It’s amazing how quickly we’ve changed our minds about remote work over the past year. At best, remote work used to be a benefit that very few employees could take advantage of and most employers thought of remote work as a bad excuse for taking a day off.
Today, the reality of remote work is much different and some of the largest companies in the world are adopting it as a permanent option moving forward. Do a quick online search on the impact of remote work during COVID-19 and you’ll be flooded with articles that sing the praises of improved productivity and performance. This makes it look like remote work is a home-run solution for most businesses around the world, but that is far from the truth.
Over the past year, we worked with several global companies from diverse industries to research, assess, design, and implement remote working strategies and noticed that there are several considerations that companies need to address before they decide to adopt remote working on a permanent basis.
What Influences the Success of a Remote Workforce?
It’s important to identify the factors that impact the success of remote work before adopting it as a permanent workforce strategy.
To understand the true impact of remote work, we need to look at research before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, not just at evidence that surfaced during 2020 due to forced remote work. Studies on remote work started more than 20 years ago and there is significant peer-reviewed literature from around the world that points to different factors impacting the success of a remote working strategy. Here are some notable extracts from our secondary research:
- An empirical research of 22,000 individuals in Germany showed that remote workers give more effort (work more than what is required) when compared to non-remote workers. This is due to the freedom and higher degree of autonomy which remote workers reward with discretionary effort (Rupietta & Beckmann, 2017).
- In a research study conducted by professors at the University of Amsterdam, more than 56% of survey respondents (N = 1014) believed that they are slightly less productive and are enjoying work less while working from home. But they feel moderately positive about working from home in the future. The overall analysis shows complex interactions between the domains of work, home, and commuting. Although many people welcome the possibility of working from home, the survey results show that commuting also has an intrinsic value. The survey showed that many remote workers miss social contact at work (Rubin et al., 2020).
- In a 2017 study, evidence showed that remote employees tend to voluntarily work more hours, display more positive attitudes towards their employers, and report that their jobs are more pleasurable and stimulating. On the downside, remote employees expressed difficulties in “switching off” from work, creating clear borders between personal life and work life suggesting that remote work may be negative for work-life balance (Felstead & Henseke, 2017).
- Being “always switched on” as a result of working from home can lead to cognitive weariness, headaches, blurred vision, etc. (Kinman et al., 2020).
- Work-life balance comes back as a concern in the long run for female workers, especially if their partners cannot work-from-home making the work life task juggle a greater challenge (Alipour et al., 2020).
- Three major categories of activities were identified to increase the effectiveness of remote employees. The first deals with the employee’s ability to carry out the right tasks and the manager’s ability to assess the employee’s effectiveness. The second category reflects the essential role information technology plays in enabling remote work. The third category deals with the employee’s need for advice and support (Staples, 2001).
- A higher prevalence of working from home by co-workers results in workers being less satisfied with these co-workers (Golden, 2007). Social disconnection has been shown to develop between employees working from home and office workers because working from home allows employees to distance themselves from work relationships at the office (Collins et al., 2016).
- Using unique 2016 data relating to 11,011 employees in 869 teams in 259 companies in 9 European countries, Lippe & Lippényi found that individual employees perform better when their colleagues do not work from home, manager-reported team performance is worse when co-workers work from home for more than 1 day per week and working from home was negatively related to individual employee performance (Lippe & Lippényi, 2019).
Considerations for Implementing Remote Work
Based on primary and secondary research, we’ve determined that there are 5 key considerations to keep in mind while assessing the viability of a remote working strategy for your company:
- Although there is significant research that supports increased productivity and job satisfaction with remote workers, there’s also research that proves the opposite to be true. From the research, you can see that the impact is different based on geographical location and employee demographics.
- Mental and physical health are important issues to monitor in a remote workforce and will greatly impact performance, satisfaction, and retention.
- The success of remote work heavily relies on open communication channels between the team members and their managers, the company’s ability to measure and manage employee performance effectively, access to the appropriate technology tools and infrastructure, and continuous employee support by managers and other counterparts.
- For some people, remote work can lead to increased social isolation from the company’s workforce and feeling that they might be left out of major decisions or opportunities for promotion.
- When analyzing the viability of a remote workforce, we should study the impact on the group interacting with the remote workforce and not on the remote individuals in isolation. This detail is often overlooked and plays an essential part in determining the viability and success of remote work for some job roles.
These considerations are something to keep in mind while assessing remote work or building a remote working strategy for your company.
Making the Case for Remote Work
The pandemic forced businesses to adopt remote work because there was no other way to keep doing business. This meant keeping all business operations mostly the same and simply working from home with minor reactive adjustments to keep things moving.
For remote work to be successful in the long run, companies need to rethink their core operations, target talent profiles, tech infrastructures, physical footprint, organization structures, performance, rewards, and more.
The decision to shift your company’s talent strategy to a remote or distributed workforce starts with identifying “why” you are considered this option in the first place. Is it to replicate the successes of other companies? Is it to scale a successful internal experiment? Is it to improve access to the international workforce? Is it a way to reduce fixed costs in international expansion by foregoing the need for physical office space?
