I’m making an effort to get better at working remote and help others do the same. As the workforce changes (and as my life changes) it’s clear that companies need to adapt to a more remote workforce. It opens up your talent pool, saves money on investing in bigger and bigger physical office space, and gives great employees the flexibility that will help companies retain them.
Personally, remote work means I can travel more and plan on moving out of the city while still staying connected and doing my job. Today, for example, I worked a half day from my friends’ apartment in Boston. With video calls, email, Slack, I’ve been able to stay connected to some of the moving pieces at my org right now — and we have a lot of moving pieces.
I called into the one meeting I needed to be a part of this afternoon and though I had the option to just dial in or do a video, I opted for video. Part of connecting a remote workforce is utilizing face-to-face video interactions and not hiding behind phone and email. Though on the other side of the video it’s clear we have work to do as a company to create a better remote experience (have everyone individually on camera, for one, instead of getting an awkward half shot of the room).
I’m planning to test out working remote more this year and use that to help our current remote workforce (currently five full-time employees and most employees work at least one day from home a week). This takes some retraining on my part as well as a consciously shift in our culture to naturally include remote employees and get used to calling someone up on video/slacking rather than just waiting to do a “drive-by” in the office.
I feel very lucky I have a team that supports this and wants to move towards more remote work. It makes it easier to keep prioritizing what’s important to me: my family, my friends.
With Love,
Natalie