When you talk about the Future of Workers (and the Future of Work), one thing is clear: In the 21st Century, remote work is going to be the “new normal” for a great many workers.
Even before the current coronavirus pandemic made remote work a necessity — a “watershed” moment, as the Chicago Tribune put it — a Gallup survey found that “Remote work not only improves outcomes and employee branding, but is a policy that the most talented employees desire.”
Here’s what Gallup said, in research done before the coronavirus outbreak, about the increasing trend towards remote work:
“The number of hours spent working off-site is increasing, as is the number of workers. In 2012, Gallup data showed 39% of employees worked remotely in some capacity, meaning they spent at least some of their time working away from their co-workers. In 2016, that number had grown four percentage points to 43%.
And of those who do work remotely some of the time, the percentage of time spent working remotely increased from 2012 to 2016 as well. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found a threefold increase in the number of companies offering remote work options between 1996 and 2016.”
As promising as those statistics are, they lag far behind the current reality that when a global health crisis makes it risky to work close to others, lots of organizations that never, ever would have considered letting employees work from home suddenly get very focused, very agile, and find ways to make remote work possible.
Delivering “far greater organizational benefits”
Philippe Weiss, president of Seyfarth Shaw at Work, the Chicago-based workplace training subsidiary of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, told the Chicago Tribune:
“I think this is a watershed moment in terms of wider acceptance and implementation of work-from-home. Employees that have tasted the benefits of more freedom and autonomy are going be hard-pressed to let it go.”
And Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a research and consulting firm focused on new ways of working, added this:
“What many organizations learn from the experience is that a remote work program, when approached strategically, can deliver far greater organization benefits such as improved (talent) attraction and retention, increased productivity and engagement, reduced real estate costs and environmental impact and more.”
The critical finding in Gallup’s research is that even before the coronavirus outbreak, more and more industries were putting remote work policies in place. “Remote work is no longer a privilege,” Forbes recently observed. “It’s become the standard operating mode for at least 50% of the U.S. population.”
In other words, companies that have resisted letting workers work remotely now find that they have no other choice, even if they’re struggling to make it work. That’s how it goes as we adjust to the Future of Work.
A rallying cry for remote work
However, one thing is clear, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out:
“Chaotic times have a way of reordering reality and, in the process, opening doors to new opportunities and mind-sets. In the past month Americans broke a habit of almost a century’s standing: The office lost top billing as the place where white-collar work gets done. Hundreds of thousands of newly remote employees will soon begin to see that productivity, innovation and creativity remain as strong, if not stronger, under new conditions.”
That’s a great rallying cry for the concept of remote work, but even when the coronavirus pandemic is over, there will still be a number of businesses and other organizations that continue to resist remote work despite its growing acceptance.
Some will do so for a good reason, and it’s usually this: No matter how widespread the acceptance of remote work becomes, there will always be SOME jobs where it simply isn’t possible or practical to work remotely. For example, airline pilots and Uber drivers will probably never get the opportunity to work from home no matter how much they would like to.
Lance Haun, editor of the talent management and HR website TLNT, is someone who has worked remotely, and successfully, for a number of years, but even he acknowledges the shortcomings of remote work when he recently Tweeted:
“Work from home isn’t for everyone. I’m married to someone who hasn’t ever had a career where she could work from home. Hard to make commercial wine from home. Hard to do university lab research from home. Hard to educate from home. It’s not just retail and health care.”
All of that is true, of course, but it is equally true that a global altering event — like a coronavirus pandemic — that requires people all over the world to suddenly stay home, may alter how people work as dramatically it is altering so many other parts of life as we know it.
In other words, it’s a “perfect storm” that may be the one thing that pushes a lot of employers who have been resisting remote work to finally accept it as a realistic option to keep their workers working and their business afloat.
And THAT’S why remote work is going to be a big game-changer for the Future of Workers.
“The workplace is being tested … more now than ever”
Organizations everywhere are finding that they need to be incredibly agile and make changes — immediately — if they are going to be able to deal with the fast-moving situation around them.
Lillian Ngala, the head of human resources at Diamond Trust Bank in Nairobi, Kenya, recently wrote that workplace agility is “the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous and turbulent environment. With the breaking of the coronavirus pandemic and an increase in industry disruptions, a more apt meaning cannot be found.”
And, she also made this important point: “Employees’ capacity to be aware of, understand, and duly respond to changes in the workplace is being tested … more now than ever before. … Employees have to feel empowered to make decentralized decisions and work around procedures to speed up a response. And they need to have the freedom to deploy their ingenuity and creativity.”
It’s hard to come up with a better case than that for letting as many workers as possible switch to remote work — now!
Matt Burr and Becca Endicott of Nomadic Learning, a collaborative learning tool, made a similar argument in The Wall Street Journal:
“We are collectively undertaking a great experiment in the nature of work — not because we want to but because circumstances have forced our hand. It will take a lot of conscious effort and rapid calibration to make this transition as smooth as it can be.
In a world we anticipate, a world where work never really returns to the office, the most important factors for success will be ample trust, mutually agreed-upon norms, good communication and a strong and validating work culture.”
Transforming people’s lives
Stella Garber, who works remotely from as product marketing lead at Trello, a task management software firm, has been managing a remote team for team for six years.
She recently told the Chicago Tribune that the one big thing companies need to understand is that as remote work becomes more common in our 21st Century workplace, remote work teams will have to stay agile and agree to some new norms and rituals.
“This is an exciting time for those of us who are dinosaurs who have been doing this for a while,” she said of the potential for the coronavirus preparation to usher in a work-from-home revolution. “I think remote work has the potential to transform people’s lives.”
5 Tips for Managing Remote Workers
Gallup recently published COVID-19 Has My Teams Working Remotely: A Guide for Leaders. Harvard Business Review weighed in as well with A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers. Here are some of their tips to leading a remote workforce — suggestions that “will likely become best practice for your company later on.”
- Individualization is key. “Managers need to ask each team member to describe the conditions under which they perform best, their concerns about their workflow, and their emotional response to the situation. (They) need to individualize to the person to get the best performance. A one-size-fits-all response never fits anyone very well.”
- Set expectations early and clearly. “Managers must make expectations crystal clear: X is the work you should do, Y is the quality standard, Z is the deadline. Executives should provide higher-level expectations aligned with the company’s purpose.”
- Have regular and frequent communication. “Plan for more conference calls. … Managers will have to be diligent about communicating productively — coaching high performance requires frequent conversations… (and) keep the lines of communication open, honest and broad. …”
- Provide encouragement and emotional support. “It’s important for managers to acknowledge stress, listen to employees’ anxieties and concerns, and empathize with their struggles. If a remote employee is clearly struggling … ask them how they’re doing. Even a general question … can elicit information you might not otherwise hear.”
- Support your managers: “A sudden change in the practice of management can be hard on managers. … So, give them support, both practical and emotional, during what may be a tough transition. Invest in management development and coaching … and just remember — managers always need to know you have their back…”
