Winners, superpowers and a world of talent: the state of remote work in 2021
2020 will be remembered as the year that remote work went mainstream. For many people, the challenge of a new way of working went hand in hand with a newfound degree of freedom. You no longer have to be tethered to an office to work, the world has discovered. In fact, you can be anywhere.
But remote working has to be executed in the right way. If your organisation has not adapted to the specifics of a distributed workforce, you shouldn’t expect the transition to go smoothly: it will mean lower productivity for the business and a lower quality of life for the team. Remote working isn’t a passive transition, where you just take out an element of the working day (travelling to the office). It is very much active, requiring thought, effort and commitment, which includes being empathetic to those struggling with the transition. However, if you evolve leadership style and properly empower people to be more productive, remote work is a superpower. Who wouldn’t want a healthier work/life balance and more flexibility?
What needs to change?
On a company-wide level, successful remote working requires a shift in leadership attitude. Once, presence in the office was seen as an indicator of hard work. Now, with no one in the office, management must rely on output and trust when it comes to productivity. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re working 80 hours a week or 30; what matters is that you get the job done. And in order to measure productivity in this way, the goals of individuals have to be made clearer than ever - it would be impossible to know if someone is getting the job done if it is unclear what the job is. Comprehensive documentation, asynchronous communication and radical transparency are all principles central to the Oyster HR model that makes a distributed workforce work.
Change is needed on an individual level, too. Training is essential, regardless of company size. As well as becoming confident with new methods and increasing your skillset in terms of written communication, documentation and so on, there are other qualities that make a great remote worker. Knowing what a good home workspace setup looks like, undertaking a good personal routine, removing the need to be constantly connected: these are just as important for an individual to have in their arsenal. Our remote ready training course - designed for job seekers as much as people currently working from home - has information on wide-ranging aspects of remote working, from the basics of Zoom to taking care of yourself.
If these changes are taken up successfully, remote working is going to transform the world of work in so many dynamic ways in 2021, including:
- Truly global workforces
- New winners
- A renovated HR function
- A new war for talent
- The end of the HQ
1. Truly global workforces
A mass shift to remote work provides a unique opportunity to build truly diverse workforces that have no borders. Not only does it connect businesses to a global talent pool, but it also connects global talent to businesses they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work for otherwise. A talented copywriter in Cairo could work for a luxury London-based retailer with no trouble. Asynchronous collaboration and communication is key to empowering global teams: frameworks such as Kanban make working together across time zones a smoother process.
2. New winners
The winners of tomorrow will be the companies that are adopting the remote working model now. What the cloud was in 2008, distributed working will be to 2020, if not even bigger. Just as early adopters of the cloud gained an edge over competitors 10 years ago, companies embracing remote work now are leading a wave of change. Everyone will have to adapt to this new model sooner or later: you might as well get ahead. And the very companies who embraced change then, are the ones who aren’t shying away from changing again now.
3. A renovated HR function
HR functions will have to be fully transformed to manage a distributed workforce. It will require a new set of tools - from document management to salary calculation - as well as people to engage, employ, pay and take care of people across the world.
4. A new war for talent
Once, the battleground of the war for talent was expensive tech cities such as San Francisco, New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris and Berlin. Now, there’s no front line. The hottest AI development could come from Lagos, from Rio, from Mumbai. The new challenge is how to attract such widely distributed talent. Getting your job spec in front of someone within 100km2 is one thing; achieving that when your next hire could live anywhere is another skill entirely.
5. The end of the HQ
Experience of a hub-and-spoke business model has shown me that having a head office can defeat the meritocratic aim of a distributed workforce. People working in the HQ were the ones defining the company culture: they were, therefore, more plugged into it, and had more opportunities for promotion. A truly distributed workforce requires everyone to work remotely - and saves money on office space, too.
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In the past, culture was created at the water cooler, in the moments where individuals interacted, engaged and socialised with one another. That is about to change. Working remotely will make the workplace more inclusive for many - imagine the benefits of flexibility for working parents, for example - while others, such as extroverts who thrive on interaction with others, could find it more challenging. The key is to introduce structures that are amenable to everybody.
Perhaps the biggest impact of the shift to remote work - in which we’ve all played a part in 2020 - will be more fairness in competition for talent. Previously, it was only huge companies that had the infrastructure for hiring people globally. Now, any startup can do it. And that, to me, is cause for optimism.
Global Subject Matter Expert
3 年interesting view Tony Jamous even more so for me, as currently finishing my MBA dissertation "Does leadership style impact the culture of remote work" As you say, a host of key variables that requires careful planning to execute this forward looking strategy successfully.
Great article - thanks!
Personal Branding for Founders & Teams | Founder of WOAW
3 年Great read Tony ??
I Create Competitive Edge Through People | People Development | Coach |
3 年Fantastic read, spot on.
Filmmaker
3 年Although appreciating your comments, I think there are some important distinctions left out. I reference this with the truth that 2020 was not the year remote work went mainstream. It was aberration from traditional workplaces brought upon by stay-at-home orders, shuttered buildings and the fear of the pandemic. The “year that remote work went mainstream” was not done with a strategic agenda or plan. It was thrust upon an ill-prepared business community and nothing more than that. Most surveys show workers prefer a workplace and fear that they’ll never return to work and will eventually be displaced. Personally, I used remote workers for the past 40 years in my own companies (publishing thrives on small internal staffs and mostly remote contributors). I didn’t even work in my own offices. I preferred working at home. That was a precise structure and was not forced on me. There is a larger agenda going on that is deconstructing independent businesses, displacing workers, empowering and reducing costs of the largest companies and reshaping America in the interests of the already megaliths. It’s fear-based and as humans we are social animals and most people are forced to work from home, kids at home too, and the “best” always thrive.