Making Remote Working Work
How a coronavirus outbreak forced the most conservative of companies to embrace remote working
When an employee in his 50s was hospitalized due to COVID-19, 5,000 employees from the major advertising agency Dentsu Group Inc. were forced to work from home. Cosmetics maker Shiseido did the same, sending 8,000 employees—comprising of executives—home to work remotely.
These companies aren’t alone: companies across the globe from Wuhan to Silicon Valley have all altered the way they are operating. According to financial data platform Sentieo, 77 public company transcripts also mentioned “work from home” or “working from home”, in an effort to prevent any coronavirus spread. The Ministry of Manpower in Singapore even suggested that employers keep their businesses operating by having employees “work from home where feasible”.
The coronavirus outbreak saw an acceleration in the number of remote workers around the world, which although predictable, is an unprecedented move for companies that never had employees work from home. According to an Owl Labs study in 2018, 44% of companies around the world don’t allow remote work at all. However, what used to be thought of as a trend is now looking to stay, especially when the number of remote workers has increased by 140% since 2005.
In fact, there are companies that work entirely remotely: one example would be UK publishing startup Reedsy and social media management startup Buffer.
For companies not built from the beginning with remote teams, it will be difficult to adapt. Although Google was not built with a remote team, they are much able to operate with remote teams as compared to a company like Sony or Hitachi. The coronavirus outbreak may have accelerated the trend of remote working, but many of these companies aren’t ready for it (i.e. their remote work is ineffective and unproductive). Leaders have been urging for a transition into remote work, but articles like these indicate that most businesses are still stuck in the physical office.
Since the coronavirus is slated to create a long-lasting workplace change, how can businesses navigate through this crisis and continue to operate, while everyone is working from the comforts of their home? Making remote working work isn’t impossible but it definitely takes more than just telling employees to open up Skype and hope it all goes well from there.
Like with anything in business, remote work requires standardized processes and protocols, just so employees know all the nitty-gritty.
For instance, how is sick leave handled? How will meetings be carried out? What will the roles be like? Generally, transitioning into remote work can be a daunting task, leaving employees confused rather than productive.
1—Build an Adaptable Leadership Team
You wouldn’t want your leadership team to fumble—scrambling to get their bearings back during the first few days is fine, but a single day lost means potential revenue lost as well. From the start, leadership teams should be briefed about remote working plans. Using those briefs, the leadership team must be able to continue daily operations, focusing on details such as communication tools, working hours, and even collaboration platforms.
2—Work Out the Nitty-Gritty HR Details
Having employees guess what’s going to happen is going to diminish the employee experience. For instance, if an employee is on medical leave and staying at home, he’s technically also able to work: should he still report to work on his laptop? Task the HR professionals to come up with a remote-working HR plan, with a protocol that the leadership team can break down and communicate to their teams.
3—Create Remote-Working Guides
An Open Buffer Blog article talks about 40 things that made remote working better. Regardless of whether the company was always remote or not, a remote-working guide should exist to help employees navigate the new experience. Not everyone is used to seeing 20 faces plastered on the screen or looking at their own face for hours during a video call.
4—Ensure The Company has the Resources
This can mean communication platforms like Slack, or allowance for employees to get coffee or rent co-working hot desks (in light of the coronavirus outbreak, getting coffee is better, but brewing your own would be the best!). Without resources ready to be deployed, employees will take a longer time to transition into a semi-productive state, especially if they come from conventional incumbents.
The remote working trend is a great way for companies to experiment: do they really need that many people in a single office space at one time? Less headcount in the office means less square feet leased, which also means less expenses and higher profitability.
With an increasing number of tech-run generations occupying the workforce, companies will inevitably embrace or crash into remote working, leaving only the critical ones at the physical office (or maybe some swanky WeWork space, if they haven’t crashed and burned yet). Rather than have an unprecedented health crisis sweep across the world, it’s better if companies spur this change amongst themselves during the most peaceful of times.