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Remote Work opposes Nationalism!

The actual development in Europe and for sure extremly in the US politics throws questions in every community and every industry.

So, what is the remote work industry thinking about? The remote work ideology, if we like to name it that way, is the complete opposite of all nationalistic thinking. Most remote workers symbolize globalization, multiculturalism, equality and freedom (of thought, speech, action, religion, trade, loacation and much more).

There are just a few remote workers in the world, who are working from home or in a co-working space for a company or customers, without any connection to foreign nations. All the others have regular communication, collaboration, partnerships and trade (of goods and knowledge) with different countries. And we love that and we know the benefits.

Globalization is not 100% positive for everyone, we are not denying the drawbacks. But nationalism is definitive the wrong answer! To name one example: the jobless production workforce of the North of the USA will be not saved by import taxes or anti-immigration actions. They will only be saved by appropriate educational actions (education has already changed to a lifelong task) and complete opening to the global remote work industry.

To the political leaders everywhere: Think of easier taxes for digital nomads, e-residencies, universal basic income, free travel, working visas for every taxpaying worker and free internet with net neutrality instead of closing your borders!

So in these days, remote workes are Canadians instead of US citizens. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, twittered at 28th of January 2017 ‘To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada’.

Anyway, most remote workers are decribing themselves as ‘global citizens’. Surveys of millennials are showing a rising numbers of people identifying themselves with the global community rather than with a nation.

Sorry, Mr. Trump, there is no place for your ideology in our future communities!

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How remote work supports the health of our planet

There are different aspects of reducing our footprint on our planet with remote work. I will go through them and will also highlight, that there are two points where remote work stresses the environment.

Commuting

We all know that commuting is a bad thing. Not only for commuters and the productivity, it’s at first bad for the environment. For sure it’s better to take bus, train or ferry (i.e. in Vancouver or Sydney) then your car, but in any case you have a significant amount of air pollution and climate gases forcing climate change. If you power your electric car by photovoltaics, you are the extreme rare exception.

Lot’s of cities are now looking closely at their pollution data, maybe a little more since VWs scandal. Some are calculating how many death per year are caused by traffic pollution and some are even banning cities temporarily for diesel cars (“Oslo temporarily bans diesel cars to combat pollution” by TheGuardian).

Now it’s very clear what a big impact working from home has for the health of the environment and the health of the people. And we are not starting to discuss the saving on gas, car loans, parking or train tickets or the danger of accidents in this article.

Less commuting results in less demand for new or wider freeways, streets and railroads. That is a direct impact to longer untouched nature or the possibility for more parkland.

De-Urbanisation

Today, urbanisation is still a mega trend in developped and developping countries. This study (2014 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects) of the United Nations shows it well and is also projecting this till 2030.

But the rise of remote work will slow this process down and I’m pretty sure, it will reverse that trend someday in the midterm future. The reason is clear, without the need to life in a city for work, lot’s of people will seek a place with more nature und less leases (however many will stay in the city, which is ok because actual infrastructure is more than enough for them).

The de-urbanisation, caused by the fact that you are able to live in a quieter, cheaper and cleaner environment, will have a big impact on the environment. Huge areas in metropol regions can be converted into parks or can be completely recultivated. That’s adding large potential space for plants and animals and will increase the air quality to name only one big benefit.

This decentralisation of living will fit perfectly with the new general way of power generation through solar and wind. The power will be generated and consumed decentralised, without the need of increasing the number of huge power plants to feed the demand of the cities or to build new power lines.

Downside

But there is, like always, a downside with remote work and the environment. If you are a digital nomad, you like to travel much, including flying a lot with planes and use all the other transporting possibilities. It depends on the commute, that you would do at your home town and it depends heavily on the frequency and lenght of your travelling, if you want to calculate what of both is worse.

But in any case you should consider to reduce your carbon footprint as digital nomad. There are lots of possibilities, donating for forestation projects or volunteering (for sure online) for nonprofits are only two of them.

