Facts you need to know about Remote Work to learn from COVID-19

This read is for who is interested in a fact-based view and deeper reflection on remote work: What can we learn from COVID-19? What facts to consider when moving forward? What aspects to get to the bottom of to understand better what measures to take?

Before COVID-19, only 1 of 10 German employees made use of the home office arrangements of their company

Surprisingly, larger organisations are more commonly found to offer remote working. A whooping 57% of companies with more than 500 employees offered some form of home office but only 25% of companies with 100 or less employees.
Comparing leadership and the broader workforce, the study showed that those in leadership positions make use of remote work arrangements more frequently than employees. For example in Production, 23% of leadership vs. only 5% employees, Service & Public Administration, 43% leadership vs. 23% employees, and Marketing & Sales, 59% leadership vs. 36% employees.
For the digital economy, Bitkom came to a similar, but somewhat more promising result in their survey 2018 on senior & HR executives of 855 companies: While in 2014, 22% of companies surveyed by Bitkom indicated that they allow employees to work from home (or elsewhere), the number climbed to 31% in 2017 and 39% in 2018 with a rising trend expected in subsequent years.

COVID-19 mainly uncovers cultural weaknesses

Working from home is experiencing an unexpected boost in the face of the Corona crisis. In fact, the potential of activities that could also be done in the home office has by no means been exhausted and cannot be fully exploited at present.
Reasons? In its survey 11/2019, IAB distilled the following reasons in particular: Apart from technical hurdles, this is due, among other things, to the attendance culture at some employers and the desire of many employees to separate work and private life.

Instead, the potential for an advantageous home office culture is high, especially for specialist and expert activities. And also in classic office jobs, up to 30 percent of employees could additionally work in the home Office.

Realise how remote work increases your company competitiveness

In 1993, Peter Drucker predicted “commuting to an office is obsolete”. Today, we can see how much truth and forward thinking this forecast contains. Particularly, he identified employee engagement as a core success factor in the future competition between companies.

1. Become more attractive on the recruiting market

The original motives for offering remote work or some form of flexible work arrangements was often to allow employees to better align their professional and personal commitments and thereby led to a better work-life balance. According to Gallup, ‘53% of employees say greater work-life balance and personal wellbeing are „very important“ to them when considering whether to take a new job.’
With millenials making up the largest part of the workforce, demanding more flexibility and increasing concern over environmental impact, remote work arrangements are nowadays crucial to keep up a competitive position in the recruiting market.
In the same paper, Gallup states that ‘54 % of office workers say they’d leave their job for one that offers flexible work time.’ And they found that ‘67% of people aged 18 to 29 and 49% of those aged 30 to 49 say global warming is real, man-made and a serious threat.’ Understanding that most of the millennials want jobs that align with their values, this is an important factor to consider when thinking about remote work arrangements.

2. Increase overall productivity

Aside from these individual and societal concerns, there are also benefits that the employer can reap:

• Employees are more efficient and productive
• Employee retention goes up 
• Workforce can be deployed more flexibly
• Reduce operating costs by saving on office rental, energy consumption…
• Improve your environmental footprint

According to Gallup is the engagement highest among workers who spend 3-4 days working remotely. Furthermore, companies are 21% more productive, when keeping up a high employee engagement. IAB distilled that 45 % of employers see a productivity increase when offering home office arrangements.

3. Against all odds

Biggest obstacles to remote work shall be named as well. According to the IAB, for German companies the following applies:

• Perception that job activities would not allow (76/90% employees/leaders)
• Team collaboration is more challenging for employees (59 %)
• Difficult to separate professional from private life (56 %)
• Not allowed although seen as possible from a technical standpoint (16%) 
• Lack of control perceived by leadership (10 %)

Our take-away

What has become evident in the current COVID-19 crisis?

Opportunities and down-sides depend on the one hand strongly on the activity structure of jobs. For example, in those areas where people are increasingly working with machines and systems, the hurdles are still relatively high, at least so far. The cut back on production sites does also lead to jobs in administration remaining unfilled during this period, even though these activities could be relocated back home.
On the other hand, the ‘digital readiness’ is not as high as it would be required to overcome hurdles for an efficient collaboration along the entire value chain – within companies workforce as well as with suppliers, partners and clients.

What’s next?

Potential for long-term increase of company resilience can be realised if technical hurdles, data protection concerns and other issues can be addressed. 
However, this is not the only thing: even deeper rooted to your company’s core, new ways of working need to be honestly analysed and changes radically considered in order to keep up attractiveness to the future talent. It will be needed for a leap in digitisation and for a continually effective, innovative and employee-oriented work culture.

Advantage is built on resilience.

The Virtual Academy conducts all courses based on an underlying strategic perspective. There are two compact courses that teach your leadership how to excel as a virtual leader, and another how to work in teams efficiently. Ultimately, they will help you boost your company’s productivity.