01 why is remote working emerging?

Stop spending your life commuting

Every morning, we set countless alarms to catch the morning subway and bus; There was no time for breakfast, so I bought a random meal on the way and hurried to the subway station and bus stop. We finally squeezed into the car, and the crowded people and mixed smell in the car instantly gave us a headache.

Every now and then we think about this question: Do I have to go to work?

Of course, in order to live, each of us has to work, but why choose a job that commutes so long? Let's face it: no one likes to commute.

On days when you go to work, the alarm goes off earlier and you get home later. Time slips by, patience wears out, maybe your appetite is gone, and you don't bother to eat anything but fast food in plastic boxes. You may give up fitness activities, miss opportunities to put your child to sleep, and be too tired to have a deep conversation with your significant other. On weekdays, after half a day of bothering with the highway, you don't bother to do housework, so you save up all the chores and save them for the weekend.

Assuming that you have to drive to work for 30 minutes a day during the traffic jam, plus 15 minutes to walk to the side of the car and walk into the office, then it takes 1.5 hours to go back and forth every day, and 7.5 hours a week, taking into account holidays and vacations, the time you spend on the road is about 300~400 hours per year. Imagine what you could do if you had 400 extra hours a year. Commuting not only harms your health, relationships, and environment, it can also affect your career.

So we need to work, but work doesn't have to be commuting.

Escape from 996 Blessings

Jack Ma said to cherish our work, and 996 is a symbol that proves that you work hard. But with the development of the Internet, do we still have to sit in the same room and work the same way? At least that's not the case for Ma's company.

Technology has changed the way people work, and work between teams has changed from "synchronous" collaboration to collaboration without synchronization. We don't need to work in the same place anymore, and we don't even need to work at the same time. Once you've adjusted your working methods and expectations, you can coordinate your time and flexible working hours to complete a project together, even if your teammate is abroad.

The beauty of flexible working is that it caters to everyone's needs, whether it's early risers, night owls, or family-oriented employees who need to pick up and drop off their children during the day. Escape from 996 blessings. It may take a little time and practice to get the hang of working out of sync with your team, but it won't be long before you realize that it's really important to get the job done and not stick to commuting time.

Why crowd into big cities

Once upon a time, those who held the engine of capitalism thought, "Let's get a big group of people into a small area and let them live together one by one, so that we can find enough and capable people." ”

Fortunately, the high-density population that benefits the factory is good for many other things. We have libraries, gymnasiums, theaters, restaurants, and all the wonders of modern civilization. But we also had cramped cubicles, small apartments, and buses packed like sardines that took us around.

In exchange for convenience and excitement, we hand over freedom, spectacular countryside views and fresh air.

Fortunately, the advanced technology that makes remote work possible has also made the culture and life more attractive. Think about it and would laugh if you were to describe a city dweller in the '60s: everyone who could see every movie, every book, every photo album ever made, and almost every sporting event broadcast live (the quality and color were clearer and more vivid than ever).

In fact, even if you tell this to someone who lived in the 80s, he will laugh. But we live in this world now. However, there is a difference between taking all these conveniences for granted and drawing rational conclusions from them.

If we now have unfettered access to these cultures and entertainments, regardless of the region in which we live, then why are we stuck in the old dogma?

New age luxury

In the corner of the top floor of a high-rise building, there is a stylish office, the company equips you with a luxury car, followed by a secretary... This old-fashioned luxury is easy to ridicule. But the privileges of today's rich are not much different: Michelin restaurants, traveling around the world, and checking in to Internet celebrity hotels. And what do we get? You're stuck in the office, away from family, friends, and hobbies.

For the long years, what supported you through it was the hope that you would be free when you retired.

But why wait? If you really love skiing, why wait until your hip bones are too old to withstand a fall? If you love surfing, why get stuck in a concrete jungle and not move to the beach? If your dear family all live in a small town, why do you force yourself to stay in the big city?

The luxury of the new age is to get rid of the shackles of "enjoy life later" thinking and do what you love now, parallel to work. Why waste time daydreaming about "how good life will be when I retire"? Drawing a line between work and retirement is actually quite arbitrary. You don't have to follow such rules in your life anymore. You can mix the two together to be fun and rich — to design a better lifestyle that makes work fun, because work isn't the only thing in life.

02 Is remote work the same as you imagined

It doesn't have to be far away

The "far" of remote work doesn't necessarily mean another city, another province, or another country. Working on the other side of the street can also be called remote.

Working on the other side of the street can also be called remote.

Remote work simply means that you don't have to work 9 to 5 and work in the office all day. With the development of the network, the gradual improvement of various communication hardware and software, it is technology that has promoted the transformation of our way of working, so that we can communicate without sitting together, even if we are only on the same floor or in the same community, we can be interconnected in real time to complete this remote work. Far from the distance, but we can shorten the distance through more convenient means and methods, so that our team members are no longer limited by distance.

The results of work are the most fundamental measure

When your boss can't stare at employees all day, the only measure of whether you're working hard is the results. A whole bunch of other trivial standards are gone.

"Did she arrive at 9 o'clock?" Or, "Did she take too many breaks in the day?" Or, "Tell you, every time I pass by his desk, I see him browsing Weibo and scrolling through Taobao!" ”

This kind of evaluation is impossible to talk about at all.

There is only one criterion left, "What did he do today?" Instead of, "What time did they arrive at the office?" Or, "What time do they leave work?" ”

In remote work, you just look at the results. So you don't have to ask employees working remotely, "What did you do today?" Instead, just say, "Show me what you've done today."

As a manager, you can directly assess the quality of your work (you pay them based on this), and everything else that is not important can be ignored. The advantage of this is that everything is clear. When you only focus on the results of your work, you can tell at a glance who is doing your best and who is not.

It can tell you who the good employees are

With remote work, it becomes more difficult to fool people on the outcome of their work. As there are fewer opportunities to pull around in the office, the focus on the work itself increases. In addition, the online display platform used to track the progress of the work and report the progress will record everything you do, leaving conclusive evidence and showing everyone's achievements and time spent to everyone.

As a result, quiet, but productive employees have an advantage, even though they often fail in a traditional office environment.

Remote work lifts the curtain and reveals a fact that has always existed but isn't always acknowledged or seen: a great remote employee is a great employee, it's that simple. When the work is demonstrated, it is easier to see who is really smart (likewise, it is clear who is "smart"). Everyone has a number in their hearts, and they don't even need to say it.

Remote work accelerates the survival of the fittest, getting the wrong people off the bus faster and keeping the right people behind.

03 Conclusion

Telecommuting: Just a new way of life.

In fact, the remote work model varies from enterprise to enterprise, and the overall efficiency varies according to the nature of the enterprise's work; At the same time, it also varies from person to person, some habitual self-disciplined people, the scene of remote work will make him more efficient, but some people who need to be disciplined, once the personnel management is not in place, will let themselves go, resulting in the delay of the agreed task, which directly affects personal output and company efficiency.

Compared with remote work, the traditional centralized office form has its natural advantages: such as the efficiency of face-to-face communication, the ability to quickly mobilize people, super team cohesion and positive working atmosphere. These natural virtues are also the reason and purpose for which they have always existed. Then the development of remote work is not to completely replace the offline centralized work model, but to provide a new way of life for more self-disciplined and efficient people, so that they can enjoy work and life more calmly.

It is believed that the future technological changes will make the hardware equipment and software facilities of remote work more perfect, gradually make up the gap between it and offline centralized office, and create a more realistic working environment.