The Coronavirus outbreak has brought us personal and social challenges few would have one second of concern about a couple of months ago. Our daily routine that was taken for granted is being questioned and transformed.
Everyone is praising Remote Work now. Every company is now as remote-friendly as it can be, and is trying to make the best of the situation to assure business continuity. It’s a matter of immediate survival.
But it can also be an opportunity for structural change in the way tech work is organized, especially making remote a common method for working.
At Landing.Jobs we’ve always been strong advocates of Remote Work. We encourage and help companies to implement it, and internally, we’ve always given our team the possibility to work remotely a couple of days a month. Even for us, it wasn’t a smooth transition. There are a lot of things we didn’t know about, unpredicted situations, a lot of adaptations and learnings happening here. Talking about Remote Work is not the same as doing Remote Work. For sure, not everything is pinkabulous and unicorns and wooos.
But we strongly believe Remote Work to be a fundamental part of the future of work, and we’re committed to persevering in Remote Work even after this outbreak. At Landing.Jobs we won’t back down to the ‘old ways’.
The advantages are clearly identified:
- Spending less time commuting;
- Having the flexibility to work from anywhere;
- Better work-life balance;
- Fewer office politics and distractions;
- Increase motivation and productivity.
According to Buffer, workers are happier when they spend more than 76% of their time working remotely.
Also very relevant are the impacts to society as a whole, by reducing traffic and transportation congestion, carbon emissions, improving happiness and mental health, less territorial division, etc.
The biggest barrier to wider adoption of Remote Work is not technology, it’s management culture. Let there be no doubt that a lot of the companies that are bragging in their social networks about the wonders of Remote Work will default to the ‘old ways’ of work. It’s human nature, most people just change when forced to.
But a lot won’t. With almost everyone working remotely nowadays, something will necessarily change and you should be a part of this change.
If you are one of the large, large majority of tech professionals that up until this Coronavirus situation just thought how good it would be to go remote but never really had the guts or the chance to try it, welcome to the brave new world of Remote Work.
The question is: what will you do after this crisis? If everything just gets back to business as usual, office, commuting, etc, what will you do? Your career is exactly that: yours! You should have the freedom to choose your future. If you believe your future is not in Remote Work, do nothing. But if you do believe in Remote Work, go after it. One size does not fit all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Encourage your organization to make a serious commitment to Remote Work. And if this does not happen and you really want to be a Remote Worker, well… probably you need to change. The good news is, there are lots of remote work opportunities out there.
We are confident that, even when all this craziness passes, Remote Work will remain a strong concept within organizations, or at least within the individual’s minds. This challenging period will teach both workers and companies that a lot can be done while remote (and yes, that meeting could be an email) and it’s no big deal if everyone is not working together in the same room all the time. It will challenge us to reconceptualize the 9 to 5 work model and to create new ways of working and collaborating.
Is this how the future of work starts?
Pedro Moura
CMO @ Landing.Jobs
pedro.moura@landing.jobs
Landing.Jobs mission is to help you manage your career. Send me an email to know how, in the meantime check some cool Remote Work jobs here.
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