How to cope with the wave of remote working?

Preface

Recently, people have been reaching out to me to promote remote jobs, mostly managing distributed teams with a flexible working style and culture. My current company has already switched to a hybrid working model and will go long-term with this approach. This data somehow proves that remote working is a new trend now and this working style may have already moved to its next stage. As an employer, like it or not, you may now realize that remote working is the future of work and change is inevitable. But the fact is that it's not easy to succeed in transforming the working style from co-located to remote. Some companies have concluded that this new working style is not actually working after a short dry-run, and they are still struggling to find a new way to stay in the market. In this article, I would like to share some of my personal thoughts and insights from other experts that I learned from to hopefully see the picture more clearly.

The origin

Remote working is not a new thing. In the past, the term "telecommuting" was coined in 1973 by Jack Nilles, a NASA engineer, in his book, The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff. In 1979, five IBM employees were allowed to work from home as an experiment. By 1983, the count rose to 2000. I, JC Penny gave its call center staff the option to work from home.

In the 1990s and 2000s, remote work became facilitated by technology such as collaborative software, virtual private networks, conference calling, video-telephony, internet access, cloud computing, voice over IP (VoIP), and mobile telecommunications technology such as Wi-Fi-equipped laptops or tablets, smartphones, and desktop computers, using software such as Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, etc.

The relation between COVID-19 pandemic and remote working

After months of staying at home, a lot of us see the opportunity to rethink established ways of living and working. Companies struggle with immediate effects and try to explore new ways of serving their customers and organizing their way of working. To me, remote working is not a viable solution to the COVID-19 crisis, but the consequences of the crisis have pushed remote working to the next stage.

The stage I mentioned above is quite in line with Gandhi’s model for change: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I believe we're in the fighting stage and the win is going to come soon. Remote working will be the new norm.

Challenges, opportunities, and what do experts say??

Communication challenge - the cost of establishing communication

From Bjorn Freeman-Benson: Three Challenges of Distributed Teams

In a distributed team, Bjorn says, two thing keep occuring. First, the cost of establishing communication is much higher, even when the technology works perfectly.

A: B, are you there?

B: Yes I am

A: Let’s chat

B: OK

A: (sets up video call)

A: (waits)

B: (joins call)

In comparison, in a co-located team, there’s no friction.

A: (turns head) B, I have a question.

Global Talent pool - More choice when hiring engineers

From Remote versus Co-located Work by Martin Fowler

Despite the fact that I think most teams would be more productive working co-located, you will often get a more effective team by embracing some form of distributed model because it will widen the talent pool of people you can get.

To the Managers - Stop managing the chair, keeping the value below and enrich your indirect management skills

• Collaboration: Seeing is believing. Leveraging virtual communications
• Managing by creating a culture of trust and transparency
• People-oriented mindset: Keep hiring and keeping great people, supporting them, and maintaining an environment that self-motivated is the key factor.

Transforming your team to full remote working model?- The roadmap

I mentioned at the beginning of this article that the transition from co-located to full remote is not an easy mission, and I believe that the most common mistake is a lack of a clear roadmap for it. ThoughtWorks did a great job of standardising a timeline to "go-remote" for your references. Please click here for more details

Conclusion?

Again, I strongly believe that remote working will be the new norm. If you're new to this, I think the first step would be to have enough data and skills to put yourself in a ready state. For those who are already a part of this new wave, especially managers, I would suggest reviewing what stage you're in and what you should do to make your team move to the next stage fearlessly.

Thank you for your time.

Further reading?

Remote: Office Not Required by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried

The ultimate guide to remote work by zapier