What is remote work?

Although there’s no single “right” way of working remotely, there are some general best practices to create the conditions for success. These include:

• Clear guidelines and policies: A culture of trust is often grounded in a healthy understanding of expectations: Is a person expected to be “in the office” (or accessible for communication online) by a certain time or for a certain number of hours a day? How is performance measured? What devices and applications are approved for business use? And so forth.
• Team building: A virtual team is still a team. Managers, in particular, have a responsibility to build collaborative, communicative teams that are invested in each other’s success. This could include occasionally meeting in person when possible, such as for a retreat or social event, as well as other practices such as celebrating individual and team achievements.
• Top-notch technologies: Companies with high-performing remote teams invest in the technologies their people rely on to do their jobs. These include remote desktops and mobile devices, high-speed broadband, reliable and easy-to-use applications, and other business-specific needs.

Problems with remote working tend to surface when the best practices and basic principles of how remote teams work are missing. This leads to challenges such as:

• Productivity drains: Without clear guidelines and policies, employees can lose their motivation and reduce productivity.
• Mistrust and micromanagement: A lack of trust, or the virtual equivalent of looking over someone’s shoulder to make sure they are doing their work, can increase anxiety and decrease morale.
• Unreliable technology: Inadequate tools and technologies can be a productivity and morale killer for virtual teams. Poor broadband connections, unreliable applications, outdated hardware—all of these can lead to frustration and greatly diminish results.
• The reluctant remote workforce: Finally, another challenge can arise when either the employee or employer is not working remotely as an intentional choice or strategy. Remote work is best suited for people and organizations who seek it out for its advantages.
  

Working from a home office is one form of remote work, but the two terms are not necessarily interchangeable. This is because remote working does not prescribe where someone works; it just means that they rarely go into a traditional office to do their job. Their day-to-day norm is to work from some other location, which may be in their home but is not limited to that location.

Moreover, “working from home” may also refer to a temporary or less frequent version of remote work. This scenario could include, for example, a person who is unexpectedly working from home for a day or two because of a short-term childcare need, but who otherwise would ordinarily work from the company’s office. This style of working is sometimes called telecommuting or telework. Whereas remote workers typically work from an off-site location most or all of the time, telecommuting or teleworking typically means that the person also regularly works on-site in a traditional office.