Iāve been working remotely for almost a decade now, way before the pandemic made it mainstream. This gives me a certain perspective on how attitudes have changed before, during, and after the obligatory work-from-home (WFH) era.
1. Before Covid
Before the pandemic, working-from-home was a really tough selling point for me because organisations still had the attitude that bodies-in-seats at the office were more productive than slackers who worked remotely. Even though it was difficult for me to convince the client, I was able to prove their perception on productivity was completely wrong and landed some very successful contracts.
Given that WFH was not the norm, there were a lot of drawbacks. Let me list a few:
- Online communication tools were limited in choices and possibilities. Skype, Google Meet, and Slack were the most obvious choices to have remote sessions. Since Active Directory and Exchange were often self-hosted behind layers of firewalls and other restrictions, using email was challenging. Forget access to corporate documentation and in-house tools, that was not possible;
- When everyone was sitting in an office and I was the lone wolf working remotely, I missed the chit-chat between colleagues and often heard changes within the company late or not at all;
- There was also a disconnect between me and the rest of the team as I was that weird dude popping up on screen and I was never considered a true team member;
2. During Covid
The pandemic got all organisations by surprise, because there was no culture or infrastructure in place for full teams to work remotely (see my first point). The biggest hurdles I observed during that time:
- All in-house applications were not accessible from outside company walls, driving organisations to quick and dirty lift and shift behaviours to have their crucial resources in the cloud so they are accessible outside the organisation, causing lots of security, privacy and other problems;
- Employees were not equipped to work remotely:
- Laptops were not common and had to be purchased in bulk to facilitate everyone with equipment to perform their work, often straight from the supplier without any sort of governance on it resulting in compromised devices everywhere;
- Not everyone had a separate room they could use as an home office, so remote calls were made from kitchens, bedrooms or patios with surrounding noises and indecent views of other family members passing through;
- WFH requires people to be independent, focussed, and self-constrained to get work done instead of (ab)using their work time as additional free time;
- The pandemic really boost the online communication toolset as companies like Google, Microsoft, and Zoom created a whole suite of additions to use with their online video conferencing solution where whiteboards, polling, collaborative documentation were now part of their offerings, which we continue to use today in every setting (remote and in-house);
- The downside was that it was also a time where ransomware and phishing attacks were booming since the new way of working was a perfect storm malicious actors could benefit from;
3. After Covid (Current times)
I personally was really happy with the pandemic, not for the suffering of people but for the change it forced on companies to provide and use online communication tools to increase productivity, collaboration, and reference materials. But, even we now have all these tools available I notice a worrying trend:
- Organisations are reverting back from their WFH policies, requiring people to be more in the office than at home, sometimes even 5 days āat the officeā. I understand that the real estate they have costs a lot to have it filled for less than a third, but I observe again the same attitudes as before Covid where body-in-seats are more productive and closed off in-house applications are more secure than when theyāre up in the cloud;
- Employees are eager to sit in the office to have social interactions, chit chat with colleagues and gossip about whoever is worth talking about. This encourages organisations to revert back from their WFH attitudes;
- Cloud migrations are still challenging and expensive exercises that have more failures than successes, driving organisations back to walled on premise applications. With the world on fire and the US view to the rest of the world gives organisations the jitters causing them to rethink their whole cloud adoption roadmap, especially within government related industries;
My personal opinion and predictions
The pandemic was an opportunity to create digital organisations where resources were services accessible from anywhere on any device, governed by an organic identity and adaptive security was omnipresent. Some organisations nailed it and are really happy to have embraced their transformation. Unfortunately, most organisations were pushed into a situation that was alien, costly and left them without control.
With the desire of organisations to regain control and employees to be amongst people, I see the whole WFH culture slowly dying where it will be the same again as before Covid, probably by 2030. I see this as a huge loss for organisations, humanity, and the environment.
For me personally, I see myself challenging organisations to let me work remotely as the lone wolf I was in the past.
So from opt-out in the early days after Covid, to opt-in today but by 2030 it will be a hard sell to work remotely and I donāt find that an optimistic future.
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