What is your biggest struggle with 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 data point from Buffers 2021 State of Remote Work.

Notice the % of people experiencing difficulties with collaboration & communication that started working remotely due to covid.

This is not surprising.

In-office teams use the physical office as their “communication app” – the tap-on-the-shoulder to ask a question moments, the “water cooler” chats, the impromptu hallway chats, the impromptu meetings all facilitated by the physical building and all being synchronously present.

The above way of operating is COMPLETELY different to the way efficient and effective remote teams communicate and collaborate and unless the newly remote learn the virtual work skills to be as effective at distance as they are in-person they will continue to struggle and ultimately fail at realizing the true benefits of being location independent and distributed.

The truth is using the physical office as the primary “communication app” is highly inefficient as so much institutional knowledge is lost this way.

The pandemic has gifted us with an opportunity to fix this.