Robert Glazer - How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace: Simple and Effective Tips for Successful, Productive, and Empowered Remote Work

In 2017, our company, Acceleration Partners, made the decision to expand into the United Kingdom. One of the key decisions for our leadership team and our new managing director was howand ifwe could extend our remote working policy, which had existed for our American employees for over a decade and had become a foundation of our award-winning company culture, to the region.

At the time, working from home was even less common in the United Kingdom than it was in the United States, so our new managing director was understandably concerned that remote work would not be easily accepted by potential clients and employees.

Our experience with employees who worked remotely for the first time when they joined our team was that they adjusted very quickly. However, we also understood the risks of entering a new market with a work style that went against traditional cultural norms. We ultimately reached a middle groundsecuring a flex office space for our growing team to work together in person and to meet with prospective clients.

Then a funny thing happened. Within a few months, hardly anyone on the UK team was using the flex workspace. Even though remote work was new to all the employees in that region, they had all adapted quickly, and soon working from home had become their preference. Several of the UK team members enthusiastically communicated how much they appreciated being able to avoid their daily commute and shared that they could not see themselves ever returning to a full-time office environment.

Our global expansion experience illustrates what many companies have come to discover in their own remote work transitions. Some who have never experienced remote work wrongly assume it is untenable for their own organizations, and while remote work isnt for everyone, the realityas many have come to learnis that its far more feasible than conventional wisdom might otherwise suggest.

Open Secret

For years, remote work has been gaining momentum, moving from a fringe business tactic to a model readily adopted both by employees and companieseven large, well-known organizations.

Even in the past decade, there has been a stigma surrounding remote work. People who hadnt experienced that workplace model pictured employees slacking off, lounging in their pajamas, and taking hours-long breaks throughout the workday.

Not only did this make prospective employees worry about working from home, it made clients and customers wary as well. Early in our companys history, we felt increased pressure to work exceptionally hard to prove we could deliver top-tier service even without an office. Some remote companies have even felt the need to hide their lack of an office from customers in order to appear more credible.

But times have changed, and this workplace model no longer needs to be a secret. Companies with remote work environments are more comfortable sharing the practice openly with clients and see it as an emerging competitive advantage to attract the best talent.

The United States has led the remote working revolution, with remote work growing by 44 percent in the past five years and 91 percent in the last ten. However, the trend was beginning to catch on in other countries even before a global pandemic swept across the world in 2020 and forced nearly all companies to transition to remote work. And yet, despite having limited experience or preparation for that shift, a significant number of organizations found that for the most part, they were able to conduct business as usual. Many of their skeptical employees also found remote work far more agreeable than anticipated.

The Commuting Crunch

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the drawbacks of office life were becoming more apparent. The average American worker spent 225 hours, or nine days, commuting in 2019, and commute times have risen steadily over the past forty years. Thats 7 percent of the entire day spent getting to and from work!

No matter where in the world people work, the commute keeps getting longer. This is especially true in areas where housing prices have continued to rise. In order to have an affordable place to call home, most workers have had to travel farther to get to work.

In most in-office organizations, the office environment doesnt help reduce stress and frustrations. The great open-plan workplace experiment of the past decade continues to be debunked from a productivity standpoint. One study by the Guardian found that employees in open-plan offices lose an average of eighty-six minutes per day to distractions, are 70 percent more likely than workers in traditional offices to take sick days, and are more likely to leave the office earlier in the day. This adds up to a status quo where employees spend more time than ever commuting to work and get less done while theyre there.

This is not a positive or productive trend, which is why when millions of workers around the world were abruptly forced to work remotely from home, most employees were far more open to it than their employers may have realized. Although COVID-19 triggered the largest remote work experiment in history, on a global scale, nonetheless, theres every reason to believe this new work-from-home reality will continue. Companies as large as Twitter have already told employees they never have to return to the office if they dont want to. Moreover, I believe the organizations that can build a thriving culture in a remote workplace will be the leaders of tomorrow and will attract the best talent.

A Competitive Advantage

When I started Acceleration Partners in 2007, the decision to make our workforce 100 percent remote was initially an attempt to preemptively solve a pain point.