The pandemic has prompted the working class to reassess their relationship with their careers. Many people are straying away from the idea of job-centric lives as they explore their creative passions while in quarantine. Meanwhile, others are enjoying the flexibility remote work entails and wishes to continue working digitally post-pandemic. Either way, it can be argued that the old-fashioned American job model is overdue for a drastic change as remote work grows in favorability.

The current American job model is surprisingly similar to one of decades ago. The modern office is deeply connected to its roots in the 1940’s, the so-called ‘military model.’ This job model was structured around a drastically different culture than that of today. A new office culture should accompany modern social needs and technological advances. The current job model leaves little to no space for creativity and art.

After rediscovering their creative side in quarantine, many people are looking to chase their passions instead of returning to a mundane 9-5 work schedule. Others are planning on living a multifaceted life, where they can work digitally while pursuing their passions and maintaining their busy home lives. Similarly, an influx of employees have found a balance between their personal lives and work, which causes them to be more productive work-wise.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes this to be true. In an internal memo, Zuckerberg wrote that, “Working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work.” Because of his positive personal experience working online, Zuckerberg is planning on digitizing the workplace for Facebook employees.

Remote jobs are becoming more appealing to the masses, where many employers are offering full time or hybrid remote positions to potential and current candidates. This is especially true for tech companies such as Shopify, Pinterest, Twitter, Spotify, and Facebook. In May, Twitter and Facebook announced a future of permanent remote work for their staff.

Shopify is an online commerce program for entrepreneurs, where users can create their own businesses and sell their products online. Yet, the consumers of this site aren’t the only ones working remotely. CEO Toni Lutke stressed the appeal of remote work in a tweet last May, when he announced the option for Shopify employees to work from home permanently, stating, “Office centricity is over.”

Although tech companies were quick to introduce a new standard of work, others were less excited to jump into a future of remote work. Yet, as the pandemic dragged on, they began to ease up. In February, Goldman’s CEO David Solomon stated that remote work is an “aberration that we’re going to correct as quickly as possible.” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon held a similar belief, stating that remote work, “doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation. It doesn’t work for culture.” Yet now, they have given up on forcing their employees to be in the office five days a week as their competitors are fazing into a digital age.

The research indicates that working remotely can have a positive effect on the productivity of employees. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working paper series found that remote employees report that they are more productive at home. In a sample survey of 2,500 workers, 40% of those working remotely said that they were more productive when working remotely, 45% said that they were equally efficient as to when they worked in person, and only 15% said that they were less efficient. One of the authors of this report, Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, states that this increase in productivity is largely based on saved commuting time as well as an overall greater efficiency.

Yet, Forbes’ reporter Tracy Brower argues that an increase in productivity in the early stages of the pandemic was a ‘panic productivity,’ where employees experienced an adrenaline boost due to the dangers of an unforeseeable future. She also believes that an increase in productivity correlates with the blurred lines between home and work life while working at home. After all, it’s easier to work into the night when your workplace is your bedroom compared to when you’re workplace is an hour away. To combat this, Brower believes that companies should introduce a state of balance, where work is in intermixed with time off. A hybrid work model might be the compromise between both sides of the aisle.

It can be said that remote work is very plausible if looked through the lens of time management. In an interview with the Washington Post, Bloom stated that the future of work should be a hybrid model, where employees return to the office two or three days out of a week. In these days, employees should entertain the hyper-social events such as meetings, trainings, etc. He wants to reallocate the quiet time, the time in which employees work by themselves, to the two days of remote work.

The pandemic has caused employees and businesses alike to reevaluate the workplace and stride towards a digital future of productivity and balance.