Back to the Future of Work: How to Dominate the Remote Work Revolution
I thought the future of work was a zero-sum game.
It’s not.
Most companies will downsize office footprint by 50% and let everyone work from home 3-4 days a week. This will help them become more capital efficient while expanding the talent pool they can hire from.
The physical office and a companies remote work policy will be complimentary.
The office will become a destination for events and be redesigned to increase the quality of human interaction, not a place where time is wasted. As offices have evolved to become more open-plan the quality of the environment has plummeted. They are a terrible place for any worker to do deep focussed work without constant distractions and interruptions.
Step Forward remote working
Remote work lets us go back to the future. Every worker is given back the private space they need to do deep focussed work. By redistributing office space to home we can exponentially increase productivity and quality of work while simultaneously increasing workers work-life balance, lowering their cost of living, and causing less pollution. It's a rare win-win for all.
The current situation has been awful. The one positive that can perhaps be taken from it is that we don't have to accept the status quo. Companies and teams have been forced to adapt and experience remote work. It's not perfect, many are juggling parental responsibility with trying to get their work done.
This is not remote working as usual
Yet, every senior leader I talk to has been blown away by how seamless the transition has been, how little the lack of 'face-to-face' time has affected business, and how much more efficient video meetings and remote work has been for their business.
The catalyst for change has been an unprecedented external factor. This has forced thousands of companies and millions of workers to try something they wouldn't have voluntarily embraced or weren't ready for. It's easy to ignore something where there is massive risk in trying it but when you experience such massive benefits it's impossible to go back to the way things were before.
It would be suicide to go back
Companies who refuse to learn the lessons of remote work right now will miss out on the benefits. The outcome for them will be catastrophic:
1. 👻 Lose your best people
Companies who refuse to permit their workers more flexible and remote working conditions will lose their best people to their fiercest competitors who do. This will happen rapidly.
Companies that go remote-first will attract their competitors best people immediately.
2. 😱 Unable to attract great talent
Companies who go back to the office will only be able to hire the best person they can afford in a 30-mile radius of their office. This disqualifies them from 99.9% of the world's talent.
Remote-first companies will hire the best person on the planet for every position.
3. 💸 Be economically uncompetitive
Every office space costs a company $12,000-$18,000 per year. For 1,000 person companies the saving for going remote total $16.8m a year in real estate savings alone. This will be the difference between survival and domination for companies.
Remote-first companies are more capital-efficient & will replace office-first competitors.
As companies come to terms with the new reality they will search for ways that make the transition easier. This will include better software tools for remote working, and things which help them establish far better remote working experiences, culture, and human connection.
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MBA, Sr. Global IT Category & Asset Management at COURSERA, Supply Chain, DE&I, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, IACCM & CSCMP Certified
4yIt has been around for a while, why are they surprised that it seem less and it works? You will always have slackers it doesn’t matter if they at onsite or remote employees, most of us that are given the opportunity perform the same or better while remote
Senior Presales & Technical Enablement Pro | Cybersecurity and OSINT/Threat Intel | EUC / Digital Workspace | IAAS | SSE / SASE | Zero Trust | Hybrid / Remote Work Strategy | Strategic / Advisory
4yI think this is spot on, and emphasizes my stance that we're at an inflection point now with remote work. After this coronavirus craziness is over, there will be a large percentage of workers who are now used to remote work, and see it as an option that they may not have known before. Those workers who were unfortunately displaced during this disruption may now find options for remote employment outside of their local markets that did not previously exist. Organizations who embrace the remote worker concept will no longer be shackled to tapped-out local talent pools and can do away with expensive relocation packages in order to hire the best people for the job, regardless of where they currently live. I'm already seeing some nervous commercial real estate agents talking about existing tenants/clients wanting to save money by reducing expensive, local commercial square footage in favor of sending workers home.
Lead Mentor at Coursera
4yDo you actually provide a coffeemaker like in the picture?
Successful Sales Professional and Project Manager in demanding and complex environments.
4yI love the idea of a future office as an interaction/collaboration space not a daily monotony. Future offices can be like a live/work/play type environment minus the live. Or the clubhouse in a subdivision. So many avenues
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4yI’m inclined to agree with your point of view and would add: - not all jobs can be done remotely (but that’s not your target market of course), mind you it’s not unlikely that automatisation of these jobs will speed up as a result, - I can see an acceleration of the trend of contractor working rather than employee contracts - the change has been slow in Europe (the US and UK has a very different employment code), but this event may well speed it up as more remote work = breaking down geographical barriers = access to different jobs for every individual, not limited to you 30 mile radius, - work life balance- not everybody has a private space to focus intensely on their work, in some cases and for some people the work life balance has tipped uncomfortably towards life. Might sound weird, but when you’re working from your dining room table or bedroom and kids are flying around then in some cases office space might be welcomed, - love your point about the office space being reframed as a designated place for short and intense personal experience (the opposite of what it is today), - I’ll send you a pitch from a friend Oliver Skopec , he’s working on something that could fit right in with what you do and are talking about