 

ARTICLE

After Embracing Remote Work in 2020, Companies Face

Conflicts Making It Permanent
Paul Sawers
Venture Beat, 2021

READ THE ARTICLE

Read or listen offline

Download Amazon Kindle Subscribe

 28   

Rating  Qualities
Applicable
 8
Overview
 Concrete Examples 

Recommendation
Netflix might pine for an in-person workforce, but most companies are
preparing for a new hybrid model. A distributed-teams strategy, where firms
support team members working remotely, requires a change in how
companies do business, reports Paul Sawers for VentureBeat. Asynchronous
communication, focused more on iterative written communication than on
endless online meetings, is only one adjustment. For large established
companies, a “spoke-and-hub” model is a likely solution. New companies,
trying to bloom in the COVID era, are implementing a distributed team
strategy from the onset. As they grow, that is likely to become commonplace.

Take-Aways
• Although leaders may long for the old model, many companies are
working with a remote workforce.
• The changing workforce requires redefining how you do business.
• Post pandemic, companies are likely to embrace a combined or hybrid
model.

Summary
Although leaders may long for the old model, companies are
working with a remote workforce.
Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings maintains that having your staff work remotely
is detrimental to a company, but he’s in the minority. Before COVID-19
required employees worldwide to vacate their offices, an increasing number
of people already worked remotely, at least part time.

Some companies are leaning into the change. Facebook and Twitter plan to
have their staff members work remotely permanently. Hastings, however,
hopes his employees will be back in the office immediately after their
coronavirus vaccine shots.

The pandemic accelerated a location-agnostic mind-set across

the corporate world.
 A majority of companies see a myriad of benefits in having a remote
 workforce. Stripe, a large financial technology company, created a remote 
engineering hub to access engineering talent beyond its four physical offices.
It has employed remote workers since its inception and now is elevating their
existing roles. Previously, Stripe’s remote staff worked virtually, but within a
traditional office-based structure reporting to someone at a physical location.

Basecamp, which creates collaborative-work software, has been developing a

remote-working culture since 2000. Co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier
Hansson co-wrote a book on it. He says that large companies now shifting to
a permanently remote workforce are “knee-capping” the benefits of access to
a larger talent pool by mandating that workers accept big cuts in their
salaries if they move away from expensive areas such as Silicon Valley.

The changing workforce requires redefining how you do business.

The crux of changing to a virtual workforce is the shift from a culture based
on meetings to a culture using written communications, according to
Hansson. Instead of companies simply holding the same old meetings, just

“
remotely, companies need to learn to communicate asynchronously.

”
For a distributed workforce to succeed, remote working needs
to be built into the fabric of the company.

Lori McLeese, HR global leader of Automattic, the company that created

WordPress.com, deals with 1,200 employees in 77 countries. She agrees
that companies need to connect with all of their staff members by modifying
their traditional workflow. She distinguishes between distributed work, which
indicates a corporate-wide embrace of the practice of having remote staff, and
just hiring individuals working on tasks from home. To support its distributed
teams, Automattic uses Slack and Zoom as well as Happy Tools and P2,
created in-house, but available to other companies on a subscription basis.

GitLab, one of the largest companies with an entirely remote

workforce, combines software development with IT operations. In its
employee handbook, the company acknowledges the hiring advantage it has
over other companies, but that edge may diminish as other companies move
to an all-remote or largely remote workforce.

GitLab’s Darren Murph believes that the company’s philosophy fosters

a democratization of workers, allowing people everywhere to access better
opportunities. Its employee orientation process is important. GitLab uses
an onboarding process (its Async 3.0 initiative) that explains the company’s
structure and workflow, which are designed for a distributed workforce.
 Post pandemic, companies are likely to embrace a combined or
 hybrid model. 
Although people predict that the remote work models which surged during
the pandemic will be irreversible, it’s more likely that a “hub-and-spoke”

“
hybrid will emerge.

”
For remote work to be successful, it has to be native…rather
than simply permitted.

Large established companies are likely to have physical headquarters along

with smaller offices in other cities where staff members can work if they wish.
Such companies will face the challenge of adapting their in-person workflow
to a distributed team model.

About the Author

Paul Sawers is a technology writer for VentureBeat. He is based in
London and focuses primarily on European and British companies.

 My Highlights


Select the sections that are relevant to you. Your highlights will appear here.

This document is restricted to the personal use of Eka Wati (eka.wati.eka@yandex.com)

Did you like this summary?

 Read the article

More on this topic

Customers who read this summary also read
 

Why Remote Work Is Remote Work Is How to Sustain Your COVID-19’s Biggest The
So Hard – And How Here to Stay. Organization’s Legacy Leader

9  8  9  9  8

Related Channels

Remote Teams Coronavirus Pandemic Hybrid Workp

Company 
Resources 
Partners 
Product 

English
Deutsch
Español
Русский
中文
Português
Français
 

Privacy Policy
Terms of Use
Operating Agreement
Accessibility


© 1999-2021, getAbstract