Success of Videoconferencing Could Keep a Lot of Education Work Remote

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 03/29/21

Two-thirds of people in the education sector expect to see a continuation of remote work post-pandemic. Sixty-five percent of respondents in education agreed that due to the success of remote collaboration, facilitated by videoconferencing, their organizations are considering a flexible remote working model.

The research was undertaken on behalf of Zoom by the Boston Consulting Group, which conducted a survey among people in six countries, including the United States. The goal was to understand the economic impact of remote work and video communications. All of those surveyed were full-time employees in a C-level, head of office or IT management position in an organization that used videoconferencing. The survey drew 5,820 respondents in multiple industries, including education.

Those employed in education said their operations saw 3.3 times more use of remote work during the pandemic, with 3.5 times more use of videoconferencing. Eight in 10 respondents agreed that videoconferencing solutions would "continue to be essential" beyond the current crisis.

In spite of the high expectation that remote work would endure, just 39% of American respondents in all types of businesses said they'd expect their organizations to work remotely after the pandemic. And a slight majority (54%) said they'd expect at least half of their employees to continue using videoconferencing.

The analysis calculated that 2.28 million jobs were preserved across all business sectors by use of remote work in the United States, representing 2% of the economy.

More complete results are available on the Zoom site.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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