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Families are Loving Remote Work

Everyone benefits from remote work. But to share your remote work life with your partner or your family is even better.

Every experienced parent will tell you, that you should enjoy the time with your kids. But who is spending enough time with the kids? What is enough time? The overlap of your life and the life of the rest of your family is simply to small in the on-site office world. And that is not only right for parents – every couple loves to have more time together.

By far most remote workers with families are working out of their home offices or a nearby co-working space. But there are also some, who are travelling the world. We will look at both in this post.

Working from Home – Benefits

The No. 1 benefit is clearly the saved commute time which you get to spend with your partner, your kids or even your hobbies. It is really priceless to join breakfast and dinner with your entire family and be able to bring your kids to bed.

The flexibility is the second big benefit. You can return to work while the kids are sleeping in the evening. You can pick them up at school or attend a school event in a work break. You are flexible to organize the childcare – i.e. you split the time, the kids are at home, between both parents.

Michael Erasmus writes in his post ‘I found my ideal lifestyle by working remotely‘ how he is using the additional time and flexibilty for his hobby surfing. He lives in Cape Town and is checking the waves in the morning and during the day. If they are good and he has no meeting, he goes surfing and returns to the desk after a while.

All the other benefits of remote work are also present. Be it taking care for a pet (Why Many Remote Workers are Happy Dog or Cat Owners) or choose a productive work environment (The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons).

My personal favorite is the added time I have with my two 10 and 8 year old girls. Our daily routine is, that I’m taking them to their school bus stop and bring them to bed very often. Remember routines – they are essential for remote workers to be productive.

Working from Home – Risks

But there is always a downside. This is i.e. the risk of mixing up work and family time. I’m highly recommending clear boundaries in terms of space and time.

Define a corner for work, i.e. your home office and another for private internet surfing / gaming, i.e. living room or kitchen. To use even different devices is a good idea for not falling into the pit of looking at business emails in private time.

You should not be distracted by your kids in the home office. Think about the possibility to work in a café or co-working space for some hours. Normally the closed-door-policy works pretty well at home – just remember to lock the door while being interviewed by BBC…

Do not mix time for work and family. So make your schedule clear to the entire family. There is nothing worse than kids, who are expecting dad or mum at home means 100% play time and are disappointed all the time.

Please don’t think you can work and look after the kids at the same time. Use their time in kindergarden, school or bed for work. And if you need the time the kids are at home awake, hire a babysitter for some hours.

Tips from the Buffer team: ‘Working From Home with Kids: 21 Tips From Our Remote Team‘.

All in all your familiy life will thrive if one or both parents are able to work from home. Even all mums have the possibility to return to work part-time after giving birth whenever they want.

Digital nomads

Is the life as digital nomad conflicting with relationships or having a family? Despite most digital nomads are single travellers, there is a rising number of travelling couples and even families with kids. Well known examples are ‘Digital Nomad Family‘ and ‘Bucket List Family‘.

Travelling as a couple is really great, because it avoids the otherwise lurking loniness. Travelling with small kids is also nice, however special in some cases. I.e. you are looking for yourself constantly about the nearest available pediatrist.

You have to make a decision until your kids are turning into kindergarden or school age. Many parents decide to settle down then and allow the kids the routine of school, friends and building relationships, which is important for their development. Only a few decide that the travelling gives them more than that and start to ‘home’ school the small ones on the road.

What benefit is missing? What is the biggest impact of remote work to your family life? Please let us know at the comment section!

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Fight Skill Shortage with Remote Work

The predictions on the future of employment cannot be more divergent. Some say we face huge unemployment due to the emergence of the robots. Others say the growth of the companies is highly limited to the shortage of talented workforce.

The Problem

Companies around the world list the lack of specilized workforce as one of their top risks. The ‘vacancy duration’, the time to fill an open position, which is a good indicator for the availability of fitting workers, has increased dramatically. The fluctuation rate increases in a more and more stable environment. Unemployment rates are lower than 5% in a number of regions worldwide, what can be called ‘full employment’. The consequence is, that employers have to pay highly increased wages to attract skilled workers.

