All the Consequences of Remote Work you hadn’t Thought of
Although many companies pulled off relatively seamless transitions to operating fully remote, we are now discovering unforeseen consequences of the sudden switch.
The pandemic introduced additional complexity to the equation: typically, even in a natural-born fully remote company, employees aren't caring for schooling kids while on the job, they're not prohibited from seeing friends, working from a coffee shop, or going to the gym.
When home becomes the workplace, many are the unexpected effects, positive and negative, on employees’ mental health, creativity, recruitment, salaries, office culture, cybersecurity, access to opportunities, carbon footprint, and the overall employee experience.
For many companies struggling to cope with the novel coronavirus, there was little choice but to resort to remote work. Google, Apple and Twitter, were among the firsts to make this a permanent arrangement at least for some of their employee already in March 2020.
Although the decision came as a consequence of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, managers were also tempted by the prospect of cutting commutes, increasing flexibility for workers, and saving up on office space.
After almost a year from the beginning of the forced remote work experiment, the most immediate advantages and drawbacks are finally becoming clear and companies are coming up with innovative ways to ease employees' discomfort as they navigate working from home.
1. Creativity
Does remote work kill spontaneous, informal learning? When it comes to informal learning and creativity, there a few vital albeit not always immediate, pros and cons to consider:
Pro: The culture of interruption fades. Although it does vary from company to company, and manager to manager, the physical distance of remote work allows employees to simply switch off notifications, indicate do-not-disturb time on their calendars, and be able to cultivate space for creative time during their day, focusing on personally enriching activities.
Con: A creative work-life requires social relationships and serendipitous interactions. It requires contending with ideas you don’t agree with, pondering plans while getting up and moving around to gather opinions. Working together in an office provides employees with the opportunity to bond. Working together remotely, however, makes it more difficult to establish this kind of relationship.
Possible solution: Employers are thinking more and more about how to combine the flexibility of virtual work with the face-to-face interaction of a more traditional office, and many are the available tools facilitating such a shift.
One possible solution is to have a remote-first distributed hub model, where teams work out of several office locations, allowing workers to choose their preferred location while still keeping the flexibility of choosing everyday between going to the office and having meaningful social interaction or staying at home to be hyper-focused.
The office may return, but its role is set to change: many surveys reported that the majority of employees are interested in some level of remote work availability as part of their workweek.
2. Recruitment
Hiring remotely means accessing a wider talent pool, and deciding on which labour agreement you will offer to your employees - will they be contractors or will they have a legal, locally compliant contract?
Hiring contractors may not be beneficial both for the employer and the employee - from intellectual property disputes to lack of labor law protections for independent contractors in most countries.
Pro: Whether you are hiring contractors or workers with a compliant contract, remote work can tear down geographic boundaries when it comes to hiring, allowing companies to look for more diverse candidates, beyond their geographical location. This can help expand both the talent pool and the organisation’s diversity, which is in turn linked to innovation and disruption.
Con: Relying on contractors raises a series of questions regarding labor laws, taxes and potentially intellectual property. Some countries protect independent workers way more than others, so you may find yourself short on candidates when only offering an independent contractor agreement.
Possible solution: To make sure you are offering fair and locally compliant contracts to your employees, you can engage the services of a third-party local entity - an Employer of Record -, acting as an intermediary in an existing employee-employer relationship. In essence, the EOR is the registered employer for the worker but does not have any supervisory or management role vis a vis the employee’s position. The original employer maintains the substantive work relationship, making all decisions on compensation, position duties, projects and termination.
Specifically, the employer of record is the legal entity that:
Arranges all visas and work permits for the employee, avoiding delays or refusals
Provides a registered entity for running a local, compliant payroll inside the country
Meets all host country labor laws pertaining to local contracts and worker protections
Advises the client of required notice periods, termination rules and severance pay
Is the host country interface between the employee and government authorities?
Contact us for additional information on how you can hire talent in Portugal.
3. Office culture
The concept of Company Culture urges us to consider how we can successfully conduct business while ensuring employees’ wellbeing and happiness. According to a Glassdoor survey, 56% of employees find a good workplace culture to be more important than salary.
Company culture is at the heart of the organisation – a combination of business values, mission, and goals. It is not built overnight, but rather, it is a participatory effort from the entire team.
