The Remote Work Weekly #5

Welcome to the fifth edition of The Remote Work Weekly!

In this week's edition, we explore a survey that shows expectations of increasing work-from-office days in 2025 and cover the news of an investigation regarding the use of mouse-mover technology to fake work in a U.S. major bank. We also resume the featured Tool of the Week with a new tool that helps online sellers turn WhatsApp into an e-commerce channel.

Survey: 25% of U.S. Companies to Increase Work-From-Office Days in 2025

Since return-to-office mandates are the hottest of all topics related to remote work, we continue starting the weekly edition with this subject. This week, we review the results of a survey by ResumeBuilder involving 765 business leaders of companies that have been implementing such mandates since 2021. This survey aims to provide insights into how these mandates will affect businesses in 2025.

The survey showed that 38% of the included companies require employees to work 3 days in-office per week, while 49% of them require employees to be present in office at least 4 days per week. Half of these 49% already require employees to work for 4 days in-office per week, while the other half already require all employees to be present at their desks 5 days per week.

Regarding talent retention, the survey showed that 80% of the companies have lost or expect to lose talent to return-to-office mandates. Despite this talent loss, 45% of the companies reported that they don't plan to change their policies, while 25% plan to increase their on-site work requirements. Only 21% of the companies said that with the main motivations being improving retention and saving on the cost of office space.

Mouse-mover Cheaters Caught and Fired

For the past few years, there have been ongoing debates on whether remote work or in-office work is more productive. Alongside this debate, concerns were rising that remote employees might be using techniques and technologies to fake work, which is undoubtedly unethical behavior.

A report by Bloomberg, published last week, showed that Wells Fargo bank fired over a dozen employees after a lengthy investigation into the use of mouse-over software. This report didn't specify if the investigated employees were working remotely or not. Either Way, such an incident is likely to increase concerns even more among many businesses about the effectiveness of expanding their remote workforce.

This incident can be linked to the U.S. financial sector’s major return-to-office mandates, covered in edition #3, signaling a possible end of remote work availability in this sector.

Tool of the Week: Callbell Shop

Although this week's tool isn't for every remote worker, it can be of great help to e-commerce store owners and independent online sellers. Callbell Shop is a virtual store tool that can turn WhatsApp into an e-commerce channel. It allows its users to create a virtual catalog that customers can browse through, add items to their cart, and place orders via WhatsApp chat. It also enables multi-user access to the WhatsApp chat and offers the ability to update order statuses that will reflect on the customer's WhatsApp chat.

The following is a sample of how an order placed on WhatsApp via the Callbell product catalog looks like:

Despite being a free tool, it is important to note that Callbell Shop is a product of Callbell, a web-based CRM that offers broader integrations with Facebook Business, Instagram direct messages, and Telegram chat.

Wrap-up

This wraps up the 5th edition of The Remote Work Weekly. I hope it was informative, insightful, and entertaining :). To receive notifications about each week's edition, feel free to subscribe.

If you'd like to share your thoughts or suggest a useful tool, your input is always appreciated. You can reach out to me directly here.

See you next week!

Amr