This should be your starting point because the “why” defines what the success factors for the program will be.
If you want to make the case for implementing remote work permanently, then there should be some tangible positive outcomes as a result. Here are some outcomes of success that you should focus on from the company and employee perspectives:
Company Perspective
- Improved employee productivity that translates into faster time to market and other positive client-facing outcomes
- Implementation of mechanisms for objectively measuring the performance of remote employees
- Positive financial impact
- Maintaining data security and network access standards for the remote workforce
- Full legal compliance with the labor laws of countries where you have remote employees or contractors
- Delivering a consistent and appropriate employee experience for remote workers
Employee Perspective
- Healthy work-life balance
- Improvements in job satisfaction
- Improvements in employee retention
- Improvements in employee productivity
- No negative impact on mental and/or physical health
- Equal opportunities for career development between remote and on-premises employees
- Knowledge sharing from employee interactions is maintained
10 Questions to Ask Before Making Remote Work Permanent
- What are the main pros and cons of remote work based on the company’s current experience?
- What do the company’s existing remote-eligible employees think of remote work? Do they favor it over commuting to the office? Why?
- What are the competencies that determine success in a remote work setting across different job levels (from individual contributor to manager)? Is the company’s remote-eligible workforce currently proficient in these competencies?
- Can you implement the current employee performance model effectively in a remote work setting? If not, then how can you adapt it to cater to remote and on-premises workers without exhibiting bias to any of these groups?
- Which components of the company’s work culture are difficult to replicate in a remote work setting? Are there any risks of unintentionally creating an unwanted employee experience?
- Is the company equipped with the right tools and capabilities to manage a hybrid workforce that could include employees who telecommute all the time, some of the time, or none of the time?
- Will a greater number of remote workers impact the level of diversity at the company?
- How can managers maintain control over the outcomes of their teams’ work without invading privacy?
- What is the impact of remote work on family life and job satisfaction in different scenarios: (1) Both members work remotely, (2) One member works remotely, (3) Couples with kids, (4) Single parents, etc.?
- If the company employs a global remote workforce, how will time zone differences impact productivity and team interactions? Do specific work teams need to be in similar time zones?
Answering these questions for your company will allow you to make an informed decision on remote work and will provide you with a blueprint for filling the gaps.
Impact on Employee Experience
When transitioning to remote work, many elements of the employee experience are impacted. Focusing on the “moments that matter” and their relevant touchpoints is critical in ensuring that the employee experience is maintained in a remote work environment.
This starts with a solid onboarding process where the remote employee is continuously supported by HR, their direct manager, and colleagues. Focusing on communication and regular check-ins is important to start the employment journey on a positive note and replicate the on-premises experience. Therefore, having measurable KPIs around onboarding and employee satisfaction during this stage is important.
Training and development are also important areas throughout the employee lifecycle. Since most learning at work happens informally through interactions with others, it’s important to maintain such levels of interaction instead of relying solely on written communication and intranet material for knowledge sharing. Tracking check-ins between employees and time to productivity can measure the level of interactivity taking place between employees and its impact on knowledge sharing and overall productivity.
Managers play a crucial role in providing ongoing feedback and support to remote workers. Since managers are not present with their staff at the office, keeping track of employees’ performance and supporting them effectively requires a structured approach. Managers should consistently check-in with their staff and promote open communication channels to avoid isolating any remote workers. Regular pulse check surveys with managers and employees can allow you to detect any red flags and take corrective action when needed. Building and maintaining a high level of trust between remote workers, managers, and the company makes for a positive employee experience.
Considerations for autonomous working schedules are important as well since remote workers each have unique circumstances at home. Balancing between the needs of the individual and the team will be important to avoid employees being “always switched on”.
Social interactions between employees shouldn’t be reserved for video calls only. Encouraging social gatherings at the office or on company getaways (once we’re past COVID-19) is a good way to build relationships between remote workers and their colleagues. This caters to the need for social interactions and contributes to building an engaged workforce.
Measuring the Success of Remote Work
As mentioned earlier, the criteria for success will change based on the company’s reasons for considering a distributed talent strategy. In most cases, the main overarching themes are:
- Job Effectiveness: The degree to which remote employees are meeting the performance standards set by the company. This is measured by monitoring employee performance over time.
- Employee Well-being: The degree to which employees are mentally and physically healthy. This can be measured via surveys and changes in employee health data in the company’s HRIS.
- Employee Engagement: The degree to which employees are fully engaged at work. This can be measured using employee engagement scores.
- Customer Satisfaction: The degree to which customer satisfaction is impacted by remote work (especially for client-facing roles). This can be measured via customer satisfaction or NPS surveys.
- Business Impact: The degree to which remote teams are meeting strategic objectives. This can be measured using KPIs that are defined based on each team’s contribution to strategic outcomes.
Measuring these criteria over 12 months should provide you with representative data taking into consideration the comparisons between remote and on-premises employees within the same job family or job role. In addition, we suggest comparing the results between fully remote and hybrid teams to check for any different insights.
