Remote Work’s Impact on Workers’ Compensation Claims Frequency

In a post-pandemic environment, remote work has reshaped how millions of Americans perform their jobs. While this transformation has stabilized in recent years, with many organizations introducing a return to a physical office or a hybrid work environment, its long-term effects on the workers’ compensation system are still unfolding.

“While face-to-face meetings are still imperative, there are more opportunities for virtual meetings, which reduces the need for travel and contributes to the reduction of both travel budgets and employee injuries,” said Jason Wagenblast, Director of Claims at Safety National. “As hybrid work becomes the norm, we will see continued evolution in both exposure patterns and claim types, making flexibility and proactive risk assessment more important than ever for employers and insurers.”

The latest research from the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) explores how this shift toward remote and hybrid work has influenced workers’ compensation claims frequency and what it means for insurers and employers.

The Remote Work Revolution

Prior to 2020, remote work was rare. Data from the American Time Use Survey and American Community Survey suggest that only 4-7% of full-time U.S. workers primarily worked from home in 2019. By contrast, pandemic-era surveys show that remote work skyrocketed to cover the majority of workdays in early 2020 and has since settled at around 20–30% of the U.S. workforce.

This new normal represents a permanent change, especially for office and clerical occupations, sectors inherently more adaptable to remote settings. Although many employers have encouraged returns to the office, national data indicate that remote work has largely stabilized since late 2021, suggesting that hybrid and at-home work arrangements are here to stay.

Measuring Remote-Friendly Work Environments

To assess how remote work impacts workers’ compensation, NCCI first estimated which occupations can be done remotely. Using data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and NCCI’s own Statistical Plan, they evaluated roles across eight job characteristics, such as time spent outdoors, exposure to hazards, and physical proximity. Jobs scoring high for indoor, sedentary tasks and low for hazardous exposure were classified as remote-friendly. These occupation-level classifications were mapped to workers’ compensation class codes, allowing them to estimate which parts of the workers’ compensation system were most affected by remote work.

The analysis focused on the combined office sector. This includes industries such as information, financial activities, and professional and business services, and special classes, which include office and clerical roles. Roughly half of the payroll in either group is remote-friendly, and about three-quarters for workers who fall into both categories. However, due to the low risk of these roles, they account for only 11% of total premium despite representing more than half of all workers’ compensation payroll. This imbalance explains why even large frequency changes in remote-friendly sectors have only a small effect on overall workers’ compensation trends.

The Impact on Claim Frequency

While most industries experienced a decline in workers’ compensation claims during the pandemic years, the remote-friendly workforce declines were even sharper. Frequency in the combined office sectors fell about 15% in 2020, twice as much as other sectors, and has remained lower through 2023. For special classes, frequency plunged 26% in 2020 and has stayed far below pre-pandemic levels. The steepest drop occurred among clerical and office workers within office-based businesses, where frequency fell roughly 40% and has not rebounded.

Fully remote-friendly classes experienced about 34% lower claim frequency than classes that cannot be done remotely. This result remained consistent across multiple model variations, even when including medical-only claims or adjusting for time trends. When broken down by cause of injury, remote-friendly jobs saw the most dramatic declines in:

• Slips and falls: 50% reduction
• Motor vehicle accidents: 44% reduction
• Strains: 26% reduction
• Contact injuries (e.g., struck or caught): 15% reduction

The frequency decline is most pronounced among workers who can be classified in  both the combined office sector and special classes, typically white-collar employees in finance, insurance, or professional services. For this group, NCCI estimates frequency is 62% lower for fully remote-friendly jobs compared to those requiring in-person work.

Adjusting for the Future

Remote work will continue to reshape exposure and risk, and while the workers’ compensation system has adjusted fairly smoothly, hybrid work environments blur the line between work and home, and compensability for injuries sustained in home offices may evolve as case law develops.

Remote work has proven both safe and sustainable for millions of U.S. employees. For workers’ compensation, it represents a quiet, lasting decline among the nation’s office workforce, a shift likely to influence workers’ compensation data and pricing for years to come.