BEERG Newsletter - Future Work: The rise of the “Chief Remote Officer”

According to the London Times “the rise of working from home has prompted a recruitment boom for a new role: ‘chief remote officer’ “. It reports that within the past month, 107 British companies were recruiting someone to oversee hybrid working, up from 52 in October 2019, according to the jobs search engine Adzuna.

The title of chief remote officer has been particularly popular in the technology sector. Facebook was an early adopter, having begun its recruitment process for the role in September 2020. The social media giant, which is owned by Meta, said it was looking for someone to develop a long-term remote working plan and lead the firm’s push “towards remote-first ways of working.”

The percentage of UK workers who reported that they work exclusively from home fell to 22% between February and May, when the latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) survey figures were published. A separate recent survey by LinkedIn showed that fewer than 12% of job adverts in the UK were for fully remote roles — the lowest level since the company began collecting the data in September last year.

Paul Lewis, chief customer officer at Adzuna, said although remote working could be good for productivity and performance, “the lack of face-to-face communication and social interaction can lead to employee disengagement and burnout.” He said chief remote officers would be responsible for “future-proofing the business to avoid employee disengagement.”