Research and consulting firm Gartner predicted in a study that 51% of all knowledge workers worldwide will work remotely by the end of 2021, compared to 27% of knowledge workers in 2019.
Gartner defines knowledge workers as those engaged in knowledge-intensive professions, such as writers, accountants, and engineers.
The research firm also estimates that by the end of 2021, 32% of all workers worldwide will come from abroad, up from 17% in 2019.
In 2022, the U.S.will be the leader in remote workers, with 53% of the workforce; in Europe, remote workers in the U.K. will account for 52% of the workforce in 2022, while remote workers in Germany and France will account for 37% and 33%, respectively.
India and China will have the most remote labor force, but their overall penetration rates will remain relatively low at 30% and 28%, respectively.
By 2024, companies will be forced to introduce digital transformation plans for businesses for at least five years, which will have to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world in which remote work and digital touchpoints are more widely accepted.
A hybrid workforce will further increase need for PCs and tablets. By 2021, PC and tablet shipments will exceed 500 million units for the first time in history, underscoring demand from both businesses and consumers.
Gartner predicts that global end-user spending on public cloud services will rise by 23.1% in 2021 as CIOs and IT executives continue to use cloud applications such as software as a service (SaaS). Social and collaboration tools will continue to be a necessity, resulting in the global social software and collaboration market growing by 17% in 2021.
The key challenge is determining how often workers should work on-site and not at home. Employees have strong preferences for a hybrid workplace.
According to Gartner’s Digital Worker Experience Survey 2021, among 10,080 employees in nine nations, around 70% of employees work at least some time away and prefer two to four days at different locations.
Interestingly, less than 1% of Chinese and 5% of Indian employees preferred completely remote areas, while nearly 30% of employees in the United Kingdom and the United States preferred completely remote areas. These preferences are linked to available home office space, social/cultural differences, and management styles.
For more information, read the original story in TechRepublic.