As the world continues to recover from the COVID-19 global pandemic, remote work advancements have transformed many professions and segments of the economy. Technologies and trends already moving in this direction were kicked into overdrive by sudden necessity in 2020. Three eventful years later, we continue to unpack what we’ve learned and what it means for our teams, organizations, and society.
We welcomed many smiling faces at our table at the MnTech Tech Connect 2023 conference in St. Paul, MN, on May 3, 2023. It was a pleasure to visit with our local business technology community peers, many of whom attended their first in-person professional event since 2020. Our team enjoyed an energizing day full of learning and networking. Thanks again to the Minnesota Technology Association for their hard work in putting together another great show!
A Small Study
To better understand what our peers are experiencing and exercise a few new systems concepts, we conducted a brief survey on work-from-home trends and preferences among the MnTech community. We developed a questionnaire on worker preferences and current employer remote work policies. We designed the data to align with related public information from the US Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center, enabling the comparison of this cohort to broader trends.
We developed a data pipeline system that automatically processes and publishes completed survey responses to an interactive results dashboard. Colorful, attractive charts help answer questions and provide context to the data.
We displayed the results throughout the day on a screen at our booth. In addition to serving as a great conversation starter, this mini-study taught us many interesting facts about our community. While the results were not statistically exhaustive, our MnTech cohort of 54 completed survey responses produced the following insights.
- The Pew (national results) aligned with the MnTech Cohort results regarding work arrangement preference; most respondents who can work from home would want to work from home at least some of the time.
- The MnTech Cohort represented 12 different employer industries.
- About 80% of the MnTech Cohort indicated that their job responsibilities could be performed from home.
- About 59% of the MnTech Cohort indicated their employer size is 500+ employees.
You can interact with the final results here:
https://mntech2023.hargrovedata.com
We plan to repeat this study at our next show appearance, which will be at the Associations North NFusion 2023 conference in Minneapolis on June 6. We hope to see you there!
Notes
- The opinions expressed herein, including any implications for policy, are those of the author and not of Pew Research Center.