and remote working, both logical possibilities. I pretty arbitrarily chose the former, as both were well attested in the discussion and nobody really debated whether to use the gerund form or not. Again, the decision between remote work and remote working should NOT be considered "decided" now. If anyone wants to file a new request, please do. Red  Slash  22:49, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Telecommuting → Working From Home – Working From Home or WFH is way more WP:COMMONNAME compared to Telecommuting. Around 20 times more number of results in google search. WFH has increased a lot since the Covid outbreak, so things have changed in the last 1 year compared to previous move request. Crashed greek (talk) 10:47, 3 August 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. ASUKITE  15:08, 11 August 2021 (UTC)  — Relisting. Jack Frost (talk) 04:05, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose, as it seems there are so many other variants listed in the lead alone that it isn't really clear to be if "working from home" should be the primary one. Why not "remote working" for instance, which covers WFH and other scenerios where someone is working away from the office, but not necessarily "at home". The article is not specifically about home working, but working away from an office (which includes, but not solely, at home). I am not saying that I particularly like the current article title though, I just don't think "working from home" covers the subject matter on the whole any better. Bungle (talk • contribs) 21:00, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Remote working sounds like a good idea. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:04, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * "Remote working" is not WP:COMMMONNAME for this topic. Crashed greek (talk) 04:22, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The article specifically focuses upon working away from one's regular workplace in the age of the Internet. It is not about people who have been running their mail order, accounting, child care or other businesses from home during the 20th century or about people who established basement workshops or handyman enterprises in their homes. It is particularly relevant in the Age of Covid and specifically focused upon work that can only be done with the technology of the past decade or less, such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, etc. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 08:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Support Working from home (lower case). Far more common term than telecommuting. And already redirects here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:29, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Roman Spinner. User:力 (power~enwiki, π,  ν ) 02:02, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Move to remote work. More common in google scholar than telecommuting: . Much more common in the news, 1.2 million vs 81k Vpab15 (talk) 14:28, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Remote working runs a close second, but it's moot I think. I am self-employed and work for clients from my home office. Is that remote working? (Hint: does the taxwoman apply business rates to all or part of your property?) 85.67.32.244 (talk) 00:36, 12 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Support moving to Working from home (f and h are lowercase) per WP:COMMONNAME. Crossover1370  (talk &#124; contribs) 05:10, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Support move to working from home per User:Crossover1370. The proposed title Working From Home uses the wrong capitalisation. J I P  &#124; Talk 12:26, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Computing has been notified of this discussion. — Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 02:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Telecommunications has been notified of this discussion. — Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 02:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Support move to "Remote work" instead Remote work seems like the far more common term and is less ambiguous to individuals that might not be familiar with the expression "Work from home" (which could be things other than this article).DocFreeman24 (talk) 03:06, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Support move to Working from home as first choice, simply because it's more commonly used than remote working, but I could also support that if there's more consensus. Both are way better than the present title "telecommuting" though, which frankly I wouldn't even know meant the same thing at all so it fails WP:RECOGNIZE. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 01:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Telecommuting, as a term, is strong but starting to fall out of favor (see ngram). Work from home and working from home are a bit ambiguous as they can also describe self-employed endeavors. This area is in flux and it's hard to say where it will land. Let's leave this as it is for a while and see where things go. ~Kvng (talk) 15:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Relisting comment: I have elected to relist this discussion for a second time (rather than closing with no consensus), given there has been some recent discussion and I feel that there has not been sufficient consensus for any option to close at this time. I note that the discussion can be closed at any time following a relist should the closer feel that sufficient consensus has formed. --Jack Frost (talk) 04:13, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Although there is overlap, telecommuting and working from home are two different concepts. As the article notes, telecommuting involves working from a remote worksite, often but certainly not always from home. On the flip side, working from home may include many self-employed professionals or small business owners who do no type of commuting, physical or virtual, to any other location. Station1 (talk) 07:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Support move with preference to Remote work(with ing or without, that doesn't bother me) but still accepting Work from home I don't believe any person actually uses "telecommuting" anymore, during the age of COVID. In response to the ngrams, they only date back to 2018, which means it completely misses out on COVID-era, which has made this topic much more different then before. I agree with the arguments against moving to Work from home, as it's too broad, but I still believe that Work from home is still at least understood better than telecommuting. The fact is the title is not good and regardless of what the future title should be it shouldn't be Telecommuting. Thanks, SixulaTalk 01:03, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment by proposer: Move to Remote Working As the proposer of the move, I am ok with either Working from home or Remote Working or without the ing suffix for either. Both Remote work and Work from home are WP:COMMONNAMEs. Crashed greek (talk) 05:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Firstly, it isn't really appropriate to !vote in a discussion you're a nominator of - this should really be a comment. Secondly, when I suggested "Remote working" (which by virtue could include variations like "Remote work"), you said it wasn't a WP:COMMONNAME, yet now it is? Even if RW(ing) gets consensus, the mover would need to know which variation is preferred, which doesn't seem clear at the moment. Bungle (talk • contribs) 06:10, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I changed my comment from support to comment now. Crashed greek (talk) 07:49, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Related article
A new article was called WFH for American Office-Based employees during the COVID-19 Pandemic. I thought editors here may be interested to know about it. --Xurizuri (talk) 09:17, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Subsections
OMG do we really need 29 subsections of benefits of drawbacks, many of which are just a couple of sentences long? This is horribly organized, and even the titles of these creep towards original research. I suggest we create a section of Benefits, and then a difference section of Drawbacks and then try to cluster more intelligently within each. -- Zim Zala Bim talk 20:41, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks like most of the disorganization was caused by a since-banned editor named Ward330 who made several unexplained major edits on November 29 and January 29-31. I've restore some of the old section headings. Jade Ten (talk) 20:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Under "Potential Drawbacks and Concerns" there's a section titled "Negative aspects of remote work". Just to be clear, it's a real shock to read that negative aspects might be a potential drawback or concern(!) Why is it there, this redundancy? 92.40.197.220 (talk) 08:05, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

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Proposed merge of Distributed workforce into Remote work
Distributed workforce seems like remote work from a more corporate perspective. The text sort of reads like an MBA's class project but maybe there's something useful to move over. The list of sources at the end seems potentially useful. Apocheir (talk) 20:43, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Given that this has been uncontested for more than 6 months, ✅ Klbrain (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

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Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance
Saw an interesting piece in Nature by Bloom, N., Han, R. & Liang, J. Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature (2024). https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07500-2

Their conclusion is that remote work does not make performance better or worse. It leaves leave performance unchanged. What hybrid working does do is reduce attrition, because remote work is seen as a perk with reduced commuting and easier child-care. Derek J Moore (talk) 22:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)