Going all-in on remote work: The technical and cultural changes

When done right, properly assessing the appropriateness of remote work for all your employees, and then implementing the changes necessary, saves money. It's the old idea of "right-sizing," except instead of a saccharine euphemism for "firing excess people," the term in this context means targeting and shedding capital and operational expenditures that are only necessary if you're stuffing all your people into an office.Right-sizing your business here means near-term investments in technology to enable remote work where it makes sense to do so (and we'll talk about those investments in a bit), while reducing or eliminating the spending necessary to support an office full of people. Such expenses might be more than balanced out by the savings of not having to pay for expensive desk space in a rented office; make enough people remote and you can rent or buy smaller offices and cut capital spending.Remote work isn't only about the company saving money, however. And some folks actually are more productive in the social stew of the modern office, where policies and decisions sometimes arise from informal hallway conversations.Broadly, then, businesses intending to make long-term work location changes can start getting their hands around the changes by first having an honest go at categorizing employees by whether they can or should work fully remotely, partially remotely, or fully in-office.You make these choices simply: some jobs are simply location-independent. The trick here, of course, is to not end up with a large number of "location-frequent" employees that you are supporting in two places—at home and at an office.When your current in-office employees transition to remote work, they need to be equipped. We see the following as ideal when transitioning in-office people to remote work:I didn't mention smartphone expenses in that list, and the reason is that those expenses shouldn't really change—if you currently issue a company smartphone to an employee or pay a stipend to offset an employee's smartphone bill, keep doing those things. (If an employee needs their personal smartphone to work remotely, then consider issuing them a company device, because if they truly need it, you should be providing it.)Additionally, it is necessary to anticipate reasonable accommodation for special workplace requests, including helping employees create a working environment around any specific medical needs they may have.