https://DevOpsCloud.io -- Cloud Monk Losang Jinpa

Return to Effective Remote Work, Remote Work Bibliography, Jobs Bibliography, Jobs, Remote DevOps - Remote SRE - Remote CI/CD, Remote Cloud Native - Remote Microservices - Remote Serverless, Remote Security - Remote DevSecOps, Remote Functional, Remote Concurrency, Remote Data Science - Remote and Databases, Remote Machine Learning, Remote Courses, Remote Glossary, Awesome Remote, Remote GitHub, Remote Topics

Fair Use Source: B09Z5F678G (EfctRmWrk 2022)

“ (EfctRmWrk 2022)

Challenge of Retrofitting Fully Remote Culture

“If you look back at the spectrum-of-remoteness diagram, you’ll notice that there’s a vertical line separating the remote-first and fully remote configurations. This is because the transition between remote-first and fully remote can be challenging, and for some large companies, it may never even be possible. It may not even be desirable.” (EfctRmWrk 2022)

Therefore, it needs to be considered carefully, both from the perspective of companies that are wondering whether they should be making the transition and from employees who will be eagerly watching how their workplace is reacting to the needs of current and future employees and the direction of the industry in general.

If a company begins its life as fully remote, it avoids by default the issues that we cover in this section. Candidates who apply for jobs at fully remote companies already have an intuition about what the remote culture is like. If they didn’t like remote work, they wouldn’t have applied in the first place! At these companies, remote practices are present from the start. Operationally, everything is aligned toward supporting remote staff. The company budget will begin without line items for office rental and headcount for office managers and receptionists and will likely include stipends for getting staff set up properly at home.

However, a company that wishes to transition to fully remote—even if the leadership believes in it strongly—may find that there’s too much to demolish before construction can begin again. Hybrid remote is like fighting a war on multiple fronts. Providing an excellent in-office experience is an entirely different game than providing an excellent remote experience. Giving up on the office may be the focusing of effort onto a single front that wins the morale war in the long term, but there may be casualties in the short term.

Transitioning to fully remote should not come lightly. In a hybrid organization, there will be a number of employees who prefer working in offices, and the company risks losing those employees in the transition. Many old habits and elements of the in-office or hybrid culture will need to be left behind for a fully remote configuration to work.

So what can we learn from others? As part of discussion and knowledge sharing with other companies in the industry, GitLab has compiled its advice on breaching that line and becoming fully remote.[71] It states that the specific path for companies making the transition will depend on the company size, number of offices, percentage of employees who already work remotely, existing tools and infrastructure for remote work, and the existing culture around communication and career mapping.

Assuming that a company is committed to becoming fully remote, the following actions are advised as part of the process:

Make the executive team remote. This is one of the quickest ways to send a message about the commitment to a transition. The executive team will have to adapt to remote work themselves, which in turn will set the standard through the rest of the organization.

Establish remote infrastructure. This can be initiated with a thought exercise: What would happen if everyone worked from home tomorrow? Companies should consider what possible information voids and confusion would appear, which issues with communication would arise, and where tools and practices are lacking. As many changes as possible should be put in place before making the transition.

Document the culture. If there are no offices in which to observe company culture, it needs to be documented. What’s the company’s mission and vision? What are its values? What’s the structure of the organization and how does it function? If nothing is written down, there’s nothing for remote staff to discover, learn, and operate within.

Close the office. Practicalities such as leases may need navigating, but another strong message is to close all or some of the offices. It makes the message about the fully remote transition concrete and is a clear signal everyone who works in the company is remote and equal to each other.

Equip and educate team members. Not everyone will have worked remotely before, and even those who have may not have experienced what it’s like to be part of a good remote culture. There must be a focus on training and education that’s led by the company rather than letting employees work it out for themselves. The latter can cause disillusionment and attrition, especially when combined with the increased isolation of being at home.

Embrace iteration and transparency in transition. The leadership of a company should be transparent in the same way that engineering teams are used to: work progresses in increments and requires continued testing, reviewing, and iteration to get it right. With the transition in mind, this involves proactive communication about progress, successes and failures, open discussions with all staff, collecting and processing of feedback, and so on.

If this is looking like a lot of work, that’s because it is. If hybrid-remote companies are considering the transition, the additional overhead of doing so piled on top of the day-to-day running of the business can be too much for leaders, managers, and HR staff to manage.

Therefore, one suggestion is to hire a “head of remote” role who can then build a specialist team to assist with the transition.[72] One technical executive, Andreas Klinger, describes this role as “at the intersection of optimizing internal tooling, processes, transparency, collaboration, efficiency, inclusivity, onboarding, hiring, employer branding, culture, and communication overall.”[73]

If you’re speculating what direction your company may take, think about whether the executives would consider investing significant money into making this key hire and building out the head of remote’s team. If this is something that you know the company would do without question, you’re probably in a good place if it transitions. If pigs may fly sooner than that happens, any transition to remote work at your current employer may be challenging.

Here’s what you should be looking out for:

As an employee, you should be thinking about what type of company you want to work for. Think about the different configurations that we explored in this chapter, and try to understand what sort of working situation you want to optimize for in your life. This will be an important factor in determining how long you want to stay at your current company, or if you would be able to weather a transition period, or if you would prefer to make the jump and join a company that’s already fully remote.

If you’re a leader or manager in a company that’s transitioning or considering it, do your research and commit fully. Supporting remote work is a considered effort, and supporting hybrid remote can be harder than being fully remote. If you’re in a position to influence these discussions and decisions in your company, take inspiration from the material that we’ve covered so you can encourage a better outcome for your company.

“And here’s one final thought: office-based work isn’t to be looked down upon. Just because remote work is gaining in popularity, and just because it’s likely you’re invested in it, because you picked up this book, remember that office-based work is still entirely valid, workable, and the personal preference of many people. In the process of making remote workers not feel like outcasts, be sure not to encourage the inverse behavior.” (EfctRmWrk 2022)

Fair Use Sources:

• Effective Remote Work on DuckDuckGo
• B09Z5F678G (EfctRmWrk 2022)