{"id":9023,"date":"2020-07-23T10:25:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T10:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/?p=9023"},"modified":"2023-11-27T11:31:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T11:31:04","slug":"the-new-normal-isnt-remote-work-its-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/future-of-work\/the-new-normal-isnt-remote-work-its-better\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Normal Isn\u2019t Remote Work. It\u2019s Better."},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Desperate for stability, our society keeps talking about \u201cthe new normal\u201d \u2014 how our personal and professional lives will be permanently altered by the coronavirus pandemic \u2014 and understandably, work-from-home policies are a cornerstone of that conversation. Remote work was a critical enabler of business and economic continuity during the original shelter-in-place regulations, and may continue to be for future emergencies, especially now that it\u2019s been proven to be possible. So, now our news feeds are\u00a0innundated\u00a0with reports and projections about where knowledge workers that were able to work remotely during lockdowns will be commuting to in the future \u2014 the cubicle or the kitchen table.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Based on\u00a0a recent report from Gartner<\/a>, it looks like many workers will continue to have the option to work from home permanently. Even amidst a global crisis, employees are reporting greater productivity and higher job satisfaction, which is translating into enormous profitability for their employers. By permitting offsite work, the businesses then get to access even more overhead savings, like lower real estate, equipment, and supply expenses. Global Workplace Analytics reports an average savings of\u00a0$11,000 per part-time role<\/a>\u00a0that is converted from physical to virtual. With such incredible corporate and interpersonal rewards at stake, it\u2019s easy to see why remote work may be the foundation of the future of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But isn\u2019t saying that home offices are the ideal alternative to colocated offices a bit, well, hypocritical? Remote work advocates, including myself, tout that \u201cwork is something you do, not somewhere you go\u201d and therefore, one\u2019s professional success shouldn\u2019t be dependent on a location. But if we\u2019re saying that home offices are superior, then aren\u2019t we still saying that success is still dependent on a location?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In 2019, OwlLabs promoted a tagline for their annual\u00a0Work from Anywhere<\/a>\u00a0campaign that summarized the true telework advocacy goals best: \u201cLocation is Irrelevant.\u201d We don\u2019t need to be anywhere specific to fulfill our scope of work. Some days we might choose to go to the office, others we might go to a coworking space, library, or just our living room. The point is that no matter where we are, we\u2019re trusted and enabled to do our best work. Period. For knowledge workers whose roles rely on mobile tools (such as computers, software, and internet connections), location should be a daily choice, not a lifestyle commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, perhaps the conversation that we should be having as a society isn\u2019t about\u00a0where\u00a0<\/em>we are going to work after the post-covid dust settles, it should be\u00a0how\u00a0<\/em>we are going to work. What have we learned from the abrupt transition to virtual collaboration that we want to adopt in the future, regardless of our workplace choice? Based on my decade of work as a\u00a0remote work consultant<\/a>\u00a0and researcher, there are three primary differences between the onsite work that we are traditionally used to, and the organizational behavior of a distributed company, like the dynamics that we experienced while quarantined in early 2020. They are virtual workplace accessibility, asynchronous communication, and results-based tracking. These elements are what define and enable remote work, and therefore may define the \u201cnew normal\u201d of location-independent business operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Virtual Workplace Accessibility\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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If work is something that we do, and not somewhere that we go, then that means we shouldn\u2019t have the need to go somewhere to get the things we need, in order to do what we do. That\u2019s a crazy sentence, so in more simple terms, we just need to be able to access the resources of our workplace outside of the office, and virtual workplaces <\/a>are how we get that. When information management is facilitated with software instead of file cabinets, there\u2019s no more waiting to do a certain task or have a certain conversation until you\u2019re back in the office. Workers can have equal access to documents, people, and decisions whether they\u2019re at a client\u2019s office or a home office. True business continuity can only be achieved with uninhibited workplace access.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Results-Based Tracking<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Traditional management methods for office environments are\u00a0subconsciously\u00a0sensory-based. For example, productivity is often confirmed when seeing an employee \u201cheads down\u201d at their desk or hearing a sea of voices and ringing phones, and over-achievement is signified by an employee arriving early and leaving late. So when many leaders don\u2019t have access to these visual checks, they\u2019re at a loss on how to measure productivity. The good news is that sensory criteria measures activity, not true accomplishment. To remedy, managers should instead focus on results, such as deliverables, learnings, and reports. This enables workers to prove their productivity, with or without local supervision.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cnew normal\u201d isn\u2019t necessarily a business world without working in an office, it\u2019s just a world where we focus on work instead of the office. As our teams adopt new ways of working via virtual workplaces, asynchronous communication, and results-based tracking, we\u2019ll be able to focus much less on where we\u2019re working, and instead celebrate the immense contributions that we\u2019re making to our companies and industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Desperate for stability, our society keeps talking about \u201cthe new normal\u201d \u2014 how our personal and professional lives will be permanently altered by the coronavirus pandemic \u2014 and understandably, work-from-home policies are a cornerstone of that conversation. Remote work was a critical enabler of business and economic continuity during the original shelter-in-place regulations, and may<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":813,"featured_media":9024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[384,469,220],"ppma_author":[3654],"class_list":["post-9023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-of-work","tag-new-normal","tag-work-from-anywhere","tag-work-from-home"],"authors":[{"term_id":3654,"user_id":813,"is_guest":0,"slug":"laurel-farrer","display_name":"Laurel Farrer","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/13e97f8f71df940497a20f15573f43f457e48e7523e51d9462ec2bb3aab9bba1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"http:\/\/distributeconsulting.com","last_name":"Farrer","first_name":"Laurel","job_title":"","description":"Laurel Farrer is CEO anf Founder at Distribute Consulting that collaborates with the world's top remote-friendly companies to strengthen virtual communication, streamline digital processes, and develop long-distance management strategies. She also writes about remote work for several online publications and education platforms and advises US governments, business conferences, and industry associations on how to share remote work resources with their audiences to stimulate economic growth."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/813"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9023"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34388,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9023\/revisions\/34388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9023"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=9023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}