The case for adopting an all-remote working model

The no-office move­ment is gath­er­ing momen­tum. More and more com­pa­nies are aban­don­ing their phys­i­cal premis­es and going ful­ly remote.

San Fran­cis­can tech firms Automat­tic and Git­Lab have been promi­nent pio­neers of the approach. They pride them­selves on their glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted organ­i­sa­tions, empow­er­ing employ­ees to live and work any­where they like.

‘Glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted’ has come to define what many believe is the work­force of the future: main­ly remote and spread across sev­er­al time zones, ensur­ing round-the-clock pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty to cus­tomers and clients. 

Dis­trib­uted busi­ness­es do not coor­di­nate team mem­bers around a spe­cif­ic time zone. Instead, they use asyn­chro­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tion (async). It means replac­ing inef­fi­cient real-time meet­ings with col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and trans­par­ent audio/video record­ing and doc­u­men­ta­tion. This enables employ­ees in dif­fer­ent time zones to work togeth­er effec­tive­ly with­out hav­ing to be ‘always on’.

Experts in this field expect the increas­ing adop­tion of async col­lab­o­ra­tion to have a big impact on employ­ers and employ­ees over the next few years. One of them is Bet­sy Bula, who works in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, as GitLab’s all-remote evan­ge­list. She believes that, while many firms oper­at­ing remote and hybrid teams are biased towards one time zone at present, they will start hir­ing the best peo­ple for the job, regard­less of loca­tion, as their asyn­chro­nous prac­tices mature. 

This change will improve employ­ees’ oppor­tu­ni­ties and work/life bal­ance, accord­ing to Bula, who believes that employ­ers will ben­e­fit in sev­er­al respects. The ful­ly dis­trib­uted mod­el enables them to find tal­ent wher­ev­er it exists, there­by improv­ing their diver­si­ty, for instance. It will also help them to become more agile, inno­v­a­tive and resilient in times of cri­sis. 

Work­ing from her base in Glas­gow, Nico­la Hamill Phillips is Automattic’s glob­al HR leader. She believes that there is “a mis­con­cep­tion that run­ning a dis­trib­uted team is chal­leng­ing. Hav­ing peo­ple all over the world enrich­es our deci­sion-mak­ing. We find that our team mem­bers, with the flex­i­bil­i­ty they have, can be more pro­duc­tive and lead more ful­fill­ing lives. That’s one rea­son I love it so much – I’m drink­ing the Kool-Aid.”

But the glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted mod­el is not with­out its dis­ad­van­tages, even for organ­i­sa­tions that have been using it from the start. 

Bula points out that the warn­ing signs of excess stress can be hard­er for man­agers to detect among a dis­trib­uted team, for instance. Busi­ness lead­ers there­fore need to cul­ti­vate an open, non-judge­men­tal cul­ture when it comes to pro­tect­ing employ­ees’ men­tal health. They must encour­age peo­ple who are strug­gling not to sol­dier on with­out telling any­one.

“Man­agers should not cel­e­brate work­ing long hours or allow that to become the norm,” she says. “They should be trained in how to pre­vent burnout.”

But the biggest dif­fi­cul­ties con­cern com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Bula explains: “When work­ing async and rely­ing on writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion, work­ers may feel dis­con­nect­ed because they’re not get­ting enough social face time with their col­leagues. A writ­ten mes­sage can be mis­con­strued or fail to give the recip­i­ent all the infor­ma­tion they require to act on them.”

Git­Lab and oth­er dis­trib­uted firms coun­ter­act these prob­lems with a range of meth­ods designed to ensure that their peo­ple always feel con­nect­ed and includ­ed.

Two cru­cial aspects of sup­port­ing dis­trib­uted work­forces are inten­tion­al­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. In a con­ven­tion­al cen­tral office, face-to-face inter­ac­tions hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly. In a dis­trib­uted team, you must active­ly pro­mote infor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions that build cama­raderie. 

At Git­Lab, for instance, new recruits are encour­aged from day one to make time for social inter­ac­tions to get to know col­leagues out­side their imme­di­ate team.

Hamill Phillips says that inten­tion­al­i­ty is also about ensur­ing that every­one is includ­ed in deci­sions. Every­thing should be doc­u­ment­ed trans­par­ent­ly to pro­mote inclu­sion. 

“Anoth­er ben­e­fit of this is that peo­ple feel mes­sages aren’t being fil­tered by man­age­ment,” she says. “They can see the orig­i­nal infor­ma­tion for them­selves.”

The all-remote, glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted mod­el doesn’t pre­clude employ­ees from meet­ing each oth­er in the flesh. Instead of con­ven­ing in an office, they will trav­el to con­ven­tion cen­tres or oth­er suit­able venues to par­tic­i­pate in sum­mits and local co-work­ing days.

