Me and My AI, Working Remote: Boosting Productivity/Job Satisfaction or Inciting Labor-Management Conflict?
Abstract:
Covid-19 changed the place where many workers worked, from offices and other business locations to their homes (WFH), where thanks to digitalization, powerful software including AI assistants, and the Internet, workers could avoid lengthy commutes and do their jobs at home. Firms found that WFH was more productive for some jobs but less productive for other jobs while in all cases saving costs on offices and other buildings.
Since the location of work can vary in any time period, the stage would seemingly be set for a new post-Covid equilibrium in the labor market with hybrid work locations, compensating differentials for WFH depending on worker desires, effects of WFH on productivity, and savings on office expenses. While some firms and workers have adjusted to workers new preference for WFH, many major firms have insisted on return-to-office (RTO) practices in the mid-2020s over the objections of workers, creating a major fault line in the labor market in the foreseeable future.
What is preventing the market adjudicating the differing desires of employers and employees? Who will win the RTO vs WFH battle over where workers will work? Will AI tip the balance to RTO or to WFH? This presentation will explore these questions in the never-ending struggle between labor and capital in economic life.
AI, Remote Work and Productivity: An International Conference 