Working from home vs. Working from anywhere: what employers must know

What’s in a name? 

Location-independent, remote worker, digital nomad – in the last couple of years, we have heard multiple variations of the same concept. Before we begin, let’s get our basics right. 

Working from home is not the same as working remotely; while the former means exactly what it sounds like, the latter pertains to the idea of your workplace not being fixed. This could include digital nomads spending each month in a new continent, or a tech consultant travelling to multiple office locations every quarter. “Working from home” could refer to freelancers or full time employees; as well as remote workers.

A third category is that of hybrid workforces – where employees alternate between working from home and working from the office. Post pandemic, a large percentage of the working population chose to work remotely for some parts of the week. Tech companies like Twitter, Apple and Microsoft are great examples of companies that adapted smartly to the situation. 

But why are we discussing this? In a nutshell, because being open to a location independent workforce is one of the best steps a company can take in order to increase its growth and productivity. The multiple benefits of being a remote first company include: 

• Access to an unrestricted pool of talent, unfettered by geographical barriers;
• Cost efficient hiring, thanks to the comparative cost of hiring talent globally;
• Increased levels of productivity as employees work according to their own schedules;
• Increased flexibility for employees resulting in higher levels of autonomy, engagement and happiness;
• Reduced operational costs in the form of office rent, electricity and other such fixed costs. 

So how does a workplace make the transition? As the first step, here are some essential considerations that employers must take into account to nurture a remote workplace:

Asynchronous communication

In a geographically dispersed team, asynchronous communication enables each contributor to work according to their own time zone, but still play an integral part in the project deliverables. As an employer, encourage the use of asynchronous communication in the form of pre-recorded videos and voice notes, emails and slack messages wherever possible. Read more about how open source leader Github is using asynchronous communication to extract the complete productivity of its fully remote team.

Knowledge sharing

Colleagues located at different corners of the world can’t tap one another on the shoulder to ask questions or to get help. Siloed data is one of the biggest problems faced by remote teams, leading to a direct loss in productivity. Often, a large chunk of time is wasted in locating the most recent version of a document. 

Having a central, universally accessible source of all work related information is a highly beneficial practice. More importantly, it ensures that attrition in the company does not result in loss of knowledge and data. From Auttomattic to Slack, a central source of knowledge forms the backbone of all successful remote workforces. Tools like Notion enable teams to document standard operating procedures along with related data. Box and Canto are great for the management of shared digital assets.

Boost social interaction

How do you build trust and relationships between coworkers in the absence of coffee breaks and water cooler conversations? In this podcast, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Auttomatic talks about how fully remote workplaces need to intentionally create avenues for social interaction. 

Managers and leaders must intentionally include time for non-work conversations and regular team building sessions. This enables team members to form bonds of trust and empathy. From Gatheraround to Donut, there exist hundreds of tools to help strengthen the connection between members of distributed teams. We also love the idea of virtual water coolers – online spaces where remote colleagues can gather for casual conversations and non work banter.

Performance evaluation

Quality over quantity is a principle that applies squarely to most things, and evaluating your remote team is no exception. Begin by setting objective standards for the evaluation of your employees that are not based on the number of working hours. We recommend de-prioritizing the transactional nature of work and taking into account multiple metrics like customer feedback, collaborative effort and initiative. 

A holistic evaluation of any employee’s performance includes self evaluation, one-on-one conversations and actionable, constructive feedback. In a remote setting, how you give instructions and feedback plays a major role in the way your workforce experiences your company culture. It is not enough to simply include the words “flexibility” and “empathy” in your core values; they must reflect equally in your performance evaluations. 

Data security

Solar Winds, Colonial Pipelines and Sony – we’ve all heard of high profile cybersecurity breaches that have held sensitive data and millions of dollars ransome. Here’s a scary number – cybercrime could cost the world economy a total of $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.  

As we work to establish completely remote workplaces, we must accept the fact that all-remote companies have to work harder to protect employee, corporate, and customer data. Subtract the secure network and firewall protections that all of us take for granted, and add the perils of working on public wifi or non-work computers – and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. Thankfully, there are a large number of steps that employers and employees can take to protect the security of their data. Some of these include the usage of VPNs (virtual private networks), sliding web-cams, password protected documents and a cloud based, centralised storage system. 

Working remotely was always a highly viable option; however, it took a pandemic for us to realize how beneficial it could be for businesses universally. With technology and location strategy enabling us to eradicate the barriers of geography and time zones, there has never been a better time to build your global team.

Take the first step towards building your distributed workforce with Talent500. Our team of experts and network of highly skilled professionals help you build your global team in over 50 countries. Ready to take the first step? Set up a consultation with our team here.