The Sustainability of Remote Working
Five Reasons to Hire Permanent Staff Remotely Instead of Taking Your Chances with a Contractor
The United Nations has created a list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a total of 169 separate targets that all member states have agreed to try and meet by the year 2030.
With less than ten years now left on that deadline, I wanted to share how the implementation of remote working worldwide could be integral to achieving some of these objectives, which include:
1. Good health and well-being for all.
In our last article, we spoke about how cutting out the commute to and from work not only had a positive impact upon the planet but also upon our physical and mental health. Depression and anxiety have been shown to go down due to the decrease in travel and the fact that remote workers get more sleep, and have more time to exercise and cook healthy, nutritious meals.
2. Gender equality.
As I have already mentioned, remote working decreases traffic, and therefore, our carbon footprint as well. Plus, with people working from home, you (the employer) do not have to heat or air condition your offices. As your employees are now responsible for the cost of their own energy output, they have more of an incentive to tamper it down!
3. Affordable and clean energy.
Self-employed contractors are great for single-person projects, but when you need a team to get the job done, you are much better to hire all its members on a permanent basis. The sense of equality and the opportunity this provides for them all to get to know each other will have a positive impact on their ability to collaborate effectively and will undoubtedly boost their creative output.
4. Decent work and economic growth.
There is a proven increase in worker engagement when staff are allowed to work from home. Perhaps this is because they feel more independent, more in control. Perhaps it’s because there are less distractions, or it could be as simple as, the more efficiently they work, the quicker they reach their targets, and the more time off they get. It doesn’t matter. When engagement goes up, so does productivity. By contrast, sick days, human error, and health and safety incidences decrease, all of which lead to higher profits for you in the long run.
5. Sustainable cities and communities.
When hiring remotely, your candidate pool is no longer limited by geography. This has the effect of both allowing younger jobseekers to get a foot on the property ladder without having to sacrifice their job prospects, but also means that those bringing more money in no longer have to live in the big cities either. If they work from home their office can be anywhere in the world, and they could choose to take that money and put it into a smaller economy in a little town or countryside village.
6. Climate action.
Again, the very nature of remote working will lead to a significant decrease in dangerous emissions if adopted on a wide enough scale. However, with the damage we have already done to the planet, some effects of climate change may now be irreversible. Remote teams mean that businesses can weather the extremes of snowstorms, flooding, and heatwaves, because they will no longer have to battle the elements in an attempt to make it into the office. The global economy will therefore grow stronger, as it will no longer grind to a such halt in the face of natural disasters.
7. Responsible consumption and production.
Companies can save big money when their employees work from home. For example, IBM reduced the size of their office space by 78 million square feet and saved approximately $100 million dollars every year in the US alone as a result of their remote working policy.
Case Studies
Since the advent of COVID-19, the lockdowns and confinements and “circuit breakers” which we are now seeing a resurgence of across the continent, companies big and small have had to adapt to remote working.
Some have responded with reluctance, but a great many international corporations, including industry giants like Google, Facebook, Shopify, Slack, and PayPal have embraced the change.
Salesforce, the award-winning CRM provider who have been voted in the top five of the World’s Best Workplaces 2020, can also be counted among those responding with enthusiasm. After recognising that remote working widens the company’s access to talent, promotes an increase in productivity, reduces overheads, and encourages employee satisfaction and longevity, they have guaranteed that their workforce will be able to work from home until at least summer 2021.
And others, like Twitter and Square, have taken this a step further. In May 2020, their CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced that his employees will be able to work from home “forever” if they would prefer to do so.
The biggest turnaround, however, came from Zillow, the US-based real estate database. Zillow had previously rejected the idea of remote working, but recently, they went public will their commitment to being a “flexible employer”. This means that their employees will be able to choose whether they want to work on site or from home, even after the pandemic restrictions are lifted.
And don’t worry, this flexible approach to working is not exclusive to America by any means; all kinds of companies across the EU have followed suit over the last few months.
DEON is a visual collaboration platform based in Berlin, Germany. At the forefront of technological innovation (because who hasn’t needed to collaborate, during this pandemic, with their colleagues? And who wouldn’t have found that easier to do if they had a tool like this one?), they are currently recruiting on a remote working basis.
It is reassuring for their customers to know that they believe in their product so much that they are not only selling it, but actually using it to do so! And it’s a fantastic model to work from if you are considering setting up a remote team yourself.
Embracing the New Normal
The benefits of remote working are very well documented, we have even written a blog post about this ourselves, which you can check out here, but it is important to remember that you are very unlikely to see significant change (like a boom in productivity, or a massive increase in profits due to reduced spending) overnight.
Like every other overhaul, the different environment and the different ways of communicating will all take a little bit of getting used to.
Think of it like you’re just moving offices—there’s bound to be more than a few hitches along the way; maybe the computers won’t be set up right, the lights keep going off, and people are coming in late because their commute is longer and this route has more traffic—but eventually, you will all settle down into a new rhythm.
You will have a new normal.
And so it is with remote working. Only you’re not just moving to one new office—potentially, you’re moving into hundreds. You expect there to be hiccups at the start, but you must persevere, because the benefits will greatly outweigh these tiny inconveniences in the long run.
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