It is not a worldwide problem and it occures mostly not in a whole country. It appears regionally in the following parts of the world: Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Middle and North Europe. And even in some Asian, Arabian, African and Middle or South American regions.

The Reasons

There are some obvious reasons for that problem. The Baby Boomers (which are born in the 50s and 60s) are retiring rigth now, faster than young employees can follow. The average of work hours per week is declining continously. The automation replaces widely manufacturing and other low skilled jobs but rarely higher skilled jobs (till now).

The Generation Y, the Millennials, are seeking for completely different factors at work with more flexibility, less stress, less career ambition, but they are highly motivated (i.e. they presume to be allowed to have private time for phone calls or Facebook at work, but are willing to be available and checking emails after work). And the employers are very rarely attuned to that situation.

The Actions

What to do about that situation? You can employ less skilled workers and do plenty on-the-job training. Or you can educate workers by your own, i.e. right after school. But the best investment is to change your policies and culture to let your existing staff work remotely and to use the remote workforce.

As a regular reader of this blog you know all the benefits of remote work. It is not only the saved cost for offices and the ability to hire as fast as possible the best talented workers from around the world. Above all it is encouraging and motivating to your workers. That is because they will experience your trust, save time and money for commuting, have less stress and can combine work and family or hobbies in a better way. That results in happier, more productive, less sick and thriving employees.

To get a good summary, read also this blog post: ‘The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons‘.

The Conclusion

The best way to fight the No. 1 fear of the employers – the skill shortage – is to enable remote work. It is a win-win situation for both, the employers and the employees. It is definitively the future of work, so it is a huge advantage in the competition about the most talented workers.

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Remote Work Will Save Small Towns

The struggling small towns, which lost so many people, first and foremost the young talented ones, to the big cities, will be thriving again with the already started wave of remote work.

Status quo

The entire world is in a long phase of urbanization (see also these UN report: 2014 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects from my post How remote work supports the health of our planet). But it is not only the movement from rural landscapes to cities – it is especially the skilled people, who have to move from small towns to the big cities to get proper jobs. That is the same in the US, North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia and even Africa. And there are also some decreasing metropolitan areas; to name only two examples: the Rust Belt in the US and the Ruhr area in Germany, which were strong in coal mining and steel industry.

You can see the same pattern everywhere: Young people move away from home after finishing high school or studying to find higher education and work in big cities. And everywhere you see the big travel movement for christmas, chinese new year or the other big holiday breaks, when singles, couples and young families are travelling to their families to be together for a few days.

Future

But why will that change? Because of the advent of remote work. I am explaining the rise of remote work in all my other posts, but take this as summary: The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons. Because it effects so many parts of our lifes, we should name it a new industry. With so many known advantages, it is clear that the remote industry will introduce itself even faster than the digital revolution.

Everyone with a location independed job can choose a place to live and work. There will be people, who want to live at their home town, at the place where relatives live (if it is not the same) or they will choose a ‘nice’ spot. Some will stay in big cities, because of amenities like good travel connections or cultural offerings. But the big movement will go from overcrowded cities where housing is expensive, the air is polluted and traffic is a nightmare to small towns, while some of them are already looking like ghost towns.

Home towns

We all need communities, and nearly all of us love the community of family, friends and neighbours where we grew up. So it is easy to guess, that a lot of people will move back to their home towns. And the returning inhabitants bring demand for services and spending capacity which will not only keep some dying small community alive, these towns will be literally reinvigorated.

Imagine the young high potential graduate who can still take care of an elderly family member and start a significant job from home. Or imagine a young family with remote working mom and dad, who are enabled to live in their small home town, neighbouring parents and other relatives to give their children the same feeling of ‘home’ like they experienced years before.

Vacation spots

All the others, who are not tied or not tied yet will choose a nice spot, which is affordable, has good weather and other amenities like security. In general that will be the holiday regions. There will also be much movement between these areas, because the migration will start again when the locations get crowded, which ends the quite and also rises living costs and traffic.

The vacation spots will get nomads, who are passing by on the one hand and new residents, who are settling down, on the other hand. It is important to grow the infrastructure to handle them in a balance with minimal destruction of the nature to keep the place attractive.

