What’s the Status of Remote Work in 2023?

One of the hot topics of 2023 in boardrooms and around leadership tables continues to be remote work. The pandemic is over, but companies are still struggling to attract their talent back to the office full time. I am often asked about the state of remote work and when this trend will end. (Spoiler alert: it will not.) I often tell leaders to reframe their thinking about remote work – to move away from the binary pandemic paradigm of remote v. in-the-office to the post-pandemic paradigm of embracing flexibility in many forms for the future.

First, let’s stop acting like remote work is new. It’s not. We’ve always had workers who interact and collaborate across geographies. I have personally worked for multinational corporations where my colleagues were spread out all over the globe. I was still able to cultivate robust working relationships with people who I never met in person. Perhaps it takes time and a different approach, but it does work. We need to take a page out of the old playbook and recognize that people can and do work together successfully despite distance. If anything, we now have much better tools in place to do it.

Next, whether you call it – remote, hybrid, or Shirley - what your people want is flexibility. Flexibility looks different at different stages of life. Young adults want to be able to travel. Young working parents need more time with kids. Many in mid-life are caring for ageing parents. And those over 65 want to slow down and spend time with spouses and grandchildren. Flexibility is not a one-size-fits-all model. We have to look at our organization with this new lens and figure out how we can make work work for everyone.

And finally, we have to adapt our management practices to this new paradigm of flexibility. Instead of relying on time and attendance to ascertain whether someone is performing, we have to set clear goals and expectation for performance and hold people accountable – whether they actually do the work at an office between the hours of 9a and 5p or in the middle of the night from an RV in the desert. If our focus is on achieving clear goals, we can’t lose.

We are in the middle of a seismic shift in the way we work. Companies and organizations that embrace it and adapt will win the talent war and outrun their competition hands down.

If we can help you adapt your organization to meet the demands of today’s workforce, contact us at www.peoplecap.com.