HR ser­vices provider Grow­mote­ly has a team of 22 employ­ees who are based in coun­tries rang­ing from South Africa to the Philip­pines. Based in Austin, Texas, Sarah Haw­ley is the firm’s founder and CEO. 

“We work com­plete­ly async, except for one all-com­pa­ny meet­ing a month. This gives every­one the free­dom to work and live in the most effec­tive ways,” she says. “We don’t often get to see each oth­er in per­son, but I’m cur­rent­ly shar­ing an Airbnb in Croa­t­ia with five of my Europe-based team­mates, which is fun. My ear­ly chal­lenges with async con­cerned unwind­ing my con­di­tioned beliefs about work need­ing to be done in a fixed place from nine to five. Once I let those go, I could dis­cov­er how and where I work best. My qual­i­ty of life increased expo­nen­tial­ly after that.”

For firms with a glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted work­force, estab­lish­ing a strong cul­ture and set of shared val­ues becomes crit­i­cal.

Bula says that there should be no unwrit­ten rules in a remote cul­ture. Lead­ers should demon­strate the val­ues they want every­one to share, advo­cat­ing trans­paren­cy, flex­i­bil­i­ty and a work/life bal­ance that’s good for people’s men­tal well­be­ing, she adds.

Hugo Stride is co-founder and MD of mar­ket­ing agency Opus Growth Part­ners, which has team mem­bers in the UK, the US and Ukraine. One of the biggest hur­dles he’s faced in build­ing a dis­trib­uted mod­el has been devel­op­ing a cohe­sive organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture with­out the uni­fy­ing expe­ri­ences of in-per­son work­ing.

“There is less scope for the safe cor­rec­tion of mis­un­der­stand­ings between peers, which is built into an office envi­ron­ment,” he notes. “This can be mit­i­gat­ed to an extent with clear guid­ance and reg­u­lar infor­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. But we are increas­ing­ly devot­ing time and effort to repli­cat­ing the intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits our team would get from a cen­tralised office.”

Katy Peters, glob­al head of mar­ket­ing at tech­nol­o­gy firm Valamis, works in the US while most of her team is in Europe. She describes that arrange­ment as a “bound­ary-set­ting super­pow­er” that enables her to work half of each day with­out dis­trac­tion. But dif­fer­ing cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions about the time peo­ple spend both at work and off work can some­times “fall uneven­ly on cul­tures that don’t set bound­aries”. For instance, US clients have dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of sum­mer hol­i­days than, say, Finnish clients. 

Anoth­er poten­tial prob­lem is that in-per­son teams tend to be “tighter” than remote work teams, Peters adds. “This fac­tor can widen cul­tur­al gaps and cre­ate issues with your glob­al sense of belong­ing.”

The tran­si­tion to remote work tends to be more straight­for­ward for a knowl­edge-based busi­ness in the ser­vice sec­tor, but firms in tra­di­tion­al­ly co-locat­ed indus­tries can adopt the mod­el at least par­tial­ly. For instance, a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny may always need some peo­ple work­ing togeth­er at a cer­tain pro­duc­tion site, but staff in oth­er depart­ments, such as HR and mar­ket­ing, can oper­ate any­where. 

But even some tech com­pa­nies that are adopt­ing the dis­trib­uted mod­el aren’t con­vinced that they will ever go ful­ly remote. For exam­ple, New York firm Stack Over­flow has increased the pro­por­tion of remote employ­ees in its work­force from 40% to 85% across 14 coun­tries since the pan­dem­ic start­ed. 

But CEO Prashanth Chan­drasekar, who’s based in San Anto­nio, Texas, observes that not all employ­ees want to work at home.

“When we sur­veyed employ­ees last year, we found that some were crav­ing office space, while oth­ers loved their work-from-home set-up,” he reports. “Also, what works well for a sales team may be dif­fer­ent for an engi­neer­ing team.”

Vari­a­tions in employ­ment law and tax reg­u­la­tion are oth­er com­mon chal­lenges for firms to con­sid­er when build­ing glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted teams. 

Pieter Man­den, head of trust and employ­er com­pli­ance at Work­Mo­tion, says: “Hir­ing and employ­ing peo­ple in a coun­try where you have no phys­i­cal pres­ence is dif­fi­cult. For exam­ple, how do you deter­mine a com­pet­i­tive offer in that coun­try? You will prob­a­bly also have to find a lawyer, pay­roll com­pa­ny, accoun­tant and banker. It is pos­si­ble, but it’s prob­a­bly not worth­while if you’re hir­ing only one per­son.”

But pro­po­nents of the mod­el believe that over­com­ing such chal­lenges is worth the effort, giv­en the ben­e­fits of glob­al­ly dis­trib­uted all-remote work­ing. Uptake looks set to grow as com­pa­nies have to cast their nets more wide­ly to find the skills they need. If they get their way, it could even become the norm.