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’.

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.