Workstyle Resilience – Remote Work Strategies
Building agility and capability within your structure, culture and people.
“Our people want more workstyle flexibility and we need to diversify and decentralise our talent but I’m not sure we have the culture or systems to support remote work.”
Regular remote work is becoming increasingly common within organisations of all sizes around the world, fuelled by globalisation and enabled by the internet and digitisation. Within organisations the spread of ‘activity-based workplace’ programs, increasing employee demand for flexible work policies and greater reliance on contractors and networked platforms to support business initiatives mean remote work is increasingly an intrinsic part of workplace and workforce strategies. Recently the benefits of an integrated ‘business as usual’ remote work strategy as a business continuity enabler during periods of social or environmental disruption have been brought into sharp focus.
We view remote work as being much more than just a ‘work from home’ policy. Remote work includes fully as well as partly virtual teams, telecommuters/teleworkers, mobile workers, salespeople, contractors and ‘digital road-warriors’. They may operate from a ‘first place’ (home), coworking place, ‘third place’ (such as public facilities), and potentially in future also within a virtual or digitally-enhanced environment.
A remote working strategy should be integrated into your structure, systems, culture, leadership style and performance management system. A robust remote working strategy is business-led, multidisciplinary and builds resilience and capability at the organisational, manager/team and individual levels.
Many of the critical qualities and capabilities of remote workers are increasingly also critical future of work capabilities for all knowledge workers. In future, the qualities that determine knowledge worker success and ability to thrive will be the same qualities that enable most workers to engage in successful remote work, at least some of the time.
Successful remote workers are aware of their own workstyle preferences and know how make the most of different environments and experiences to be effective and efficient.
Our strategies provide a roadmap for creating remote working strategies that help your organisation meet the challenges of tomorrow, such as supporting decentralisation, improving access to diverse talent and retention rates, increasing flexibility and efficiency, reducing real estate costs, and continuity planning.
We always begin seeking to understand the context and how your organisation rates in terms of the critical success factors for remote work. Our remote working framework enables us to identify the priority areas that need to be strengthened and to provide recommendations and tips for developing the required capabilities and support mechanisms.
Why are we such advocates of remote work? Because Workplace Revolution is founded on a distributed talent model to ensure we can provide the best team for every Client assignment. We are all remote workers! Our team are empowered and trusted to work when and how they feel is best to deliver the results and value our Clients deserve. Our digital platform allows us to communicate, collaborate and manage project workflows within our team, with partners and with Clients remotely in real-time. We will share our personal experience, expertise and research to develop a customised approach to helping your organisation reap the benefits of remote working strategies.
A remote working strategy can be a valuable risk management tool as the global COVID-19 outbreak amply demonstrates, but it can also be much more than that. A remote working strategy is an opportunity to redesign workstyles and improve the employee experience within your organisation.
If you would like to know more about how we can help you plan for change and create competitive advantage, please contact us to arrange a confidential conversation. This will allow us to gain some insights into your specific context and challenges, and tailor the more detailed information we share with you accordingly.