Work is not a place

Culture

5 Feb

Written By Aimee Tasker

I’ve been reflecting on why working remotely is a good experience for some people and not for others.

Working remotely is great

…when it means:

not having to commute to an office on crowded transport, or navigate traffic and find a car parking space
the temperature of the environment you’re working in is adjustable [1]
it can be as loud or as quiet as you like. Not everyone can concentrate with music on, not everyone can concentrate in silence
it’s possible to not be interrupted every 5 minutes. This requires setting some expectations on the speed of replies to people and being disciplined in turning off notifications. It takes 23 minutes to get back on track after being distracted [2]
digital is a real enabler to bringing more diversity into teams, whether that is hiring someone from another country or a different country.

Working remotely is not so great

…when it means:

You are homeschooling children and working at the same time.
You don’t have the space to have a working-only area.
You are forced into remote working and you’re not sure how to or don’t want to do it.

Not knowing how to work remotely creates painful experiences for teams who have not defined what communication should be async or face-to-face, or what rhythms and rituals are important for the team to feel a sense of connection to each other and the organisation.

Physical workplaces have mostly has been designed for extroverts [3] even though there are probably as many introverts and ambiverts in the world.

I do think getting together with teams is a great idea when you want to get to know each other and increase psychological safety. Feeling everyone’s energy can be invigorating and is not something as quickly achieved over zoom. But this seems more about learning to be together, rather than having to work in front of a computer together.

Working out how we like to work is a useful way to figure out how to work smarter, but not necessarily harder to be more productive.