When employees work remotely, building a company culture that reaches everyone across various locations can be challenging. However, it can also be a way to bridge gaps between geographies and make everyone feel like they are part of one big team, regardless of where they are.
Pro: Physical spaces might lead to companies having a different corporate culture at each site. With remote work, those differences fade, and a more unified culture emerges. Also, studies have shown that overall culture may be reinforced in some cases. In a recent study, companies who encourage working remotely experienced a 25% lower turnover than companies who did not and 78% of HR professionals cited flexible schedules and telecommuting as the most effective non-monetary ways to retain employees.
Con: Informal meetings at the office can improve morale, and many companies are also learning that informal, person-to-person interactions are also crucial to the flow of information.
Possible solution: It can be more difficult for leaders to clarify which values are important when they don’t regularly interact with employees in person. With remote work, leaders need to set up structured moments to communicate the company’s values, answer questions, coach and lead by example, from a distance. Enabling a seamless internal communication process and experience means keeping team communication channels clear and open, promoting transparency, and encouraging participation.
4. Access to opportunities
Not all telecommuters can afford to recreate an office space within their home – particularly one that meets the same standards as their previous office. However, given the right set of tools, the home office may prove to be a way to give everyone in an organisation the same opportunities to participate in important decisions.
Pro: By increasing flexibility, remote work allows all employees to take part in the office culture – by attending meetings they might otherwise not be able to take, collaborating with colleagues based out of a different location and by diminishing the effect of being distant from the headquarters.
Con: Generally, offices are a safe, quiet, space with lighting and temperature control that assure optimal working conditions. Many of those working from home are doing so alongside family members, roommates, and kids, which makes a home office less of the quiet escape it might have been in the past.
Possible solution: Companies that adopt remote work will be expected to provide every employee with training, tools and processes that allow everyone to work from home with similar standards. Again, a hybrid model between digital work and distributed physical sites may well strike the right balance: some employees value the option to work in an office that the employer maintains. Even the most seasoned telecommuters appreciate the fact that creating an inspiring workplace takes time and energy that they might not be willing to invest on their own.
5. Location-based salaries
As many workers scatter from big-city headquarters to smaller, remote-work-friendly enclaves, should their pay be adjusted due to lower cost of living? One of the most appealing aspects of remote work is that it allows remote workers based in low-cost-of-living places to apply for well-paid jobs. However, Facebook has been reported to plan to tie remote pay to the location of their employees.
Pro: In the in-office framework, where an employee is based has almost always been a prevailing factor in their remuneration. With remote work, talent and experience seemed to be the key factor. However, with many employees moving out of big cities, managers are thinking to readjust pay to reflect location, allowing them to cut costs significantly.
Con: The relationship between pay and location is complex, and there’s no magic formula for it. And the issue can be contentious, dividing employees to the detriment of company morale. Putting into place location-based salaries means that workers earning high salaries and based out of locations with a high-cost of living might not be able to keep their pay should they move elsewhere due to remote working. In practical terms, this means bringing the office-centred logic of ‘location-based pay’ into the fully-remote framework.
Possible solution: There is no absolute answer - in this uncertain period of trial and error, companies will be keenly watching each other to see how different policies play out. An example of a different approach is MURAL, a hybrid company that provides digital workspace tools, with a mix of remote and in-person employees. It assigns pay based on zones, which are simpler than completely individualised compensation packages, but more complex than a single-pay system.
6. Cybersecurity
As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, most organisations made a quick transition to a remote workforce and a more intense focus on serving customers through digital channels. This digital response to the crisis has created new security vulnerabilities: attackers seek to exploit the gaps opened when telecommuting employees use insecure devices and networks.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, the number of cyberattacks has soared as hackers have exploited a greater number of weakly protected back doors into corporate systems as well as the human distraction caused by COVID-19-related events.
The FBI is receiving 3,000 to 4,000 cybersecurity complaints daily, up from 1,000 prior to the pandemic.
NUMBER OF CYBERSECURITY COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY THE FBI (US, 2009-2020)
Pros: By adopting remote work, companies are required to shift to more cloud-based solutions, that overall improve their productivity and safety.
Cons: Working from a home network introduces all kinds of risks and vulnerabilities to work files. It is harder to maintain control when people are working remotely, depending upon who their internet service provider is.
