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What you need to ask when developing a remote working policy

The adoption of remote working as a more agile way of running a workforce has been eulogised for some time, but in the COVID-19 era, working from home has quickly become the new normal for many.

While some have been able to adapt the changes in this regard, it has not been the case for all organisations, and with the COVID-19 pandemic showing no signs of slowing down in 2020, it’s imperative for businesses to have a remote working policy in place.

Some may be looking to the IT department to facilitate this process, but as Nevo Hadas, partner at DYDX explains, setting up a remote working policy is not an IT task.

“It is a strategic task that is a combination of HR and executive leadership. Its purpose is to enable the company to benefit from the big changes occurring in society while enhancing staff engagement, productivity and retention,” the partner points out.

“The remote working policy will become a cornerstone digital transformation document  for the company. It will impact almost every aspect of work, just like the physical office did, and in many ways define the future of the company’s culture, employee base and customer base,” adds the company.

With that in mind, Hadas has outlined seven questions that organisations will need to ask themselves in terms of creating a remote working policy.

  1. What percentage of your workforce is able to be remote, how do you reduce office space to meet that?
  2. What limitations do your employees face at home and do you assist them to overcome that (i.e. home office allowance) or provide offices just for them?
  3. How do you coordinate a work from home company, what tools and more importantly, standards for those tools do you use to align communication and tasking?
  4. How do you move your employment contracts away from time-based (9:00 to 17:00) to output based (agree on tasks to be completed within a time frame) effectively and maintain team communication?
  5. How do you keep employee engagement and culture strong, while not leading to burn out as employees stay connected at their desks for too many hours?
  6. Do you change your recruitment policy to hire from other countries/locations or do you keep your employee base closer  to a HQ?
  7. Do you need physical offices to expand globally?

“Remote policies aren’t about whether you use Zoom or Microsoft Teams for meetings, but core strategic issues,” notes Hadas.

“As the dust settles post-lockdown, executives will need to focus their vision on thinking through how the future of work impacts their business’s evolution into the future,” Hadas concludes.

[Image – Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash]

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