Successful Companies Will Use Remote Work to Dominate Competitors

February 8, 2020

Successful Companies Will Use Remote Work to Dominate Competitors

Remote-first is the strategy every large enterprise must adopt immediately.

During their next board meeting, how does any board of directors not force their companies to consider switching to remote-first after seeing that it works during the ongoing situation?

Companies who ignore lessons they could be learning about remote now will no longer be competitive after this situation has passed. They won't be able to attract or keep the most talented people and they will be far lest capital efficient.

They will become unviable on two fronts at the same time.

Remote work already happened and it's now about catching up.

What will kill companies?

What does going remote well look like?

It comes down to one thing: how much do you trust your team?

Can you avoid catering to your ego by not requiring the instantaneous gratification of synchronous work destroying the benefits of remote through fear?

Can you trust your team to be adults and get their work done?

  1. You need to be asynchronous-first.
  2. Let them set their schedule.
  3. Empower them to do the best work they’ve ever done and they will.

How do I set my team up for success?

We spend a lot of time talking about the 'two halves' of the future of work.

One has largely been solved: documentation, collaboration, and communication. These were the tools and software products needed for remote work to be possible. Things like dropbox, Gsuite, Slack, Zoom and superfast internet connection.

There is a missing half of remote work which those things leave out.

The boring, dusty parts that are critical for globally remote teams to scale on top of. The infrastructure that enabled great remote work with zero friction. We need to ensure our team has everything they need to be safer, more comfortable and productive at home that they could be in an office but this is expensive, time-consuming and things never turn up on time.

For them, you need to focus on 3 things: culture, experience, and human connection.

🎉 Culture

Focusses on how you can be the company that workers want to work for. Remote will be a strategy that companies employ to attract and retain the best people in the world, but the culture is how they do it. What processes will you use? Will you take advantage of the benefits of remote or will you destroy them trying to replicate what you know.

Don't replicate the adult kids clubs that offices have become remotely. Let workers do the best work they ever have by having the space to do deep focussed work.

💺Experience

Does your team have all the tools and equipment to do great work? This is the table stakes for producing at a high level remotely but most companies neglect it. Companies who don't provide a great remote working experience will lose their teams to companies who do.

Giving your team the tools and equipment they need to do their job remotely shows them you care while empowering them to do the best work they ever have.

🤝 Human connection

The office is terrible in creating deep meaningful relationships, it leads to superficial connections that lack depth, breadth or meaning. If we meet up less frequently can we engage on a more human level and actually care for the team that empowers us to do the best work we ever have? I think we can if we develop processes that create connection and we continue to meet up in person on a less frequent basis.

Develop a cadence that works for your team for in-person meet-ups. These will create more effective teams.

How can I take care of all these things easily?

We built an all-in-one provisioning platform that lets you develop a remote work strategy instantly.

We provide all the practical equipment remote workers need at the touch of a button. Firstbase takes care of everything as a monthly subscription per worker, including delivery, upgrades, maintenance, repairs, and collections when a worker leaves. We help you:

Sign up for a demo of our platform here