Remote Work Is Here to Stay—Especially If You Speak English
The remote work revolution has settled into a lasting equilibrium: hybrid schedules. This is especially true in Anglophone countries.
A sweeping Stanford-led survey of over 16k college-educated workers across 40 countries finds that the average employee now works from home 1.27 days per week—a figure virtually unchanged since 2023. Despite high-profile pushback from CEOs, both employers and employees appear to have quietly agreed on a hybrid schedule.
The most striking pattern in the data is regional: Anglophone countries lead the world in remote work. Canadians and Britons average nearly two days a week at home (1.9 and 1.8 days, respectively), with Americans close behind at 1.6. By contrast, the practice is far less common in continental Europe and East Asia. In South Korea, for example, the average is just 0.5 days.
So what explains this divergence? According to the study, culture is the primary driver.
Using Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede’s famed “individualism index,” the authors found a strong correlation: the more individualistic a country, the more it embraces remote work. As shown in the chart below, English-speaking nations are the most individualistic and the most likely to WFH. In contrast, East Asian countries are the least individualistic and the least likely to WFH.
In these highly individualistic societies, managers tend to place greater trust in employees to perform without constant oversight. Workers, in turn, view productivity as a personal responsibility (driven by guilt) rather than a collective obligation (driven by shame). Nowhere is this ethos more deeply ingrained than in the US, where a long-standing tradition of Jeffersonian individualism exalts the self-reliant homesteader and casts suspicion on the crowded, urban panopticon. (See “Remote Work: US vs. the World.”)
Bottom line: Remote work is here to stay—especially in the Anglosphere.
The contracting job market in white collar jobs has created an opportunity for employers to begin a wave of return to office mandates this year. I wonder how that shakes out against the data so far where hybrid work has been allowed and encouraged. Perhaps other employers will use work from home as an incentive to offset lower compensation and the equilibrium will continue.