Remote jobs on the rise in Whanganui as more options become available

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report predicts that the total number of employed people working from home post-Covid will stabilise at 20 to 30 per cent. Photo / 123rf

Working from his home in Mangamahu near Whanganui, Dr Robin Mann collaborates with local businesses along with companies in countries such as Singapore and the UAE.

As the director of the Centre for Organisational Excellence Research, Mann has been completing a portion of his work remotely for many years but has transitioned to a greater amount of remote work as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That's the case for many workers in Aotearoa, with StatsNZ reporting that 42 per cent of employed people worked at least some of their job from home during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

While that was expected for the lockdown, what was less expected was that a large number of those workers have stayed home since.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report predicts that the total number of employed people working from home post-Covid will stabilise at 20 to 30 per cent, a substantial increase from around 5 per cent who worked remotely pre-Covid.

Mann said he believed the opportunity for remote work would continue even once the pandemic was over.

"I think in many cases there will be a move to a hybrid model, where remote working is allowed along with a certain percentage of time spent at physical premises," Mann said.

He found that the shift in attitudes was due to the increased use of programmes such as Zoom making workers more comfortable with online communication and giving them more options in how to conduct their work.

"You've got this flexibility now; if you can't meet someone physically, you can always do it online."

Recent figures suggest that Whanganui has become an attractive place to live for people working remotely.

The 2020 Stats NZ study found that the job fields most likely to be working remotely were highly-skilled jobs requiring tertiary education and training (57 per cent), and managerial jobs (53 per cent).

According to economic development agency Whanganui & Partners, in 2021 36.3 per cent of all jobs filled in Whanganui were highly skilled, with the most common of those high skill jobs being specialist managers (7.3 per cent).

On top of this, Whanganui's population increased to 48,400 people in 2021, as well as a 1.5 per cent increase of jobs filled, far higher than the 0.1 per cent national average.

So, it can safely be presumed that a number of these new jobs came from workers choosing to live in Whanganui but take work, or perhaps keep work, elsewhere in Aotearoa or even internationally.

Whanganui & Partners acting chief executive Jonathan Sykes said Whanganui's lifestyle was very attractive to working families.

"One partner will often retain a job outside of the region in order for the family to move and enjoy the excellent schooling and lifestyle factors they can't get in bigger cities," Sykes said.

Mann said he believed the reason for the shift was simple - people were enjoying working remotely.

The PwC report found that in 2021 83 per cent of people working from home found it successful, a 10 per cent increase from 2020.

Similarly, a 2021 Otago University Business School survey found that 84 per cent of respondents found remote working easy, and 43 per cent of respondents found that their employers were proactive in adapting to remote work.

However, while many report being happy with remote work, it can still have its downsides. Mann has found that while people were more open to online communication now, strong relationships between workers were harder to build online.

"Yes, you can undertake projects, but I think the human relationships are more difficult to establish."

The Otago University Survey also found that remote workers had a higher likelihood of experiencing high stress or burnout, as well as struggling to find a healthy work/life balance and having to work with home technology that was not fit for their job.

The PwC report also stresses that businesses need to continue to change and adapt to workers choosing to work remotely rather than in office or in a hybrid model.