The other downside will come from the wish to life and work at beautiful places (i.e. in the near of nice beaches). That will bring a pressure on that communities to enlarge their size into untouched nature. Hopefully we can cope that with a modern approach of coexistance of people and nature with as less impact as needed.

What are your thoughts on remote work and our environment? Please let us know in the comment section!

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What is remote work, a digital nomad or even a remote-first company?

The remote work movement gains more and more momentum. But what is ‘remote work’ really? And what are all the other terms in its context? See the following collection.

Remote Work

It is any kind of collaborating work, where not all participating members are colocated in one building. The definition diverges, some say all workers on one plant are not remote, but others say everyone who sits 30 meters away or on a different floor is remote. That hard definition comes from the fact, that this 30-meter-collegue will lose the connection to the project without proper communication and documentation.

With that definition you will get one point: you are already working remote in some kind. But the common understanding of working remote is to work part- or full-time from your home office or a cafe or coworking space in your home town or anywhere else on our planet.

Completely Remote / 100% remote

If you are talking about a person, it is someone, who works full-time remote (no matter if in the home town or abroad). This is not excluding project meetings at your company and visits of customers and suppliers from time to time.

If you are talking about a company, all their employees are able to work where they want. The company can even have offices, but some never had an office or headquarter anywhere.

Remote-friendly vs. Remote-first Company

All big companies are trying to be remote-friendly these days. They are offering flexible work hours, part- and full-time home offices and sometimes even single enployees, which are completely location independent. These actions are commonly taken on existing onsite staff.

A remote-first company is built around the remote philosophy with all its tools and processes, even if some employees are sitting together in the same office. These companies are hiring worldwide, with no connection to any location. That constellation is still rare, but there is a raising number of i.e. software companies. One of the first of that kind was 37signals, turned now to Basecamp (http://basecamp.com).

Freelancers / Entrepreneurs

There are 3 major working conditions for remote workers: freelancing, self-employment and traditional employment (permanent appointment). These conditions are often mixed, i.e. a freelancer who has its own side projects or an employed person with part-time freelancing. Anyway, the percentage of freelancers and entrepreneurs is very high under remote workers.

Digital Nomads

are generally people, who are working online with the help of laptop and smart phone (formerly known as telecommuting). While the term is correct for people in the home office and abroad, it is normally linked to remote workers, who are moving from location to location around the globe.

Co-working and -living

With the raise of remote work, some digital nomad hubs emerged (i.e. Chiang Mai in Thailand). In those cities the first co-working spaces appeared, commonly open offices with WiFi where you rent your desk per day or even hours. Co-living came up next, the easiest explanation is: a combination of co-working space and hostel. The co-working spaces are already spreading through our home towns, because remote workers, who cannot work at home, are tired from distractions and bad wifi at coffee shops.

Remote Industry

If you combine all that, you see that we have a rising industry branch here. The related businesses includes co-working and -living spaces, hostels, coffee shops, specialized travel agencies, organized digital nomad trips, specialized online education and blogging, software for online collaboration and a lot more (please feel free to put the things I missed in the comments).

Millennials / Generation Y

Everytime you read something about the future of work you will come across the term ‘Millennials’. The millennials (or ‘Generation Y’ if you live in continental europe) are, according to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials): ‘the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and ending birth years ranging from the mid-1990s to early 2000s’.

Why are they (wait, I should say ‘we’) that important? Because this generation will have the highest percentage of working people soon and because the needs and desires of that generation are totally different to generations before. Security and stability at only one employer was desired over decades, but the millennials are looking for freedom, opportunities and self-fulfillment. And because that is combined with and enabled by the digitalization, it is the biggest challenge for all industries.

That explanation was helpful? Or do I missed an important point? Please let us all know in the comment section. Thanks for sharing!

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How to start the transition to a remote company

launch
launch the future of work

How to start? The answer to that question depends highly on your actual company. How old is it? How many employees in how many locations does your company have? Which industry is yours? What kind of work are you conducting?

