Remote is no more a buzzword today. Remote work has become more common than before and in spite of companies like IBM, Yahoo changing their remote work policies, there is an increase in the number of remote workers in the world. According to the State of American Workplace Report by Gallup , above 40% people in the US are working remotely these days. About 70% of the people surveyed by FYIsaid that they knew one team member who worked remotely.One thing to note is that Remote is a generic term used to encompass distributed working, telecommuting, work from home and digital nomadism. As remote work continues to increase across the globe for various reasons, a lot of companies have come up to address the various needs and requirements of such workers, starting from communities like Remotive, tools like OwlLabs, learning and certification companies like Workplaceless.
It is easy to understand why working remotely is so popular. Of course, the reason why Remote is preferred by companies ,and the reason why it is preferred by employees may be starkly different. A remote culture allows for employees to choose their own work-hours while addressing personal needs of taking care of children, older parents and more. People who get distracted by the noise and distractions at office find it easier to focus in quieter environments, and employers are able to hire the best talent without any geographical constraints.However, everything is not hunky dory in the remote world. There are organisations who prefer hiring remotely for labour arbitrage and there are also people who are possibly a bit too engrossed in the thought of sitting at the beach with a margherita forever.
There are several requirements to keep in mind while evaluating a remote work-life for oneself. Here are 5 reasons it may not work for everybody.
1. You are better suited to work in an Office environment
Working from home or a co-working space occasionally, is not the same as doing it every day (of the work week), and often our environments help to foster the sense of camaraderie and purpose that helps us work towards achieving our goals.Working alone means queries might get responded to much later in the day. It also requires one to work with minimal supervision and that can be difficult for many.
A lot of people find it difficult to work in a non-office environment. They need to hear the buzz of the coffee machine, the ringing of the phones and chatter of co-workers nearby to get that familiar feeling of working. Even though large number of people are bringing work home , a lot prefer the separation between work and home often leaving their office only when their work for the day is complete. If this sounds like you, then remote work may not bring out the best in you.
2. Your office Culture is Not conducive
No one is remote at your current office, nor are they remotelyinterested (pun intended). In such a scenario, even if they agree to having your work remotely, they might not be as diligent as a remote-first organization would be in terms of communication. Decisions taken during informal meetings, absence of sufficient documentation can make it difficult for the one member who is remote.
Trust is a big factor in distributed organizations. Not all managers are comfortable with not having their direct reports in the same office. They will aniticipate lack of engagement, reduced productivity and collaboration and not be happy or even agree if you plan to work out of office. Some offices do not allow their office laptops to be taken out of office rendering it impossible to work remotely. For every statistic in favour of remote work, there is another that shows that it may not give the level of output desired from an employee. In such a situation, you can continue to work onsite, or mutually agree to work remotely for a trial period or simply look for a new job that allows you to.
3. Your work requires you to be On-site
Not all kinds of work can be done remotely.People in the services, transportation, construction, hospitality, retail and health industries require to be present at their site of work. People working in an agency setupmay not be able to work well remotely. Team members building hardware or working in a lab together may not be able to work remotely at all, or on most of the days.
4. You feel Isolated
One of the biggest challenges for remote workers is loneliness.They miss catching up with their colleagues on a daily basis as well as the humdrum of a regular office life. Isolation does affect the quality of mental health and that is key for anyone contemplating a remote role. While video calls, bi-annual meet-ups, traveling to another city where one or more team-members reside and working out of co-working spaces help, it is important to figure out whether the lack of co-location will affect you in the long run and hurt your overall engagement. In fact, a survey by Future Workplace and Virgin Pulsein 2018 revealed that despite increasing number of remote workers, “over 40% said they feel lonely alwaysor very often, are not engaged and have a high need for social connection.”
5. Your Infrastructure set-up
Work , especially remote work thrives on communication. In fact the recommendation in a remote-first workplace is to over-communicate, and that cannot be emphasized enough.Communication again is dependent on technology and relevant infrastructure. During a recent research around supporting consultants with a product platform, one of the key requirements for a successful facilitation was surprisingly or unsurprisingly, a good Internet connection. While it surprised me for a second, I realised that one cannot really ignore the reality of how important network and connectivity is for all of us. Today, Wifi is available even in the farthest areas on the planet, but for it to work well, it needs to be consistent and be able to support various activities including bandwidth consuming video calls. If your infrastructure set-up isn’t great or you do not have some back-up in place it could make working remotely quite troublesome. Years back when I was working remotely and was checking if it helped for some of my junior colleagues to work likewise, I realised that they preferred working out of the office which had a reliable Internet connection, than at their rented accommodation which was not equipped for running a home office.
Conclusion
Like all work practices, there are pros and cons to working remotely. Not all organisations or teams are suited for a remote-first culture. Also, not everyone wants to work remotely or more importantly, is suited for remote work. In of the organizations where I worked remotely, majority of the team members would be available in office. Since most of the teams and folks I worked with directly, were based out of offices in other cities, it was never a big deal. However in an office culture where face-time and time spent in office was important, I was one of the outliers. I worked in multiple teams in that organization, and in each stint, I did not face the usual trust issues that one tends to incur in such scenarios. Of course, it helped that my managers focused on the outcomes I delivered, and I made sure they did not have reason to feel worried about my mode of work, a comment by one of the leaders on my motivation and discipline helped me realise that this was one of the most important factors that helped me work successfully in a remote fashion for majority of the time.
I did visit office, travel to others , turn up for formal and informal meetings now and then and strongly recommend to do so. In fact, most remote-first organizations have team-meetups organized once or twice a year where they focus on work and bonding with team-mates. Some companies like Buffer organize separate meet-ups( or on-sites) for their focused teams which helps in bonding, discussing topics and issues that are covered better during in-person. However, despite such measures, one may discover that they are still not comfortable with working entirely remote or that they need a mix of remote and on-site work. The key of course is to figure this out in good time and adapt accordingly.
This post is also available on Medium.
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