Remote Work: Benefits for People
An overall summary based on my personal experience.
Last week, I wrote an article about the benefits of remote work for companies. And this week, I wanted to address the benefits for people — referring to the workforce of a company in general, which includes employees but also freelancers.
I had the chance to work for different companies in the past, which all adopted varied strategies for remote work. Some of them had virtual teams spread all over the world, whereas others were more traditionally allowing remote work once or twice a week. And finally, I’ve even worked for a company that prohibited 🚫 remote work entirely. The decision came from a lack of trust but also a shortfall of tools and processes set up to implement distant collaboration seamlessly.
Whilst some of these options may sound extreme, here are the benefits that I have retrieved from those various approaches.
Drop the commute 🚌
I was chatting with an Uber driver the other day and we discussed work routines. He told me that he used to be working as a chef in a restaurant, but the shifts were extremely long. The work itself was exhausting, and he very often ended up not being able to enjoy any time off with his family and friends after a hard day followed by a long commute. He told me: “Since I’ve started Uber, I finally feel in control of my schedule and that makes me so much happier”.
Since then, this discussion kept popping in my mind and for a reason: I can actually deeply connect with that, too. Owning your schedule really changes the game. 45% of people surveyed¹ by PowWowNow spend over an hour commuting per day (cheers to all London commuters who know too well what that hot sweaty summery commute feels like).
As someone living away from my hometown, remote work also allows me to visit my family much more often for example. I can simply buy my train tickets, and all I need to be able to work from my parents’ home for a week or two is my computer 👨💻.
Health benefits but not only
Something I found very tough about working in an office was to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. It is difficult to say no to lunch out with colleagues where all the options might not be that healthy 🍔. And the same goes for finding the time to go to the gym. You tend to leave late, and might just not be feeling like working out after spending an hour commuting back home. Working from home makes maintaining a healthy diet much easier (with a properly equipped kitchen available to you). It is also much more convenient to plan your sports sessions as you have that extra time at hand now. Going to the gym, going for a run, or even using a personal trainer (with an app like Freeletics) won’t take lack of time as an excuse anymore!
And finally, removing distractions, noise, and even the politics of a busy workplace can boost performance when working from home. With the time saved, I’ve personally also adapted my schedule to include trainings or webinars before starting to work, during my lunchtime or after work.
WFA = Work From Anywhere
Work-From-Anywhere 🌎 is a pillar of virtual and decentralised teams. A WFA employee has all the same schedule flexibly of someone WFH (= Working From Home), but she/he can be based in any other location that suits them better — a location with a lower cost $$$ of living for example.
An exciting read from Harvard Business Review: Is It Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere? brings up essential questions about WFA employees. They could yield some career-extending benefits to both employees and companies by encouraging valued senior employees to remain in the productive workforce longer. Additionally, they compared WFH and WFA employees, and their results show that giving more autonomy can actually improve employees’ productivity. Finally, They found that if a job is very independent (that is, the employee can carry out most job duties with little to no coordination with co-workers) the transition to WFA is more likely to result in an increase in productivity.
Want to hear about WFA jobs? Forbes listed the top 20 companies hiring for work-from-anywhere remote jobs based on a FlexJobs’ article².
Julien, a friend of mine, is living in Taiwan, but last time we spoke, he was in Japan for a month to work and travel. He studied Finance but then moved to software engineering and now he specialises in blockchain development. He creates online courses on top of working as a freelance for different companies.
He said the main benefit is that he can both work and travel simultaneously for a long time, which enabled him to create a deeper connection with the place he lives. He also said that being a digital nomad offers him to meet more impactful people more often than if he had stayed in Paris. He said that this enabled to organise his days in the most optimal way for him, whilst still being able to easily give his bosses an account of his work as everything is reported and logged online.
The best of both worlds
According to the insightful 2020 State of Remote Work report³, the three greatest struggles to working remotely are (1) collaboration and communication, (2) loneliness and (3) not being to able to unplug.
For the first and the second problems, the poll below — which I found in another HBR article⁴) gives us a good tip.
According to a Gallup poll of 9,917 employed U.S. adults, remote workers that come in to work at least once per week are the happiest. These “mostly” remote workers report a slightly higher rate of engagement […] and that their job included opportunities to learn and grow.
I would tend to agree with this hybrid version of working remotely. What is working best for me is to change my environment regularly to stay motivated and focussed. That is also confirmed by this study⁵ with what they called the “alternative workplace”.
Employees in such an alternative workplace tend to devote less time and energy to typical office routines and more to customers. At IBM, a survey of employees in the Mobility Initiative revealed that 87% believe that their productivity and effectiveness on the job have increased significantly.
Another teammate I was working with, in a London startup, was operating from Spain. He found the real in-between solution by working as a freelancer for that company, in an office he shared with friends. That way he got the feeling of going to an office, with the added advantage of keeping the option to diversify his work environment if felt necessary.
A format for everyone
Even if the highest proportion of remote workers were amongst founders/C-Level execs (55%) and VP level (48%)⁵, remote work is here to stay and projections for the next few years are moving towards it too. It is democratising.
There are different strategies: fully remote or only a few days a week, WFH or WFA, working from a shared office or from a cafe. All these strategies go in the same direction: being able to build a schedule that fits best with an individual’s preferences, as opposed to obeying the rigid work schedule demanded by the workplace.
I really like this statement made by Fuze:
“Businesses must adopt a fluid approach, embracing the ‘Work-as-a-Service’ model, rather than attempting to define when and where people should feel their most productive.”
Working remotely requires a certain amount of expertise and seniority. I would not have been able to do it during my junior years. Hours spent in the office are very formative; witnessing the interactions between people, observing the internal processes and learning from leaders are very important work life trainings. It is also where we sharpen our interpersonal skills. By contrast, working remotely forces us to improve our self-organising and digital communication skills. Both are essential and entirely complimentary, which at the end makes us better performers 🏆.
I’d love to read your thoughts about it. So please feel free to send me articles or papers you enjoyed and wish to share with me 🙏. You can quickly contact me via Twitter as well as LinkedIn.
¹ Arturo Pizano, Flexible Working in 2017, March 2, 2017
² Brie Weiler Reynolds, Top 20 Companies Hiring for Work-from-Anywhere Remote Jobs, January 24, 2020
³ Buffer and AngelList, The 2020 State of Remote Work, 2020
⁴ Jennifer Moss, Helping Remote Workers Avoid Loneliness and Burnout, November 30, 2018
⁵ Mahlon Apgar, IV, The Alternative Workplace: Changing Where and How People Work, From the May–June 1998 Issue
⁶ Merchant Savvy, Global Remote Working Data & Statistics, Updated Q1 2020
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Figure 1:
77% of people say that working from home has improved their overall health and wellbeing, source: FlexJobs
80% of remote workers say they are happy with their job, compared to just 55% of on-site workers, source: Owl Labs
“Workers who have control over their schedules report finding time to exercise more, eat better, and have higher morale and a better outlook in general.”, source: American Psychological AssociationThis is not a sponsored post.
