A Massive Environmental Impact

The great economic shutdown of 2020 had an interesting side effect: pollution across the globe plummeted. As a National Geographic article from April of that year put it:

From China’s Hubei province to industrial northern Italy and beyond, pollution levels have plummeted as lockdowns aimed at slowing the viral spread have shuttered businesses and trapped billions of people at home. In India, where air pollution is among the world’s worst, “people are reporting seeing the Himalayas for the first time from where they live,” Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said in an email.

Here in Dallas, it wasn’t long before doors opened and traffic returned to business as usual with all the familiar stalled rush hour traffic. These overly-congested rush hours have been and are again doing severe environmental damage. Empowering the workforce to work remotely when possible goes a long way toward decreasing carbon footprints. We should not return to hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic post-pandemic. 2020 proved we didn’t need that many people commuting daily. 

If that isn’t motivation enough, then it’s worth noting that a 2020 BCG survey found that 90% of consumers are either equally or more concerned about the environment than they were prior to the pandemic. Parting ways with consumer opinion is not typically wise. In the years to come, going green is going competitive. 

A Wider Talent Pool

Why strictly limit the pool of talent you hire from to your local area? If you’re open to remote work, then you may very well find your best talent tens or hundreds (or more) miles away from your local office. Better still, you don’t have to consider paying to relocate your prospective hire. 

Many modern jobs simply require a desk, computer, and reliable internet connection. Most potential hires already have all three. If the best fit for your open position lives in another state, then there’s no reason they can’t be your top performer from a distance. 

While we’re on the topic of finding the best talent: remote options lure the best. Remote work is not a privilege — certainly not in free market terms. It’s a benefit. The most talented people on the market are often looking for more than a dollar amount. The benefits a prospective employer offers is a major part of what will either seal the deal or drive the prospective hire to your competitor. 

Don’t take my word for it. In May of this year, LinkedIn reported that the percentage of job postings from employers offering “remote work” skyrocketed to a whopping 357% beyond the recorded year-earlier share.

This is a major factor in retaining talent as well. Referring back to the earlier mentioned Forbes study, they found that offering remote work resulted in about a 12% reduction in turnover. 

Not the Cyber Threat You Might Think

Cyber security must inevitably be first and foremost on management’s mind when evaluating the remote work option. At first blush, a remote workforce may sound risky. Even if you provide the hardware, that alone only goes so far. Is your corporate intranet now only as secure as the weakest home network connected to it?

No, not at all.

The cyber security industry has thankfully adapted just as quickly to the rapidly growing remote work trend. Cisco is popular for providing remote workforce security solutions and Broadcom/Symantec Endpoint Security provides yet another very popular remote endpoint protection solution. 

If you have software developers working remotely and are worried about the ever-growing threat of code leaks, then companies such as Cycode provide leak protection at the very level your code resides at, while products such as BlazeMeter even provide a secure cloud platform for testing software releases remotely. 

Virtual private networks (VPNs), especially if configured as split-tunneled, can encrypt all data coming from remote employees’ devices into your local network while keeping their own home and internet activity entirely separated from it. Many cloud solutions can enable similarly secure, encrypted services that allow remote workers access to do their jobs safely, in some cases even without any VPN in place.

(None of these providers are sponsors; I’m simply referencing a few I have had some direct exposure to.)

Not for Everyone

Admittedly, this heading may come as an ironic surprise after all the work-from-home proselytizing I’ve done to this point, but the truth is — as with any major technology movement — one size does not fit all. 

Remote work should be an option where viable. Some jobs, of course, cannot be done remotely (though I’d love to see what building a Boeing 747 at home would look like) and some people simply do not prefer it. I’ve known my fair share of teammates who preferred being physically around people in the office. There should be a place for them.

I myself have happily flipped back and forth over the years. I enjoy seeing my teammates in person and I enjoy seeing them remotely. It often depends on the context of the situation. I prefer conducting training classes in person so I can see my trainee’s body language. Conversely, I much prefer writing and coding from my cozy, very quiet, very customized, distraction-free home office.

The good news is that if you’ve freed up a lot of office space by enabling remote work where it makes sense, then it’s all the easier to make that space flexible and pleasant for those who need or want to remain onsite in the office. The same technology that enables remote work likewise enables on-location workers to easily collaborate with their remote colleagues. In fact, many companies are learning how to transform their old operations into “hybrid” workplaces that quickly adapt to situational-specific needs as they come. To that end, remote work even enables a better office for those who don’t opt-in.

Obstacles or Opportunities

I hope this year’s two-part take on the rapidly advancing remote work movement both challenges and encourages you. This current incarnation of technological change may be new, but technological change and its impacts on businesses are not. During each major shift, many companies clung to old, familiar methods as they faded into history — look no further than Radio Shack, Blockbuster Video, MySpace, or countless book stores. Chances are just reading those names stirred a brief twinge of “retro” nostalgia in you. 

The companies that survive — and rise even higher — are the ones that embrace the wave of change instead of stubbornly resisting it. Never see a wall where you can instead see a doorway.