of our 2,000 or so employees work remotely. This way of working has been
our “normal” for more than a decade.
Covid-19 has made it everyone’s normal. The mandatory shift to remote work was
disruptive, but many companies are starting to embrace the long-term value of the
concept. Some employees are more productive at home; they appreciate the flexibility,
lack of commute or ability to work in solitude without interruption. And companies that
build distributed teams can hire the best talent from anywhere in the world. In a future
that embraces distributed work, the search for talent is unconstrained by office
locations or direct flight paths. An uptick in distributed work across all industries in
2021 will connect the talent of developing countries such as Indonesia, Nigeria and
Pakistan with the employment opportunities and economic growth offered by
companies all around the world.
But what does this shift to distributed work mean for the workplace? Our decade of
experience with a distributed workforce tells us that offices are not going away, but the
way we use them will change. With more flexibility, employees will come in fewer days
a week. We will see a rise in hot-desking and a reduction in office footprints; companies
just won’t need as much commercial space. Offices will be designed for collaboration:
team deep-dives, customer and community events, celebrations, planning and design
work. People will go to the office because they want or need to engage with others, not
because company policy requires it.
This will change both how work gets done and how companies foster culture. When
workers are more distributed, the work itself becomes distributed—so it must be
documented, visible and doable in an asynchronous manner, by individuals working
independently of one another across time zones and work environments. Collaboration
and camaraderie will be built virtually, using technology that is not new, but has
renewed purpose—video-conferencing, virtual meetups and instant messaging. Virtual
happy hours and a “cameras on” policy for conference calls may seem like pandemic-
induced workarounds to boost morale and encourage engagement, but they are in fact
crucial components of post-covid corporate culture. Tools to support remote working
abound, but successfully building a distributed team demands deliberate changes in the
way people work. That requires a shift in the way companies train, empower and
support people to work in new ways.
Managers tasked with creating a culture of collaboration within a distributed team will
find that the profile of a leader changes. A recent study found that the skills and traits of
successful leaders in an in-person, office-based environment differ from those needed
to lead distributed, remote teams. Instead of valuing confidence and charisma, remote
teams value leaders who are organised, productive and facilitate connections between
colleagues. In a post-covid world, companies will have to place greater emphasis on
retaining and promoting leaders who have these skills.
In just a matter of weeks, the spread of covid-19 brought about a shift to distributed
work that happened more quickly than anyone thought possible. But the open-source
community has been working this way for more than two decades. In 2021 companies
will stop seeing remote work as an inconvenience and embrace it as a chance to create
an interconnected, asynchronous, global workforce that is more flexible and dynamic