Author: Ivan Kreimer / Source: The Next Web
For the past five years of my professional career, I’ve been blessed to work remotely from my home. First, as an SEO freelancer, then as an employee, and currently, as a content marketing consultant.
Working remotely has meant I’ve been able to work from the comfort of my home (or a coffee shop, whenever I’m tired of seeing the same wall every day) without having to suffer the problems of commuting.
The benefits I’ve gotten have gone beyond avoiding commuting, however. I’ve saved time and money, lowered my stress, and increased my work satisfaction.
This made wonder why there aren’t more companies that adopt remote work as their standard working procedure, which has led me to ask myself, will remote work ever become mainstream? And, most importantly, does it work as well as I think it does?
After doing some research, here’s what I found.
How employees feel about remote work
Before I start, let me be clear about something: I don’t think most employees want to leave their homes and travel the world, like the so-called “digital nomads” do. Rather, I think most people wish to have a more flexible work time, dividing their time between the office and their homes — or maybe a coffee shop, a library, or a coworking space.
According to a survey done in 2015 by technology staffing firm Modis, the ability to work with flexible hours and location has become one of the most important perk employees requests. This demand has led to an increased adoption of it as a standard (albeit highly negotiated) perk.
The new interest employees have shown for a remote working arrangement explains why a survey done last year by Gallup found an increase in the people who spend at least 80 percent of their work time remotely.
Despite the increasing adoption, remote work has been taken as a part-time work arrangement; a way to complement a work schedule rather than a new way of working.
Last year, the Society of Human Resource Management showed 77 percent of organizations don’t let people work from home on a full-time basis.Remote work seems like a controversial topic: employees feel the most engaged when working remotely (even if it’s done on a part-time basis), yet employers don’t accept it wholeheartedly.
If remote work is as effective as it seems to incentivize employees, will that mean it will become the mainstream way of doing business, or is it just a fad that will prove to be ineffective?
How companies have succeeded with remote work
Remote work isn’t a novel concept taken from the streets of the Silicon Valley; most large corporations from many industries, sizes, and locations have adopted it. This includes organizations like Wells Fargo, Amazon, and the US Department of Agriculture, all of which have adopted remote work policies that let employees work at least a portion of their work week from their home.
There are many more smaller companies have embraced a remote-first strategy, where working from home is the default (this list shows at least 600 companies that fit this description).
Companies like Automattic, Buffer, and Toptal have hundreds of employees each and have been completely remote since their inception, showing that it’s possible to succeed without having every employee working from an office.
The case of Automattic is emblematic, as last year they had to close their San Francisco offices because few of their +50 local employees ever showed up.
The three companies I mentioned before, have been able to grow immensely. Autommatic, for example, has more than 680 employees; Buffer made over $15 million in revenue last year, and Toptal has been able to attract top clients like J.P. Morgan, Airbnb, and Pfizer, all through remote work.
Clearly, remote work can work fine, if done properly. However, it…
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