Working in the New Decade is locally from remote

The working class is always dreaming about beaches and places far away from home - and most importantly from work. In recent years freelancers and nomadic workers have lived these dreams by all means with Bali as the most prominent location for all those influencers, marketing experts and strategy consultants. Who wouldn't mind working in a nice, cozy atmosphere with healthy food and a pilates session once a day during sunset at the beach?

Why to move so far to find happiness?

While all this is much appreciated and result of hard work for those workers the main part of the working society is employed by corporations and for those a far distance home office is not justified for the larger part of their employees. There are several reasons why corporations could not afford a remote workforce and distance relationships to its workforce at large. So there was a choice in the working community to either be a freelancer or working for a smaller organization which supports remote workers as a larger part of their workforce or be part of a larger corporation with all its benefits in difficult economic times. But what if there was another way to work remotely but at a closer distance? Getting the best from both worlds? Sitting on my balcony as an employee of a fortune 500 company and one of the largest in Europes leading economy I was thinking: "What would it take to work remote but locally?"

Sitting on my balcony I was thinking: "What would it take to work remote but locally?"

There are several parts of this - some are tangible and some are rather intangible - to reach this goal:

• Ensuring productivity levels and accountability of your results
• Being supported by your tasks and your superiors not be physically available at work
• Finding alternatives to a physical attendance from remote
• Having enough room to host a working area at the desired place
• Being able to access my working assets outside the office building

This list is maybe not complete and could be added by some bullets but it covers the main aspects. Some of them have been addressed in the past and seam to be ticked already. But in general there has been more support of this list by several trends in the past year which make it more appealing and more productive to look further into this topic.

The War for Talent changed the Corporate World

The skillset focused on by recruiters today has much changed across all industries during recent times. Those skillsets are much rare to find so the workers offering those talents are hard to find and even harder to recruit. Next to financial terms will be the working environment and tools - both hardware and software - become increasingly important for those talents. Working remotely is one of those benefits recruiters will use to convince candidates to accepts offers. Hence recruiters are more getting into details with their customers to explain why the remote capacities are even more important for candidates as financial conditions and sustainable purpose driven company goals. While the adoption of cloud based office suites and productivity tools such as Slack and Teams reached Fortune 500 companies over the last year the IT environment set the base for remote work in a sense never seen before as of today. What has been explored by startups for costs reasons has been adopted by corporations to handle larger sizes of organizations and the cross company needs to collaborate with agencies, suppliers and business partners. With the adoption of cloud based tools the working environment becomes more independent from corporate networks which supports mobile devices as much as remote workplaces. The new challenges for larger organizations are processes, HR management and corporate social development. While recruiters are used to have Skype interviews and Zoom meetings with candidates to avoid travel costs - HR managers and superiors are less trained to use those tools in their daily management tasks. It will take some time to make those changes happen but CHRO are already implementing tools and strategies to overcome those hurdles within their organizations

My Home is my Videoconferencing Place

So it looks like the companies are doing their job: Introducing state of the art collaboration tools, supporting all kinds of devices, being flexible in processes and HR management. But is this enough?

Unfortunately the bottleneck will be in workers home: "my Home is my Castle" - and like in medieval times from a technical environment those home work places are looking exactly like from those days. So when thinking about remote work my mind focused not what my company would do for me - they actually did a lot already in the past - but what I need to change at my place to make it worthwhile to work remotely. As much as I thought about it the list is rather short to provide what someone needs to look at:

• Broadband connection to have smooth access to office assets
• Accessories for unified communication (video, audio)
• A secured space to work and talk from during the day
• A cultural mindset to invite colleagues remotely into your home

Especially the cultural mindset - and even more for a German - became a focus of my thinking. Germans tend to be cautious and protective about their homes and privacy due to our history and social experiences. But I came to the conclusion that you can invite someone into your home working area and not giving him the whole house tour including all private areas. So it is rather a question of space and furniture supply to create a secluded and protected area where colleagues will get access to. After all this is set and mounted the main challenge for most people will be to switch on the webcam above your monitor at home. I for my part are having fun to put pressure on my colleagues to follow my example when I start my webcam in a conference call while everybody else is still hiding in front of his desk. It will take some time depending on the audience you are talking to but over time the video strategy will pay off. I am convinced the visual presence is important for a lot of reasons. For once it shows respect. In a face to face meeting I rarely see people hiding their faces and reactions in brown paper bags - so why doing it in a conference call? While meetings with a project team is more focused on topics the visual reactions are becoming more important when talking to your superiors and on personal topics e.g. when talking about your work and goals.

The positive financial impact on remote work habits will pay back fast

While looking on the remote working option for personal benefits and comfort until here the most interesting part is the analysis of the financial impact for both sides. Surprisingly this impact is higher as initially thought of - but only if done wisely and open minded from both sides of the table.

The organization invests in IT tools and processes - including security operations to make this networks and remote work places able to support cybersecurity on all levels. Don't underestimate the costs of a secure connection on mobile and remote devices. This included managed devices and secure lines with several authentication methods to be in place and supported. The payback is less office spaces allocated by employees and therefore less supporting services based on office space consumption: from cleaning to security services to food supply in canteens and parking lots.

For remote workers this means less time commuting, lower food costs and more efficient usage of their homes let it be rented or owned. When speaking of living costs - depending on office locations a remote working area would offer to afford a home a bit further away from the office which will become more affordable and bigger based on the available budget. When accounting additional space at your home, needed equipment and furniture to set up a decent desk the costs will generate a pay back rather sooner. In some areas those investments will be deductible from your taxes which will even further support pay back times.

Surprisingly furniture shops and youtubers already picked up the trend of home office setups. Even larger suppliers have specialized on future work office offerings. They mimic the coworking places with already proved materials and setups. The minimal desk setup is presented by many people on youtube so you will find a large selection of videos to learn about it. IKEA already has a segment on its website dedicated to this customer demand. As always various companies are addressing this market and there will be more in the near future.

In case you are part of the retail community have a look into this segment. For those of us working in the corporate world the next visit to the furniture store may trigger a new mindset while walking through it. Looking forward to see more colleagues in their home made areas in the new year. Its always fun to have guests and invite them into your home this time they have to bring their coffee themselves but thats the only difference