The technical ability to work remotely, or from home (all I need is a phone and a lap top!) has for a long while been juxtaposed against the need for collaboration and team work in the office.
But will the crisis surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19) tilt the scales toward remote work even long after the crisis has abated?
“We’ll never probably be the same,” Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s head of human resources, told BuzzFeed News of the company’s workplace practices. “People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way. Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
Ed Zitron, a tech PR veteran, told BuzzFeed News he’d welcome a move to a virtual workplace. “There are no positives in the case of the coronavirus, but I’m definitely seeing a reevaluation of whether meeting in person is truly necessary. You can really see people moving away from having in-persons that they know deep inside are just for the comfort of seeing someone for some reason,” he said. “I just wish it didn’t take a global pandemic to make people rethink the necessity of in-person meetings.”
Still, we think a balance will return once the crisis has passed, and corporate leaders will once again face some of the long standing issues with remote work on a permanent basis: isolation, decreased employee visibility, decreased work/life balance, lack of relationships among coworkers and increased distractions.