The pandemic forced many fleets to hasten the deployment of certain technologies.
Respondents were asked to select any department that was transitioned to home-based and in many cases, selected multiple departments.
By March 2020, the home-office experience became more common and during the throes of the pandemic, 71% of the U.S. labor force transitioned to remote work, according to Pew Research.
Transportation employees were not immune. Either voluntarily or thanks to local/state guidelines mandating employees keep at least six feet between each other, fleets were rewriting office policies and sending employees home.
According to a recent survey conducted by CCJ, 47% of fleets transitioned at least part of their non-driving employees to working from home and at its peak, more than half of the staff was working remotely. Back-office personnel (accounting, payroll, accounts payable, etc.) led the way in transition with 84% of respondents saying these employees were tucked away in home offices, followed by dispatch (53%), safety (51%), and IT (50%).
Almost 20% of our respondents said the majority of their employees remain remote, but the bulk (26%) worked remotely from between six months to a year. There is a sense of normalcy returning to the workplace as 48% of respondents say they no longer have any employees remaining remote, and only 18% plan to allow home-based employees to stay there indefinitely. Collectively, 26% of respondents expect to have all remote employees back in the office by the end of the year, but only 2% said vaccination status would play a role.
I'm not sure I even knew what Zoom was in 2019, but almost 60% of respondents said platforms like Zoom, Slack and Teams improved communication. Some fleets also noted an improvement in the amount of work accomplished (22%) and improvements in quality (24%), but said – to the tune of about 55% – that remote meetings were less impactful.