Responsibility of towns

The towns have to stop trying to attract big companies or manufactoring jobs. That will be a waste of time and money. Fred Perrotta explains it well with an US example here: No Jobs are Coming: How Remote Work Can Save Small Towns. Also the comments by Kristi E. DePaul, Michael DeHart and Deb Dutton are very well said.

The better way is attracting remote workers to move (back) to the town and reorganizing the infrastructure for the new situation. There will be an increase in service jobs if the population is growing again. But the actual residents should not rely on only that. They should be trained in the use of remote work tools and how to get a digital job with their capabilities.

Responsibility of big cities

First of all, the cities have to take it seriously. Lots of them are highly dependent on a few big companies (be it blue or white collar jobs), which is very dangerous. Germany has a number of cities which are highly dependent on big car manufacturers. Take Wolfsburg with Volkswagen for example. The treasurer of Wolfsburg declared a spending freeze at the day ‘Dieselgate’ went public, because they knew that VW whould not pay extensive taxes anymore.  They will have to deal with unemployment soon, because of the radical shift to electric cars, where Volkswagen will loose market share and lots of employees.

It is way better for cities to have a huge bulk of remote employees which work for many companies in different industries and even different countries. That is the best insurance against economic risk. Cities are still attracting big companies to get new jobs, but soon they will try to attract remote workers.

Big cities have to reinvent themself to keep a meaning. They have to take care of air pollution, traffic, security and they have to spend a lot for green infrastructure, parks and entertainment to be attractive in a very new competition.

If you are able to choose: Do you want to live in a big city or in a town? Let us know in the comments section!

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The Ultimate List of Remote Work Pros and Cons

No matter who you want to convince, your boss, your employees, your partner or just yourself, here are the ultimate arguments for remote work.

For Employees

pros

  • no time for commuting
  • no money for commuting (fuel, car, insurance, parking, train tickets)
  • lower stress and reduced possibity of accidents while commuting
  • improved health due to lower stress through commuting and busy city centers
  • more productive work in less time
  • no distractions by collegues and loudly cubical farms
  • no long water cooler talks
  • no useless face-to-face meetings
  • work where and when you are most productive
  • you are managing your schedule, that is not done by your manager
  • you are measured by accomplished work and not hours spend at the office
  • you can’t be micro-managed by your manager
  • more time for family and hobbies
  • time and flexibility to take care for family members (the young, old or disabled)

cons

  • risk of loneliness and isolation
  • the need for self-motivation (which is easier if your job fits to you and hard if not)
  • sometimes lack of good communication tools
  • no short water cooler talks
For Employers

pros

  • infinite talent pool / higher qualified employees and saved time while hiring
  • the skill shortage in your region will not slow your business down
  • you will get self-motivated people instead of bored 9-to-5-staff
  • good employees will most likely not relocate if you are a startup or a small company
  • you are getting work done by the employees and not hours spend at your office
  • your employees are spread over lots of different markets – so you get a lot of market information and trail opportunities for your products
  • relaxed employees, because they have no commuting or office stress and better work flexibility (for collecting kids, doctors appointments, dog walks, etc.)
  • more productive work in less time
  • possibility of an easy around the clock customer service
  • save cost on office space, furniture, energy, cleaning service, janitor
  • availability of divers cultures which can be respected at creating products
  • availability of native speakers of different languages while finding a name for your product or creating user documents
  • products are better specified and documented, because the remote work requires it
  • you are disaster ready: you are still online, if there is an internet or power blackout, flooding, snow storm or flu season at one location

cons

  • work in different time zones need to be managed
  • misunderstandings because of too less or bad communication
  • you need good remote project managers to create a successful product or service
For the Environment

pros

  • no pollution through commuting
  • less demand for new freeways and railroads

cons

  • pollution from travelling of digital nomads

So it is no surprise that the remote movement is unstoppable. My personal opinion is, that it will even accelerate and that we will find empty office towers in big cities and flourishing small towns and co-working hubs spreaded all over the counties. That will increase companies efficiency and our all quality of life.

Please let me know what pro or con I have missed in the comment section. Thanks!

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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!