Remote work pushback

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.

It is very quickly becoming crystal clear that being forced into a remote work scenario without any planning or design is a recipe for disaster.

In this piece (We can’t turn our back on office life) the author raises these issues as a reason to get back to the office:

“How can we preserve that sense of community if we have no place to go?

“How can we separate ourselves from the labels we wear at home if we don’t ever get a chance to leave it?

“Can we really slip from parent to sales executive with the click of a calendar invite?

“How do we continue to apprentice one another if no one can observe us?

“How can we learn from one another if every quick question requires a Zoom call?

“How can we casually build on one anothers’ ideas as we see a pair of colleagues thinking about a new solution on a whiteboard? Or overhear someone solving a problem similar to ours?

“It saddens me to imagine some people’s first day of work is in their living room.”

These are real concerns. However, each of these “problems” can and have been solved by extremely successful teams that have been fully remote years before COVID19 arrived.

Here is the thing, you have to DESIGN a flexible and remote workplace. When you do, the above obstacles will be no more.