At points in our professional life, we all face unexpected challenges in our personal life. Navigating tough times, like personal struggles, bereavements, health worries, or external factors beyond our control, is unfortunately inevitable. However, there is a tool at our disposal that can be a game-changer in how we work through these: remote work.

Ruth Makgill is a WFH pioneer having worked remotely for global organisations, long before the current trend towards remote working.

After 20 years living and working overseas for international companies, Andy found himself back home in Scotland looking for a remote opportunity just as Covid struck.

What does it take to build and manage a succesful remote team? A foundation of trust and open communication is a great start. But is that enough? In this article we highlight some great tips from Mission+, a Singapore based company that is taking remote working to the next level through its offshore execution teams, and its fractional CTO model. Helping companies both traditional and remote take advantage of the best talent working in globally distributed teams.

”Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Reports of the slow death of remote work have been making the news over the last 12 months, but as with Mark Twain, the reality suggests otherwise.

There is an argument that remote working encourages people to close themselves out from the world around them. It’s almost accuses some of being antisocial, living in a potentially dystopian remote world. Why leave the comfort of home with your widescreen monitor, fully stocked fridge, and the comfort of your athleisure wear to interact with the outside world? For me, third spaces are absolutely critical to remote workers, particularly those that work from home (WFH).

Remote working is about delivering on objectives, about finding ways of working that drive your personal productivity. But to remain productive it’s important to evolve your ways of working by experimenting to see what works best for you.

Great companies and leaders have always focused on the human side of their teams. In most industries people are the key differentiator and in the evolving world of remote working it’s even more critical to support people where they are, as often they’re at the end of a camera or phone, not across the office from you.

Remote working is all about flexibility and its success is built on understanding how teams and individuals can be most productive and deliver on key objectives. However, not everyone works on the same schedule and rhythms, and timezones complicate things even further. So how can you maximise the benefits of remote working, and minimise the challenges of working in distributed team globally? Let me introduce you to working asynchronously, or simply ‘async’.

For many remote working will be their future of work, but for those with more of an entrepreneurial spirit remote will also be the future of global business.

Five top reasons why some people prefer remote working are Flexibility, Work-Life Balance, Increased Productivity, Cost Saving, and Access to Global Talent.

Even the esteemed Harvard Business Review falls into the trap of confusing remote working with work from anywhere. But in the rapidly evolving world of remote working, ‘Our Work from Anywhere Future’ is still an excellent primer for those on all sides of the discussion.

Work is no longer a place we go is a foundational way of thinking of the potential of remote working. People want flexibility and companies that provide this do enjoy a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining key talent. But to get the most from new ways or working - including remote working - it’s critical that companies have a clear value proposition, and have a culture that supports the success of people working outside of a traditional office environment.