Is it time to hire a head of remote work?

Tal­ent man­age­ment is total­ly dif­fer­ent from how it looked only two years ago, with some lev­el of remote work­ing becom­ing essen­tial in many indus­tries, rather than the nice-to-have option it was before the Covid cri­sis.

The pan­dem­ic-dri­ven upheaval has led many busi­ness­es to con­sid­er cre­at­ing a ded­i­cat­ed role with respon­si­bil­i­ty for defin­ing how such flex­i­bil­i­ty should work – now and in the future – and the best way to achieve this. 

At the end of last year, Annie Dean became Facebook’s direc­tor of remote work. She told del­e­gates at a con­fer­ence host­ed by Git­Lab in June 2021 that her job was to ensure that “the play­ing field stays lev­el and that every per­son can mean­ing­ful­ly par­tic­i­pate”. Git­Lab itself was ahead of the curve in this respect, appoint­ing its own head of remote work, Dar­ren Murph, in 2019.  

LinkedIn cre­at­ed the role of vice-pres­i­dent of flex­i­ble work in April 2021. The post-hold­er, Shan­non Hardy, says that her team was cre­at­ed when the com­pa­ny decid­ed to trust its staff to choose “when and where they work best”, large­ly to ensure that its change of pol­i­cy was “man­aged thought­ful­ly and care­ful­ly”.

She explains: “We’re focused on a vari­ety of things. Our work includes updat­ing the company’s tal­ent poli­cies; sup­port­ing man­agers in lead­ing their hybrid teams effec­tive­ly; and ensur­ing that hybrid work­ing is equi­table for all. We’re con­stant­ly lis­ten­ing, learn­ing and adapt­ing our approach to improve our employ­ees’ expe­ri­ence.”

Hardy was pre­vi­ous­ly LinkedIn’s senior direc­tor of HR busi­ness part­ners, a role in which she worked to nur­ture new tal­ent. Despite hav­ing that expe­ri­ence under her belt, she admits that, although she rel­ish­es the chal­lenge of design­ing the future of work, there is “no rule book for nav­i­gat­ing this lev­el of change”. 

Deci­sions tak­en now “could affect every­thing from com­pa­ny cul­ture to tal­ent acqui­si­tion for years to come”, Hardy adds. “Giv­en that a hybrid work­force brings with it so many new con­sid­er­a­tions, it seems only fair to cre­ate a new team to focus on these, rather than expect­ing some­one to add them to their exist­ing pri­or­i­ty list.”

Giv­en that the head of remote work could poten­tial­ly be respon­si­ble for aspects rang­ing from inclu­sive­ness and well­be­ing to logis­tics and IT, the ide­al can­di­date will pos­sess a wide range of skills. 

Accord­ing to Wendy McDougall, founder and CEO of recruit­ment plat­form Fire­fish Soft­ware, a suc­cess­ful head of remote work would need to strad­dle two dis­tinct areas, as “head of tal­ent meets head of tech sup­port”.

McDougall – named by Recruiter mag­a­zine as one of 2021’s most inno­v­a­tive women in recruit­ment – adds that com­pa­nies cre­at­ing such posts are “mak­ing a state­ment to the world that they’re tak­ing hybrid and remote work­ers’ needs seri­ous­ly. Hav­ing some­one in this posi­tion enables the logis­tics of remote work­ing and the issues that pop up ran­dom­ly all the time to be han­dled swift­ly. This keeps the focus on ensur­ing that the remote work­force is as pro­duc­tive as pos­si­ble.”

She sees the post as ide­al for fast-grow­ing organ­i­sa­tions with 30-plus employ­ees, of whom more than 40% are remote work­ers, adding that it needs to be a per­ma­nent role because “the remote work­force is per­ma­nent”.

McDougall adds: “This is a great role. It will def­i­nite­ly gain trac­tion quick­ly on the job mar­ket.”

The find­ings of a recent sur­vey by con­sul­tan­cy Actu­al Expe­ri­ence sug­gest that her pre­dic­tion could well come true. When it polled senior exec­u­tives includ­ing CEOs and HR direc­tors in Europe about hybrid work­ing, 65% report­ed that there was no sin­gle exec­u­tive in charge of the future work­place, large­ly because the sub­ject was so wide-rang­ing. 

Indi­cat­ing how impor­tant hav­ing a ded­i­cat­ed head of remote work­ing could be, only 19% of the respon­dents said that they were “very effec­tive” in under­stand­ing the link between dig­i­tal tools and employ­ee well­be­ing, while 24% admit­ted that they were either “not very” or “not at all” effec­tive in this respect. 

Alex Graves is CEO of Sil­i­con Reef, which has helped the likes of the Met Office, Unilever and Sega to devel­op remote work­ing strate­gies. He stress­es that can­di­dates need to have a back­ground in oper­a­tions or HR, and that the role should be a C‑level posi­tion to ensure that remote work­ing remains on the board­room agen­da. 

The post-hold­er needs to “lead the charge”, Graves says. “They will need lots of emo­tion­al intel­li­gence to under­stand why peo­ple work, not just how. This will enable them to build remote work­ing infra­struc­tures that serve every­one con­cerned. This is def­i­nite­ly a strate­gic role, not a tac­ti­cal one. They’ll be plan­ning and com­mu­ni­cat­ing, rather than imple­ment­ing tech.”

With hun­dreds of its employ­ees work­ing remote­ly around the world, HR tech­nol­o­gy start­up Remote lives and breathes this top­ic. It recent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dis­trib­ute Con­sult­ing to pub­lish a report enti­tled Do You Need a Head of Remote? While this con­cedes that the role will not be nec­es­sary in every organ­i­sa­tion, it argues that “all com­pa­nies do need some­one to advo­cate for the well­be­ing of their remote work­forces”.

Nadia Vata­l­idis, Remote’s vice-pres­i­dent of peo­ple, believes that hav­ing a ded­i­cat­ed per­son to take the lead on remote work­ing can pay div­i­dends, because this should help an employ­er to devel­op a cul­ture that’s focused on the needs of its remote work­ers. The role would also max­imise the “incred­i­ble poten­tial” of cross-bor­der recruit­ment, she sug­gests, giv­en that many firms have grasped the advan­tages of hir­ing the best peo­ple, regard­less of their loca­tion.

Vata­l­idis describes the posi­tion as “an excit­ing evo­lu­tion”, but she warns that com­pa­nies may well strug­gle to find suit­able peo­ple to fill it.

“Indi­vid­u­als with the right mix of skills and the mind­set to build an entire­ly new way of work­ing are still rare,” she says, “so they will com­mand a pre­mi­um.”