Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | Email | RSS
Remote work, work from home and the concept and use of virtual teams has evolved significantly since I started my research journey back in 2010 and started Ulfire in 2013. Back then it was relatively uncommon for employees to work remotely, particularly in large organisations and large projects. Organisations were still reluctant to approve staff working remotely except for specific circumstances such as hard to access skills, extenuating family circumstances etc. Organisations also didn’t have policies to enable regular remote working, it was much more an ad hoc situation that was largely undocumented and consequently uncontrolled.
Similarly, most companies didn’t have the IT systems, devices or even network capacity for large numbers of personnel to work remotely, company laptops were rarer, VPN or remote access was complicated and on device video call technology was still in it’s infancy. It wasn’t so much that companies would not consider personnel working remotely, it was that systems were still evolving, policies didn’t exist and organisational inertia needed a significant push to look to make a change.
Getting to today
The last 15 years have seen significant change:
Technology is now, in many cases, ahead of organisations. It is unusual these days to find a use case where a technology doesn’t exist that is quick and easy to deploy. For that matter, most people with a smart phone have more remote work capabilities in their pockets than many corporations had access to 15 years ago.
Companies have become much more accepting of staff working remotely. There are ongoing comments in the media about companies working to get staff back to the office but while those stories get a lot of noise, I feel they are more the fringe cases and most companies I speak to still support personnel working remotely, all be it within some boundaries. Additionally many companies now have policies in place to enable remote work and work from home.
Beyond that, employees have also become increasingly comfortable working remotely, many have now built a remote work aspect into their work lives, enabling them to be more personally productive and I would argue, delivering better value for their employers along the way.
Modern virtual teams and work from home
Modern remote teams are an amalgam, or a hybrid if using the term here isn’t too confusing. Where back in 2010 and indeed up to 2020, work from home was rare and virtual teams were primarily comprised of groups of teams, each working out of an office in a different location, whether in the same city or different cities, the same country or different countries, the increasing acceptance of work from home means that these regionally located teams themselves comprise constellations of individuals working around a home base. The home base then provides a logistical and administrative hub for them to work in when they attend the office, with a typical modern team having a mix of full time office personnel, some personnel who work primarily in the office and occasionally from home or elsewhere and some personnel who are more or less permanently remote from home base with only an occasional visit.
The human side has not changed
Despite all these changes though, the human side of managing and being part of a remote team has not changed. If anything things have got harder and more complex with the strong move to work from home. We are still dealing with all the complexities that make us human, the introverts and extroverts, the experienced and inexperienced, the trusting and those who don’t trust so easily. As always though, the perception that having all the technology and tools will make things work seamlessly continues, making it all the more important to consider the human in every one of the loops and make sure that every member of every team is supported to do their best work, whether working in a central office or from a kitchen table.