From an office-based job to a fully remote one - what is the best way?

In the beginning there was a nice Saturday session with @ymoto , Andrius Kaliacius and @pedrocavalero . Many thanks to these gentlemen, they keep inspiring and supporting me over and over again.

The topic of the day was chosen on the spot and happened to be a “from office based to fully remote - what are your thoughts?”.

These days, after waves of Covid, the situation with WFH (working from home) vs WFO (working from office) and all other variations is not very clear. Some companies decided to forcefully start moving people back to the office, some moved to a fully remote and 4 days working week.

So what is the best way? First of all, we need to understand what we are trying to achieve. It is never about an employee or about a company. It is always about employees and company (or even companies). So, a good idea might be to start with communication between employee and other people from the company (line manager and such).

For example, your line manager might want you back to the office, 5 days a week. It is a good time to ask the “why?” question. What are we trying to achieve here? Is it a move caused by some pressure from senior management or is it a move caused by employees low performance? Probably something else is involved. For example, line manager feels people are not working that well while being on remote.

When the true reasons of move back to the office are established, we can start working on resolving them. Low performance can be resolved by using different approaches and tools for remote work. Uncomfortable commute can be resolved by helping employees to lease electric cars (like https://www.loveelectric.cars/ scheme in the UK), so they can ride Tesla’s for a 50% of the lease price. That might drastically lower the amount of stress.

In the beginning of 2010s I was told that a desk in London, Canary Wharf, costs £18000. Also, as I understand, commute has a chance of employee getting in an unfortunate or fatal traffic accident. The company is literally loosing £18000 per year AND can loose an employee due to a traffic accident.

So what is the solution?

Well, first of all we need to understand, there always will be “edge cases”. Some professionals, even in IT world, have to be at a specific site due to security regulations. Think of military, critical financial infrastructure, critical nuclear infrastructure and such.

However, not all of us work in the abovementioned “edge cases”. We have a privilege which allows us to concentrate on the profitability of the business. Yes, you heard me right. If an employee is constantly creating a positive balance to the company - the company might be very forthcoming in terms of WFH. Yes, it might be not that easy for those who might want to work from other countries, but a solution might be found given you convinced your employer that you deliver equal or greater amount of goodness while working remotely.

Here is the trick. It is not employer’s job to make sure you work better remotely than from the office. Well, at least it is not only employer’s job. Companies are big and changes may come slowly. However, individual employees might research the solutions for WFH, WFO and demo these solutions to their employers. Not many companies will refuse new ways of working when these ways help companies to achieve better results.

Think “us”, not “I”. That helps.

Many thanks to @ymoto , Andrius Kaliacius and @pedrocavalero who keep inspiring and supporting me over and over again. Special thanks to my wife, Maryna Paluyanava, who keeps helping me to become a better version of myself.