Most companies stuck in synchronous remote work

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 new data from Microsoft shows most companies new to remote work are stuck in “Synchronous Remote Work” or at Level 2 of the 5-Level remote work maturity model.

Most are trying to:

Ctrl + C (in-person ways of working)

Ctrl + V (replicate the above online)

MEETINGS: The 148% increase in meetings is a clear sign of this. A mature remote work environment has less meetings not more! In fact, in most cases meetings, if they are necessary are asynchronous.

EMAIL: Trying to use email to collaborate is a terrible experience. Instead there are vastly superior, threaded, visible to all conversations that can take place in MS Teams Channels for example. (We don’t email internally at all – all our internal conversations happen in Channels.)

CHAT: Another sure sign of Synchrounous Remote Work. To be clear chat does play a role but like with meetings in mature remote work environments there is a preference to more deliberate asynchronous written communication especially for content that needs to be preserved long-term.

DOCS: This is likely the only encouraging thing about the data, as working collaboratively on a document with colleagues is way more efficient than emailing it around. Also with an online document you have a single source of truth.

For teams that are wanting to embrace remote work on a permanent basis, and most smart leadership teams will do so, it does require a brief pause to:

1. Learn what the long established remote work practices are and
2. Analyze how these can be integrated into their business.

This is the only way to ensure long-term sustainable remote work.