Even though our company has been offering our employees flexible remote work policies for a few years now, this is the first time where our entire staff works from home. And so, with our years of experience with this work model, we can predict the results of this experiment and the challenges businesses will face while performing it.
Let’s start with the cons of remote work. It is perfectly understandable that businesses wish to efficiently utilize their employees’ time on the clock. On the other hand, efficiency suffers when working from home because of various distractions and temptations unrelated to job responsibilities.
This problem is closely connected to company values and culture. If the company is results-oriented and trusts its employees, they doubtlessly respond in kind.
On the other hand, there are enough international companies, which only operate remotely. They sometimes even pay for their employees’ space at co-working spaces, because some people do not have good conditions to focus and work at home without any disturbances. It is important to understand that they may be distracted by family members, pets, TV, or household chores.
Of course, work from the office also comes with its own distractions. Colleagues talking too loudly on their phone, your manager dropping by to ask that one all-important question, which makes you lose your train of thought completely, meetings, or just chats with colleagues in the kitchen. Let’s not forget social media, which is a constant distraction all day, every day.
Technology and its related infrastructure is the next challenge remote work needs to overcome. It is not as difficult as it may seem, however, despite some companies cursing themselves for buying PCs instead of laptops right about now.
The Internet speed and stability in Lithuania is perfect, so that’s off the list. If the company hasn’t had much experience with remote work, system administrators might have some important things to take care of, starting with ensuring data security, as well as picking and setting up secure means of internal communication.
I won’t even get into virtual meetings and calls. Most of us will get used to them quickly and easily. Losing the ability to quickly share knowledge, experience, or just chat with your colleagues is much more important.
Sometimes, a quick and inane chat in the kitchen next to the water cooler might inspire brilliant ideas for your business. Then, there are also internal knowledge-sharing sessions, which can prove to be a useful tool for professional development.
There are tech solutions, which somewhat alleviate the problem, including internal libraries, video seminars, or even virtual kitchens. None of them can fully replace that formal or random encounter you have with a real person when it comes to exchanging opinions, ideas, and insights regarding work.
With that said, I see this is a matter that lives or dies based on company culture and values.
Answer honestly, have you encouraged your colleagues to share their insights and ideas? How often? What processes, events, tools, or examples were you using to accommodate this before the quarantine?
If you had volunteers preparing internal knowledge sharing sessions and if colleagues were used to communicating - great! But if none of that was happening, the quarantine might just be the right time to establish and set up some kind of knowledge-sharing facet of your company culture. Losing live contact is secondary to this culture and real enthusiasm.
Why will the experiment work?
Our company experience shows that there are more pros than cons when it comes to remote work. I am pretty sure that it will become a much more wide-spread practice after the quarantine.
Embracing remote work gives your company access to a much deeper pool of talent to choose from when hiring, because geographical considerations are now irrelevant. Just like that. In our company, we have colleagues working from home or co-working spaces, hailing from Austria, Greece, and Luxembourg.
Some companies will find remote work helpful in solving professional competence issues, while others may find it beneficial to their red line at the end of the month. With proper organization of remote work, the location of your office does not matter anymore and there are several legal ways of dealing with wages for remote workers.
The lower costs of renting office space and related infrastructure barely warrant a mention. For some, it can be a tangible and important advantage when it comes to staying in the black financially, while others could use the saved funds to throw massive company-wide parties annually. Or even more often if that is your wish.
It is hard to predict what impact the COVID-19 outbreak will have on the labor market in the short and medium-term. There is one thing I am sure of: the scales will once again deservedly lean heavily in the favor of the employee.
And what do employees value? Flexibility, the ability to successfully reconcile their work and personal lives, and the agency to determine how they want their workload to be distributed by themselves. So, employers, who offer flexible working conditions, will always have an advantage over their competition.
With all of that said, it is first important to remember that remote work is still work. Even if the current unexpected quarantine-inspired situation seems to be unusual or confusing to some employees, even if they need some time to get used to it, there will soon come a time where we will all remember the elementary fact of life - work must be completed, results achieved, and goals met.
The remote work experience in our company shows that remote employees work just as efficiently as office employees in the long term. Of course, remote work can result in different schedules, various “absences”, and a wide variety of unexpected disturbances. But overall, we believe that there is no difference between remote and office work when it comes to results.
It is an unassailable fact that many of us would rather not deal with this unwelcome and involuntary deportation out of our comfort zone. But there I am completely sure that there will be a lot of people who will, in the end, find this new reality more attractive than they thought possible.
