‘Head of Remote work’ becomes a reality

As the pandemic has rapidly accelerated a move to remote work — and widespread work-from-home arrangements will become permanent over the long-haul — some tech companies are carving out new jobs for executives to act as advocates for virtual workers and think more broadly about a lasting remote future. While the practice could spread to other companies, at the moment it appears concentrated among tech firms.

Facebook recently posted a job with the title “director, remote work”. This position at Facebook is designed to support Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to allow employees to work from home through Summer 2021 and his pledge to have 50% of the company’s global workforce working remotely within the next 5 to 10 years.

Quora, the question-and-answer social platform, is in the process of hiring a “head of remote work” after 60% of employees said they’d rather work from home post-pandemic.

“You need somebody with an HR background, but they also need to be really strong at [communication skills] and to be pretty adept — or at least knowledgeable — about technology,” said Adam D’Angelo, the CEO of Quora, which has about 200 employees. “This pandemic has forced us to just flip a switch and now this is suddenly a role a lot of companies need.”

Will ‘Director of Remote Work’ become an emerging job trend? Arran Stewart, CEO of Job.com, expects it will. “I see a shift toward hiring remote specialists, those know who know how to manage and get the most effectiveness out of remote teams,” he says. “Several Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech companies are pledging to work from home until at least through next summer, and some, like Microsoft, have said their employees never have to return. It doesn’t detract from the fact that these companies need leadership to get the best out of those teams.”

Yet while the job title may be new, Stewart says that in a way, the role is not. “Many companies already manage offshore tech teams,” he says. “But the position Facebook is creating takes it to a new level of responsibility and organization and structure. I definitely expect other companies to follow suit with similar titles. It will likely cascade down into other sectors, but tech often leads the way and is the most reactive with other industries following their lead.”

Rhiannon Staples, chief marketing officer at people management platform Hibob adds that the ultimate objective of the ‘head of remote work’ should be to lead the internal movement to effectively shift the workplace to a remote/hybrid environment by enabling employee productivity and driving engagement. The primary underpinnings of this approach, she said, include four main pillars: enablement, education, culture, and communication.

• Enablement: The ‘head of remote work’ should ensure the business has the technology, structure and mindset to optimize productivity for a remote team, Staples added.
• Education: Involves coaching newly remote employees and managers on best practices and offering guidance for success. “There should be a huge focus on educating and empowering managers on how to operate effectively in a remote environment from protocol to recruiting day-to-day oversight and professional development,” Staples said. “Providing business leaders with the means by which to make the remote/hybrid model successful is key. The responsibility of success doesn’t fall on just one person, but the head of remote work will lead the internal movement.”
• Culture: Fostering cultural development should be a component of this role. The head of remote work must find creative ways to foster an environment that leaves people feeling connected to one another and to the business
• Communication: Finding ways to initiate two-way communication from the business to the employee and the employee back to the business, Staples said, is critical to retaining talent while remote. This includes identifying metrics and tangible measurements that will let businesses know what is working and what still requires attention.

Although the head of remote work might be an exciting title, it will gradually become an essential role for a majority of big tech companies which commit to adapt to a remote or hybrid working style.