Remote Working, or Working Remotely?
This week, I'm taking advantage of the generous remote-working policy at Pipedrive to visit my family in the UK for the first time since the pandemic started. A lot has happened since I was last here.
For companies and teams like ours, remote working possibilities should be a no-brainer. We are a global company with a global team of talent, and my team is distributed between four offices in three countries. Though our offices are awesome and we love working from them, there is little benefit in forcing my team to sit in them all year round, and I strongly encourage all of them to work from wherever they feel comfortable.
This year alone, we have worked from Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Greece and Finland without disruption, but in my opinion, it's justified not just by the absence of negative side-effects but by the boost in the happiness, general well-being and motivation of the team. Practically speaking, we're already working remotely! One team member even got stuck in Brazil, but with our joint experience of remote working, what had the potential to be a disastrously disruptive event was a blessing in disguise: absolutely no problems with the delivery of their work, and some bonus time to spend with friends and family.
If your company has the capability, I don't understand why this topic is still up for debate. We can discuss work-life balance as much as you want, but the key is to live it and share it, and if the team I've assembled are happy and productive, what's the problem? Does this look like an unhappy or unproductive team lead to you?