Why the Corona Virus Should Drive the World Towards Remote Work at Scale

A global pandemic is a terrifying thing. How quickly the Coronavirus has spread across a region, increasing at an exponential rate, is a testament to this. Whether it is the Coronavirus today, Ebola a few years ago, or bird Flu prior to that, the message and avoidance measures remains the same:

• Stay at home
• Don’t use public transport
• Avoid open spaces filled with people in big cities

It’s simple, effective, and because of that, it’s been proven to work. From this China is in the process of being forced to embrace the biggest remote working experiment in history. Forced upon it rather than embraced for its obvious benefits.

When the obvious conclusion comes back that:

1. workers prefer it
2. they are more productive
3. pollution is significantly reduced
4. it reduces the cost to run a business

One question will be asked

How do we ever go back?

Negative drivers often force innovation and evolution faster than we imagine it will happen. The last economic recession spelled the end of the egotistical vanity office and caused the rise of co-working spaces like WeWork. My assumption had always been that remote workings rise would be caused by similar economic constraints.

I was wrong

The biggest driver will be health reasons and companies recognizing the need to be in a physical location full time does not exist. When it becomes clear that collaboration and communication do not suffer the final impediment standing in the way is removed.

Remote Work is not a Privilege

It never has been. Both sides of the employment relationship benefit so much, that to pretend the company is doing the worker a favor by letting them do it is disingenuous belong belief.

Company Benefits

??Lower Operational Costs

The real estate cost for a company to provide an office space is $9,000 - $18,000 per year, per worker. Remote working lets you reduce the real-estate/operational costs by around 80%

??Higher Productivity

??Happier teams

??Less pollution

??Hire globally

Rather than hiring the best person you can afford within a 30-mile radius of your office, you can hire the best person for the job anywhere in the world.

The average talent level of remote-first companies comparative to office-first companies will increase with every hire. Eventually, remote-first companies will be so much more talented and diverse that office-first companies simply can't compete.

??Retain staff

Remote-first companies will be able to hire the most talented people from their biggest competitors. The companies who move first here will have a massive opportunity to disrupt their competitor's operations in this way.

Worker Benefits

???More control

Rather than organizing your life around work, you begin to organize work around your life. This is a subtle change with massive implications on quality of life. You have the opportunity to work at the times you are most productive. You're free to drop your kids at school or do the things that you want to do when you want to do them.

???♀?Time for health

Every single morning I work out prior to getting work done. I exercise and read for at least an hour which is less than my average commute each morning beforehand.

??See your family

Every single morning and evening I get to eat with my family. I may have call after dinner, or have to travel at other times, but the opportunity to sit down and hear about the people I care about most is priceless. Rather than the majority of my social contact coming with people selected by my boss leading to superficial relationships with little depth, breadth, or meaning, I get to choose the people I want to spend the most time with.

??Zero commuting

I save 25 days every single year by not commuting. Nothing comes close to this in terms of a benefit to me personally and the environment.

??Lower cost of living 

The cost of living in cities is so high because there is a relative lack of places to stay. Remote work lets you live anywhere on the planet, lowering the cost of living and increasing the disposable income you have.

??Higher quality of life

All of the above contribute to a far higher quality of life for every remote worker. I don't know anyone who has gone remote who would ever go back to working in an office.

Why this will be the trigger of the remote work revolution

Things like the Coronavirus show what we already know: the ability for companies to efficiently operate remotely is a necessity. The world has evolved to include all the tools we need to operate this way – Slack, call or email your team in your physical office while you are there? YOU ARE ALREADY WORKING REMOTELY – but as of yet, companies have been slow to embrace the transition.

Alvin Foo, managing director of Reprise Digital said, “It’s a good opportunity for us to test working from home at scale. Obviously, it's not easy for a creative ad agency that brainstorms a lot in person.” It’s going to mean a lot of video chats and phone calls, he said.

This general consensus persists

Remote teams know it's false

These events give remote work the opportunity to show that there is no difference between collaboration in person or virtually. Why? The office is simply a remnant of the industrial revolution. They began as the optimum space to do deep focussed work without distraction. They grew because we couldn't put the technology we needed to do knowledge work in homes. Now they have become distraction factory adult kids clubs where open-plan spaces mean disruption is the default. This is a terrible situation that leads to massive losses in productivity. The reasons why the office came into being are no longer true yet we allow it to remain because it is the way things have always been done.

As Chinese workers approach the end of the Lunar New Year vacation the small groups of people already working remotely due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus will grow into armies. As this happens, there will be an explosion of traffic on collaboration services such as Zoom, WeChat and other services. Where companies lack this capacity their ability to operate will be impacted.

The industries that will be most affected? Finance, logistics, insurance, law and other white-collar jobs. Every single person in these industries knows that they can work from anywhere with little more than a laptop, a phone, and a VPN connection. Ironically, these industries are the ones with the largest real estate, travel and expense costs on the planet. What they may realize is how unnecessary these costs actually are, and how much could be saved which would immediately lead to a huge increase in profits on the bottom line.

Some middle managers worry the office exodus will lower productivity, but there’s evidence the opposite is likely to be true. A 2015 study from Stanford University in California found that productivity among call-center employees at Chinese travel agency Ctrip went up by 13% when they worked from home due to fewer breaks and more comfortable work environments. This is one study, but the anecdotal evidence of that not being an isolated case increase on an almost daily basis. With rises in productivity being so high, companies are sacrificing Billions of Dollars of productivity to appease middle managers whose only metrics for measuring their worker's performance is the time spent in the office.

No Plan B

Companies without a plan B are in trouble. Remote work should, at the absolutely worst, become a major strategy for every business on a planet. Having the ability and capacity to operate remotely at scale will become the most important business skill on the planet this decade. The 2020s will be known as the remote work decade, and companies who don't recognize this won't make it through to 2030.

The second part of all of this is that a global pandemic is only one scenario where the inability to operate remotely becomes an existential threat to businesses. Pollution in cities had led to a warning from Government officials in numerous countries because of respiratory illnesses rising by up to 30% in relatively short periods of time. Another economic collapse in the vein of the 2008 financial collapse is another.

Remote work is an answer to every single one of those things

??Global Pandemic – remote work means you don't have to leave the house

??Economic Recession – remote work lets companies slash their real-estate costs

??Overwhelming Pollution – remote work reduces the number of cars on the road

Thinking about how you can go remote?

Are you a company interested in exploring your remote strategy?

Are you a worker interested in learning more about remote work?

We're building a product that could help. Firstbase is an all-in-one provisioning platform that lets companies provide a great at home remote working experience at the touch of a button.

If that sounds interesting please reach out ????