Considerations for going fully remote

Kathleen Driscoll, BridgeTower Media Newswires

“Like a lot of small businesses, the pandemic forced us to reevaluate our work and our business — to the point where we’re thinking about going entirely remote. When restrictions began to ease, we had no need to bring people back in the office, so we didn’t. So, the question is, when our lease expires in a few months, do we renew or make the arrangement permanent? Besides cost-savings, what other things do we need to think about?”
So you’re not alone in thinking about going “remote first.”

What the pandemic has been doing is changing employers and employees’ long-term notions about work, where it can happen and how it can be done productively, says Debra Dinnocenzo, president of VirtualWorks, a Pittsburgh consulting firm on virtual workplaces and co-author of a soon-to-be-released book, “Remote Leadership: Successfully Leading Work from Anywhere & Hybrid Teams.”

While remote work has slowly gained acceptance in recent years, the pandemic has brought the point home to more and more companies.

“Now you have leaders saying there are jobs we never thought could be done from home but are being done from home, and it’s going pretty well,” she says. “And there’s a growing expectation on the part of the workforce to take the opportunity to not slog through a commute to the office every day for work that can be done at home.”

Research by the consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics indicates that 25 to 30 percent of the workforce will be working from home multiple days per week by the end of 2021.

“Our prediction is that the longer people are required to work at home, the greater the adoption we will see when the dust settles,” writes Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics.

Another survey by Gartner showed that more organizations plan to permit employees to work remotely at least part of the time after reopening from the pandemic. Gartner surveyed more than 125 leaders in human resources, finance and real estate and found that 47 percent of respondents said they intend to allow employees to remotely on a full-time basis, while 43 percent said they would grant flex days or flex hours.

And maybe not surprisingly, the majority of respondents were not worried about maintaining productivity under a “hybrid” model even though 61 percent of employers said they have implemented more frequent check-ins between employees and managers.

The decline in the use of office space also tells the story. An analysis by Reuters in July, for example, indicated that more than 25 large companies plan to reduce their office space next year, trimming the second largest expense after payroll.

The transition to remote or even partially remote work does require a major shift in mindset and can affect things that you might not think about otherwise. Chris Dyer, founder and CEO of People G2, a background check company, went fully remote in 2009 to save money without laying anyone off.

“We sort of stumbled on it as a better way to work, but there were some things we had to learn,” he says.

One issue included researching the state regulations and tax implications of having remote staff work from other states. And the other had to do with having appropriate computer equipment and bandwidth, he says.

Dyer, a public speaker and author of “The Power of Company Culture,” recalled having high expectations of a remote employee the company hired from a competitor. But three weeks after starting the job, she was not doing the job the company thought she could do, he says, and they didn’t know why.

“So we said, ‘Let’s go back to the beginning with her. Assume nothing and go back and redo her training,’” he recalls.

It turned out that no one had sent her the second computer monitor she needed to do the job.

“It’s impossible to do that job on one monitor,” he says. “Now, she’s our top performer.”

That mistake resulted from not being able to walk around “the cubicle farm,” Dyer says.

“You have to be thoughtful about making sure people have the things they need and test those assumptions.”

Another technical tip the company learned along the way was about preparing for emergencies.

“We ask our employees to install every app on their phones that they can, so if the power goes out, they can pop on their phones, so they don’t have to miss meetings,” he says. “They can still get into the CRM or Zoom or at least tell us the power is out.”

Going fully remote can mean thinking of all your workplace activities and meetings differently and looking at how you are or want to be “physically present” for employees, Dinnocenzo says.

“It depends on the size of the group, who needs to collaborate and what they’re working on. Do you need to share a document or work on a document together and share screens?” Dinnocenzo says.

With many companies shifting to “remote first” and/or “hybrid teams,” some people will only be in the office on certain days, she says, so you’ll need to carefully evaluate whether face-to-face meetings are a better idea than virtual ones and what types of equipment will work best in different situations.

And an increasing number of organizations — that don’t believe staff people need to be together every day — might choose another alternative, such as hotel conference space, an executive office suite or co-working space when they need people to get together.

“For some organizations that might be just enough,” Dinnocenzo says.

So, the question is: How much collaboration does your company need and want? That depends on the type of work, the culture, how customer service is handled and much more. It’s worth asking the underlying question, Dinnocenzo says, “How real is the collaboration that usually takes place around the proverbial water cooler?”

In an all-remote environment, how will you handle meetings? People need to collaborate, but spending the entire day on Zoom isn’t productive.

Without the ability to physically walk around a space and have impromptu meetings, you will want to “design and curate” meetings in a very specific way, notes Dyer.

“Talk to your people and ask them what a good meeting looks like,” Dyer adds.

In his company, the trick has been to call different types of meetings and keep them as efficient and professional as possible, while still acknowledging that participants might be dealing with challenging caregiving situations at home. Dyer and his team have different names for different types of meetings and set rules for them. “Cockroach” and “ostrich meetings,” for example, are brief informal meetings about a single issue that can be called by anyone in the company and inviting any team members. A cockroach meeting might be a brief gathering about a particular problem, while ostrich meetings are for seeking help or information.

If there’s a complex topic, someone will call a “tiger” meeting, which is a longer event with more participants and multiple items. The team also holds a “tsunami” meeting, which is discussion around a hypothetical problem and allows people to put ideas forward and disagree in a safe space, Dyer says.

People are realizing the advantages of remote work, including the flexibility and increases in productivity without the daily commute and costs, he says.

But as the pandemic lingers, many companies find themselves in a waiting mode, still trying to figure it out.

“They’re in a holding pattern and haven’t thought past where we are now,” Dinnocenzo says.

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Managers at Work is a monthly column exploring the issues and challenges facing managers. Contact Kathleen Driscoll with questions or comments by email at kadriscoll20@gmail.com.