Knowledge work has become untethered from time and space

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

This is what remote work has proven.

However, many organizations are stuck on measuring presence instead of output. This leads to all sorts of problems like wanting to surveil remote employees to see if they actually worked x amount of time.

“Hours are a relic of the past that might be appropriate for assembly line work, but in a knowledge economy doesn’t make any sense. The problem is that for most organizations, they’re not willing to just get off hours, because they don’t have a good replacement.” — Pozen Robert

So here are some the questions leadership teams MUST answer if the are going to successfully transition to remote work:

1) How do you know, outside of hours worked, when someone is productive on your team?
2) What are the main goals on your team?
3) What does each individual have to do to reach those goals?

Answer those and you are well on your way to breaking your reliance on time spent as a measure of productivity.