The missing aspect of remote working.
It sounds obvious, but the missing aspect of remote working is people. However, it is increasingly easy to have face-to-face remote conversations. Family and friends’ hook-ups through FaceTime, Skype and Google hangouts have eradicated much of the awkwardness felt in those early years. Talking to a face on a screen is now a commonplace activity which helps with business conversations.
Yet having worked remotely for the past seven years, I recognise there is still something missing, something fundamental to the regular workplace, and that is the incidental conversations one has throughout the day. The ability to turn to someone and share what just happened. To laugh or vent with like-minded colleagues, or to share the mundane aspects of everyday life.
A few years ago one of my team took maternity leave, but because of her circumstances could not physically return to work. So we set up remote working. The bandwidth was available, the connectivity software was suitably mature and voice over IP was in place. She could work from home and carry out 90% of her normal work, but something wasn’t right. When we talked about it, we discovered it was the camaraderie of her colleagues. Yes, she could FaceTime each of them, but it felt like there needed to be a reason.
In response, my team set up a monitor with a webcam and a microphone that looked out over the team in the office whilst the monitor displayed our remote colleague at her home-office desk. We left these connections live throughout the day. In the morning the team made the connection live at both ends, and we all went about our work.
It felt weird at first having a virtual person in the group but quickly the technology became invisible and we started talking to her as if she was sat amongst us. We would walk up to the monitor and just chat. We held meetings around the monitor with her very much part of the conversation.
After a while we noticed something else. People from other departments would pop round to have a ‘face to face’ chat with our remote colleague. Sometimes this was work related, other times just an everyday social interaction. The work was done, and importantly it eradicated the feeling of isolation that often comes with remote working. The potential threat of Big Brother watching you never really materialised, and we automatically negated the trust issues associated with remote working.
So my advice for remote workers still wanting to feel connected to work colleagues is don’t just connect when the need arises. Stay connected throughout the day. Most if not all face-to-face conferencing software now enables multiple connections simultaneously. It will feel odd at first but give it a week or two and you’ll be working and interacting in a way as close to a real space as is possible. The fun aspects of work that are so easily lost through remote working will return, and hopefully we’ll all be happier.