Businesses embracing remote working opens up tremendous opportunities – access to talent being one – but it comes with its own unique challenges.
A year ago, we reacted. Today, we need to be strategic.
Research from Microsoft suggests our overall response to remote working has been mixed.
While some employees have unlocked new levels of productivity, others have struggled. Particularly if they haven’t worked remotely before, or been with their company long.
Two of the most important factors determining a person’s ability to work remotely effectively are:
The space they have access to
Who they share the space with
This varies dramatically from person to person. And it goes without saying, kids can complicate this in a huge way.
When it comes to things like meetings, some people find themselves regularly frustrated by technical barriers. How many times have you heard the words “You’re on mute” through gritted teeth in the last year?
Whereas others noticed a digital setting provides more of a level playing field for people who are normally quite quiet in the boardroom, but have seemingly found their voice online.
Sir Cary Cooper, President of the CIPD, reminds the i newspaper that remote working was already the plan for a lot of businesses, Covid simply brought that future forward sooner.
“The evidence pre-Covid was that people wanted to work more flexibly, and work partly at home” and that employers who reject this now are “so old-fashioned, so out-of-touch with what people want.”
“We have the technology to work flexibly, so if what people want is doable, employers should allow them to do it, because autonomy and being trusted is the biggest factor in staff happiness.”
Making the decision to adopt remote working as a long term strategy means weighing up all the things that were brought on as an emergency measure due to Covid, deciding what we want to keep, what we don’t, and where we can improve.
And in making those decisions, there are many questions that remain unanswered:
What’s the best way to hire remote workers?
Which of your policies needs to change?
What equipment do you need to provide?
And how do you ensure wellbeing at a distance?
HIRING
Hiring, broadly speaking, froze along with the rest of the world a year ago. Some sectors were hit harder than others, with retail, hospitality, and tourism among the worst affected.
But for some sectors, and the recruitment companies that service them, business is booming.
The tech industry were among the first to adapt successfully. Many companies saw an increase in demand for their services, and so they were able to continue growing – and therefore, recruiting – while the rest of the world got to grips with logging on remotely for the first time.
We can learn a lot from their example.
These are the businesses that pivoted to market themselves more through digital channels in order to reach people remotely.
They’ve taken historic interview schedules involving 3 or 4 stages in different locations and either altered that process, if not throwing it out entirely.
Companies that continue to hire well recognise that a strong employer brand is the cornerstone of a good remote hiring strategy.
And remote working is a highly desirable USP at the moment, lockdown or not. If you talk about it in your branding, it’s one quick and easy way to make an attractive case for working for you.
It’s also prudent to audit your candidate journey right now. Every stage, including onboarding. Because once a hire’s made, that’s when the real work starts.
Research from employee engagement company TINYPulse suggests newly onboarded remote staff may struggle to form meaningful bonds with colleagues. It can also be a challenge for company leaders to instill cultural values from behind a screen.
Given that so much hiring stems from a failure to retain someone, retention should be viewed as a uniquely valuable part of an effective remote hiring strategy.
POLICY
How remote do you want to be?
Of 130 HR Leaders surveyed by research and advisory firm Gartner, 90% “plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time”.
The same group predict roughly 50% of the workforce will seek a return to the office, once it’s safe to do so.
It’s difficult to accurately gauge public opinion, mainly because it changes all the time. But there seems to be support for some kind of hybrid arrangement: predominantly remote, with an office to visit from time to time should the need arise.
So the first policy decision you’re likely to make is: Are you going 100% remote? Or will you be providing that option of a base?
Have you considered the additional expenses or logistics of any policy decisions you decide to take?
Protective equipment for the office.
Remote data security infrastructure.
Health and safety procedures.
Insurance.
What’s your policy on vaccinations?
2020 proved that adaptability is key to remaining successful during a pandemic. As we start building a remote working future in 2021, being adaptable is looking like a sound policy strategy too.
EQUIPMENT
According to one study involving 1,000 workers in the US, over 70% have started working in bed recently.
Only 10% admit to doing so nearly every day. And workers aged between 18 and 34 are twice as likely, typically because they’re less likely to have a proper work station set up at home.
This can obviously have disastrous impacts on sleep, posture, stress, and productivity in general. But how responsible are employers for outfitting their teams with gear to be at the top of their game?
If you’re moving out of your physical office for good, you might have an abundance of hardware lying around that you need to redistribute. If not, you may need to invest.
And ‘equipment’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘hardware’. Sometimes the right suite of software products is all the remote infrastructure you need.
It’s about making sure your team have the tools they need to do their job properly.
I’m sure we’ve all used Zoom for video chats.
But how do you manage progress reviews when your team aren’t all in the same building at the same time?
How will you ensure compliance, collaboration, and clear communication, when everyone’s in different places?
WELLBEING
Nilufar Ahmed, Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Bristol, makes the point that as well as our eyes being strained from staring at a screen all day, doing so is also disruptive to our sense of space.
“In the 1960s, the anthropologist Edward Hall described how our relationships operate within socially accepted distances. Close family and intimate relationships occur within a proximity of half a metre. For close friends, this distance extends to about 1.2 metres.”
“The pandemic is sending our brain conflicting messages. With video calls, faces are within 50 centimetres of us, and this tells our brain that these are close or intimate friends when instead they are colleagues or strangers.”
This is, of course, at a time when employees aren’t physically able to be as close with their loved ones.
Mental health is in the spotlight at the moment.
Research company YouGov surveyed over 4,000 UK office workers on behalf of Microsoft Surface, in order to better “understand the working habits of the UK workforce in a transformative year.”
Over half of those polled reported increased happiness due to working from home. But an almost equal number said they now felt pressure to “be available at all times”.
These are delicate balances to manage. And they differ from individual to individual.
Software company Limeade asked 1,000 people about their mental health during lockdown. They found “employee burnout has skyrocketed during the pandemic” with 72% reporting they’d experienced burnout, up 42% based on a similar study the year before.
While these problems are unique to remote working, it’s worth recognising that we are also living through one of the most challenging periods of human history at the moment.
Current data on employee wellbeing is not exclusively determined by their remote working status. There are huge, existential factors at play, and we need to take these into account as we’re planning for the future.
Because what’s important when we’re defining the future of remote working, is that we implement solutions that tackle the unique issues brought on by remote working head on.
Mental health’s a big one. But businesses shouldn’t seek to reinvent mental healthcare services themselves.
They should however be expected to provide support, resource, and direction for staff going forward.
Have you ever turned your camera off during a meeting? Just to give yourself a few minutes respite?
And if so, have you instead spent the time busy with emails or catching up on other projects?
Is another virtual pub or Zoom quiz really going to bring the team together at the end of a long week?
Or have you you thought about encouraging periods of downtime instead? Starting a book club, something to get your team away from a screen, even if it’s just for a little while?
We don’t have all the answers. But together, we can help define how the next normal operates.
On the 24th of March – a day after the first anniversary of lockdown in the UK – we’re hosting a discussion on the long term, practical approach to remote working. And you’re invited.
Russell Beck from ImagineThinkDo leads an interactive webinar, providing thought leadership tools and techniques, with breakout sessions to get like-minded attendees networking.
Check out the Eventbrite page to sign up: Remote Working: A long term strategy not a short term solution. Taking place 12pm Wednesday 24th March 2021.