Imagine walking past a restaurant with a beautifel terrace. There’s a huge sign at the door offering “food”. You can see someone in the kitchen through the window, but they are ignoring you. There’s no menu posted at the door, no opening hours to be seen anywhere. They boast about their 4.7 star rating on Google, mostly featuring shots of the terrace. Somewhere in the comments you see that they seem to be doing takeaway food as well - though you have no idea whether they mean Thai food, Mexican food, or maybe local cuisine?
That’s exactly how most companies advertise their understanding of remote work: with little to no specificities, and a lot of beautiful pictures of their (optional?) newly renovated offices.
When looking at ordering food, you’d expect to know
the type of food they offer
where the restaurant is located and whether they offer to-go or delivery
when they are open for business - and whether you need a reservation.
The same is true for your remote work policy. Your employees (and prospective employees) need to know
the type of work culture at your company
where work usually happens - and where they need to be while working (e.g. an office, specific pre-defined locations, anywhere)
when work should happen - and how much flexibility you can offer.
Deciding how your remote work policy should work is not enough, though. You need to communicate your guidelines, both inside and outside the company. Make sure to include the basic information at the very least on your work-with-us page and your (LinkedIn) job descriptions. It can be something as simple as a paragraph on how you define remote work.
Sounds complicated? Here are some examples:
This company actively decided to keep their remote work to one country only. This allows them to offer the same social security options (e.g. national retirement options) to everyone:
We trust you to get your work done on your own time. That means we restrict internal meetings to core hours between 11 am and 3 pm (Berlin time). You will get a German employment contract, and you can choose to work from our office, a coworking, or your own home. You can also spend up to 90 days working outside of Germany, as long as you can honour our core hours. Outside of those hours, we default to asynchronous workflows. You’ll have the opportunity to meet your colleagues twice a year at our company-wide meetup and at project-based get-togethers.
Here’s another company that decided to re-invent the office, knowing that most of their employees live close enough to the city in question:
We believe that human connections happen in person, that’s why we expect every team to get together for two consecutive days once a months. If you cannot or don’t want to relocate to [city], the company will pay for the overnight stay. Travel costs, however, are your responsibility. Outside those two days, you can choose your work location (some positions may be required to follow specific guidelines due to data security) and your work hours.
And here’s another company that got rid completely of any office presence:
Work happens where you are, and you know yourself best to create the work environment that makes you thrive. We will support you in learning how to excel in an async-first and goal oriented environment - meaning you may work when and where you choose, communicating in the open and being transparent about your choices. For employees outside of [specific countries], we offer an EOR or contract-type arrangement. We expect you to travel for about 1 week once every September to get together with everyone. The other 51 weeks are your decision.
The bottom line is this: there is no right or wrong way to do remote. There is, however, a way that works for you, your company values, and your long-term goal. It won’t “just happen” though - you have to actively plan for it.
About the Empress of Remote
👑 I am Valentina Thörner, Leadership Expert for Distributed Teams. ✨ Supporting execs and other individuals in facing their own mortality ✨ Keynote speaker for companies who want to motivate and kickstart change.
*️⃣ Find out more: https://linktr.ee/valedeoro
