Newsweek USA 4.10.2020

NEWSWEEK.COM 27

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productive when given the freedom

to work from anywhere as opposed to

strict workplace requirements.

Managers will also extrapolate

from their own experience. “Working

remote themselves is often what gets

resistant managers over their reserva-

tions the quickest,” says Lister. “They

see how hard they are working while

at home and the hours they’re putting in still, and it

helps them get over this issue of trust.”

Employees will need to step up their communi-

cation, developing habits to document digital inter-

actions so other teams and superiors know what’s

happening. And that sometimes means an overre-

liance on meetings. (Because everyone knows that

more meetings create an illusion of productivity.)

Only 3 percent of office workers attend 11 or more

meetings a week, but 14 percent of remote workers

do, according to a 2019 survey by Owl Labs.

Of course, productivity can only be so high if the

necessary tools aren’t also at home with you.

Not all at-home workspaces are created equal and

employees may be held back initially if their compa-

nies haven’t implemented the right technology. G&S

found that 40 percent of Americans who’ve begun

working remotely say one of the top challenges is

setting up technology, like their phones and laptops.

Managers seem to feel the same way. Gartner says

about half of HR leaders surveyed admit that poor

technology and infrastructure for remote working

is the biggest barrier in the grand transition.

“Some of our developers [were] coming into the

office anyway even though we’d been encouraged to

work from home,” says Doug Tabuchi, a lead engineer

at SquareFoot, a New York-based real estate tech com-

pany, referring to the week before remote work was

made mandatory on March 13th. “It’s too much of a

hassle to rebuild the setups and the operations they’ve

come to expect and rely upon at the office.”

And sometimes, he adds, it’s the little things that

add up. “I don’t have a second monitor...I’m using

AirPods instead of headphones and a microphone.

It affects what I can get done.” (It doesn’t help

that he lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a

2-month old and his wife.)

Art Papas, chief executive of Boston-based soft-

ware firm, Bullhorn, is learning as he goes along and

has a different set of worries. He had a head start—

Scenes from the

pandemic:

Home workers staying

on the job in France,

Germany and

Serbia and a virtual

church service in

Liverpool, England.

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