Victor Anaya is the CEO and co-founder of Serviap Globalhelping clients with EWC and recruitment services in over 100 countries.
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As the co-founder and CEO of a remote-focused company that helps clients hire location-flexible workers around the world, I’m no doubt a big believer in telecommuting. Approximately 85% of our team members and the people we employ on behalf of clients work remotely.
Despite the fact that most employers and employees have experienced the pros and cons of remote working during the pandemic, there are still some common misconceptions about remote working. Here are a few:
Myth No. 1: Everyone works poolside or from the beach.
Often we are presented with photos of remote work of a person poolside or overlooking a beach with only his laptop on a table. Maybe it has a caption, like “No better place to work.” Perhaps this would be true if the work did not require focus and intensity. But for most people that is not the case.
The reality is that jobs don’t get any easier if you don’t do them in the office. Tech workers, salespeople, call center agents, and designers, to name a few, all need an environment that facilitates concentration.
More importantly, remote working becomes easier and healthier if the person has a suitable working environment. This often means an office with an ergonomic workplace, including a comfortable chair that provides the right cushioning and back support. It can also mean a second or third screen and a full-sized keyboard.
In some cases, I’ve seen photos of people apparently working on their laptops in direct sunlight – something no computer technician or optometrist will condone for an extended period of time. Not to mention the obvious problems of electronics in close proximity to water. In other words, these “picturesque” working conditions are better in theory than in reality.
Myth No. 2: Remote work gives us more time for more work.
One of the often-cited benefits of remote working is that it saves us time to travel, while also reducing the time we spend on breaks outside the office.
One way I’ve seen this done regularly on social media is with a few side-by-side pie charts. One is broken down into numerous elements to reflect working from an office, including commuting, breaks, and talking to colleagues, with work usually representing a fraction of the day. Next to it is a pie chart of equal size with only one color, labeled “working.” First, if the time you spend eating lunch or getting coffee at the office is close to the time you spend working, you probably have a time management problem that remote work won’t solve.
In addition, one of the well-known disadvantages of not working in the office is the feeling of isolation it can cause, which in turn can lead to reduced mental health. While it’s not ideal to spend too much time on breaks, it’s also not ideal to avoid breaks altogether.
Everyone needs to take a break from work from time to time, and downtime with colleagues can be great for building morale, especially between departments. That is why there is more and more interest in it remote team building activities.
And while having more time for work isn’t necessarily a negative thing, if all the time spent commuting and eating lunch is now spent “working,” you may be in an unhealthy professional environment, no matter how little travel it entails.
Myth No. 3: A key benefit of remote work is the ability to travel.
The flexibility of remote working is undoubtedly very attractive. However, the idea that most remote workers want to be itinerant is unrealistic in my experience.
While combining regular travel with work can be interesting for anyone with enough responsibilities to pull it off, many remote workers have families, mortgages, and car payments to consider. Those kinds of responsibilities usually don’t sit well with a nomadic lifestyle, and yet the virtues of regular travel while working remotely are constantly emphasized on social media and in promotional materials.
We hire a wide variety of experienced professionals on behalf of clients, including account managers, project managers, sales executives, developers and other computer specialists. For those types of profiles, a much more important advantage of location flexibility is the ability to stay where you are while employed by a company located far away. In most cases, the people we seek and hire on behalf of clients wanted a remote role precisely because it allowed them to stay where their family and loved ones live, while still continuing their careers by working for an international company.
It’s time for a more accurate conversation about remote working.
All of the above benefits – freedom to choose where to work, time savings and the ability to travel at will – are undoubtedly benefits of remote working enjoyed by many telecommuters. But for the type of experienced professional we usually hire for clients, the main benefits of remote working aren’t based on being less tied to a particular location, but more on being less tied to working for local businesses. Meanwhile, the biggest advantage for employers probably revolves around the fact that they can tap into a global talent pool. The benefits for everyone involved are so compelling that there’s really no need to lean into myths and misconceptions when it comes to promoting remote working.
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