But there are a lot of advices, which fits them all. There are 2 possible ways, I like to show you:

Possibility 1: You will start a new business right now

Start completly remote. Other words for that are ‘100% remote company’ or being a ‘remote-first company’. You will save a lot of money for office space, furniture, hardware, electricity and cleaning service. Even if you have just planned to rent some desks in a bigger office building – save this. Hire the best talented people for you endevour and participate in all the benefits explained in ‘Why your company has to go remote‘.

Posibility 2: You have a running company and should transform

Start small. Send your staff to the home office for some days a month, i.e. every Friday or two days a week, whatever fits to your projects. To be clear, you should not ‘send’ them home, you should ‘let’ them work from home. There will be some characters or some home situations (i.e. loudly kids or housemates), where the home office is the second best solution.

After that trail for some time, adjust you processes, tools and regulations if needed (read ‘How to prepare your company for remote workers‘) and increase the remote portion of the remote time. Please don’t forget to consider the feedback of your employees about that topic.

Only after all that improving start to hire fully remote workers. And further on track the mood inside your teams. Try to avoid any unequal treatment of onsite and remote workers.

If you want to jump into the cold water with your existing company instead, try it only with a separated project. The topic and the depending work should be as discrete as possible and should not overlap with the work of the onsite employees much. After getting through that project do the lessons learned accordingly and transform the rest of the company. Don’t allow a separated firm inside your company for too long.

What is always helpful on the way of the transition of your business is to be accompanied by an expert who has the knowledge about all the common stumbling blocks which will pop up.

Do you have other experiences or additional advice? Please let us know in the comments!

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How to prepare your company for remote workers

meeting
meeting

After knowing why your company has to go remote, it’s important to prepare your business for remote workers. I will make that an easy one for you and just ask you some questions:

Are the documents, someone will need to work with your company (i.e. requirements), in English or another language?

If you have your documents in a foreign language and would not translate them, you narrow the number of possible remote workers by a order of magnitude minimum. That is still right, if you have the documents in Spanish, French, German or Mandarin – English is simply the most common language in the business world.

Is the company language English or your native language?

Similar to the question above, you are limited, if your native language is not English. Even if its English, you should adjust the writing and talking to an English which everyone on earth has the possibility to understand. If only the documents are in English, it can work, but meetings are hard for people, which are not used to the conversations in English.

Are your employees measured by ‘hours in the office’ or by the value of their work?

Remote workers are measured by their working results, not their time spend on the work (even if they are paid per hour). Though it’s easier for managers and collegues, if the onsite staff is also measured by results. That is also an efficiency boost!

Is ‘trust in employees’ a phrase at your company or is something behind it?

Nearly all managers claim that they are trusting their employees, unfortunately many of them don’t. That’s a really important point to fix. Because if managers are not convinced, that workers will work at home or anywhere else than the cubicle, the whole system will fail. A good way to help with that is measure the people by their work, not office time – normally the trust should rise with that.

Do you have a reliable internet connection or breaks or slows it down sometimes?

Sounds like the norm? Yes, but it isn’t. That is especially important if the remote workers will work with tools on your servers. For sure the same counts for the availability of your servers. Get this fixed before you create inefficiencies or bad vibes around the collegues.

Are all documents, someone will need the work with, available from a remote site?

Again it sounds like standard. But lots of security policies are reducing the availability in many coorporations – avoid that from the beginning, be it on your servers or in the cloud.

What are possible experiences with partly remote teams already?

The common situation is a customer, which sits somewhere, most of your collegues sit around you and some suppliers are sitting somewhere as well. That is already an remote environment! What works already in your company (i.e. easy video conferencing and screen sharing) and where should you improve?

You have to go remote to sustain in the future, so prepare your company now. Avoid frustrations about remote work just because you were not prepared.

Which point is missing? Please write about it in the comments!