Possible solution: Business transformation is always a security risk. New technology and working practices require new security measures. However, this risk can be managed by adopting VPN and other ways to connect safely to work files and data, informing employees on the risks and training them to spot threats or providing staff with the right equipment.
7. Carbon footprint
One of the fastest, cheapest ways for employers and employees to reduce their carbon footprint and to affect climate change is by reducing commuter travel.
Annual Change of CO2 emissions (GtCO2 per year) - source: Nature
However, remote work is moving energy demand from offices and businesses to residences where energy management is generally less sophisticated.
Pro: The world is already seeing markedly reduced pollution, congestion, and traffic during the pandemic response, and being able to experience the results first hand may be a driver to being more sustainable for everyone.
Con: Because each individual remote worker keeps the heating on and tends to heat the entire house, working in a single office building ends up having a lower impact – even with the commute added in. When it comes to temperature, heating one office building can be more sustainable than heating each worker’s own home. The mission of saving energy, water and offsetting the company’s carbon footprint is transferred to each individual employee, so it depends on whether they are willing to invest in their own lower-emission infrastructure.
Possible solution: By adopting remote work companies are making a positive contribution to a sustainable future, but that may not be enough. It’s important to promote environmentally sound choices —like asking employees to monitor air conditioning, heating, and lighting and providing them with the resources to make their homes sustainable.
8. Employee experience
Do people want remote work? Would they choose it if the pandemic ended today? How does remote work affect the overall employee experience?
Data shows that nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers who have been working remotely during the pandemic would like to continue to do so. In all, 35% of those who have worked remotely would simply prefer to do so while 30% would like to do so because of a concern about COVID-19. Another 35% say they would like to return to work at their office.
Pro: Remote work gives people the flexibility they desire. In a single year, the number of candidates who cited the importance of flexible work in their job interview options rose by 30%.
Con: As previously stated, 35% of U.S. workers are willing to return to the office after the pandemic ends. They report isolation and the disappearance of the division between work and non-work moments as the main reasons for that.
Possible Solution: What most people value is flexibility. Most candidates define ‘flexibility’ as flexible arrival and departure times, full-time work from home/ location independence, the option to compress shifts/workweek, the opportunity for sabbaticals or career breaks (e.g., extended time off) and choice and control in work shifts. Companies concerned with employee experience would do well to promote flexibility, by giving people the option to choose when and where to work.
Making the most of remote work
Many business leaders are in the process of designing what the future of work will look like in their organisation, and remote work will most likely be a part of that strategy.
Here are a few things to consider:
Provide flexibility to work remotely or on-site. Employees value the option to work outside of the office and to get together in physical locations, at their own discretion or with a specified frequency, for the occasional visit, reporting or meeting.
Setup multiple hubs at strategic locations. By setting up company hubs at strategic locations, companies can access the local talent pool and still promote a company culture aligned with their values. This increases access to talent, boosts productivity, and improves employee experience. A co-located model provides flexibility for employees to work where and when they’re the most productive, plus occasional in-person meetings for optimal communication and culture building.
Consider a presence in talent-rich countries. In designing how a company will operate in the future, closeness to top talent is on the minds of most CEOs. Portugal is a case in point. The rich talent pool and widespread use of English attract startups and large corporations alike. Foreign companies from different parts of the globe are settling in: Google has opened a support centre creating 500 tech jobs for skilled workers, as well as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, BNP Paribas, Natixis, Cloudflare, Bosch and Siemens, Euronext, Revolut, among many others.
Offer a seamless internal communication experience - transparency is among the most appreciated values by employees.
Increase the frequency of information that is shared by leadership to keep employees engaged and aligned.
Revise existing cyber risk guidelines, requirements, and controls on how employees access data and communicate with a company’s network
The pandemic has reinforced the notion that relationships are the key to company culture and productivity. The coronavirus onset and the shift to remote work have pros and cons: on creativity, regulations, office culture, equality of opportunities, the environment and the overall employee experience.
To make the most of remote work, companies might consider a hybrid work model, where workers can integrate remote and physical work in distributed hubs across multiple sites, close to talent-rich countries. Also, managers are expected to reinforce communication, revise cybersecurity priorities, and reinforce the company’s culture and vision.
