Is your remote team set up for success: Types of working remotely

The remote work scene has seen massive changes, especially since 2020 owing to the global pandemic. The ongoing health scare has not only made remote work a go-to option, but it has helped organizations to get through these difficult times.

Most businesses that switched to a work-from-home or remote work setting, during Covid have mentioned whether they will continue to follow remote work practices or move to a hybrid working model.

This matches the sentiments echoed by many business and industry leaders across sectors. To keep up with the times and adapt to the new normal, businesses everywhere are testing out different types of remote work setups.

This is in an effort to find the one that works for them, and one which they can scale, seeing how remote work is here to stay.

Let’s break down what these different options are and see what each entails.

Remote friendly workplaces

These are organizations that primarily work in-person, but where the employees can be working remotely when they need to. They also have employees and consultants who work offsite or out of the confines of their office space.

Such workplaces allow a bit more flexibility than the usual requirement of being present in the office during work hours. Employees have the freedom of not being in the office and still get their work done from home or anywhere else. This serves only as a partial respite though, as the majority of the work still happens in-person and in-office.

Employees at such businesses tend to use their work-from-home privilege whenever they feel a need for it. But the freedom to do so is limited to a certain number of days in a month or year, depending on the organization and its remote working policies.

Remote first organizations

Being remote-first means defaulting to hiring and maintaining remote teams by default. They still might hold physical office space and have some teams or employees stationed there for when needed. But the primary recruitment principle is to hire and build a remote workforce for such organizations.

Remote-first organizations embrace the idea of working remotely and are more inclined to hire in line with that. The culture, communication, management, etc. is built to enable an easy remote working experience in these companies.

Fully remote teams in the same time zone/geography

As the name suggests, these are businesses that operate in a fully distributed manner, albeit in the same time zone and/or geography. Here remote working is the only norm. The idea behind this is to have everyone working at the same time for seemingly better coordination between the different employees and teams.

More often than not, they operate synchronously and everybody usually has the same working hours. It is similar to working in-office in terms of having fixed or core hours, but with the benefit of working from home (or rather not working from an office setup).

Such companies place a larger emphasis on the need for real-time communication and collaboration.

Fully remote teams across time zones and geographies

These are fully distributed teams that have teams working from two or more time zones and/or geographies. With employees situated anywhere across the globe, they employ an asynchronous model of communication.

In such an environment of working remotely, collaboration is usually not simultaneous owing to the difference in locations and work hours of each employee. These types of teams generally are more diverse and bring a varied but unique experience to the table.

In conclusion

No two remote work setups are the same, to say the least. Because irrespective of which remote working model organizations adopt, the subtle differences lie in the make-up of the people working there.

This is because the culture is built by the people. Different teams work well under different conditions and working setups. There is no one particular model that works for everyone, though an asynchronous fully remote setup comes the closest.

As to which model to pick or follow, it is all about how your specific teams work together, and what they need to be successful in their work. Listen to what they have to say and figure out which type of remote working model best suits the people you have. Once you have that, then it is a happy remote working experience all the way!