A few thoughts on hybrid and remote work in 2022

This article is worth a read and of course a few of our own impressions. As we move into prediction thinking for 2022(tis the season):

1. Remote work will become a strategic choice. For those of us in software development, and consulting, location has not meant much for some time, but now, being distributed will be a strategic move for access to talent, time zones and productivity, as long as you have a good infrastructure and systems. Maybe we will simply say we have a distributed workforce. Remote doesn’t seem quite right anymore.

2. Hybrid work, for that 30%, give or take, of the workforce for whom it applies, will also become the norm. The discussion will evolve to when you work vs. where. Companies will start to move far up the the pyramid of remote work where asynchronous communication happens. Read @Matt Mullenweg’s blog post on the topic. If you haven’t done the work to make the office online work and adapted the rest of your work and meeting practices to the online environment….well you might make things worse.

3. Remote and Hybrid work will start to reap rewards that feed from and into ESG practices with the promise of contributing toward sustainability and social practices… assuming you can over come proximity bias of course.

4. The endless death march of zoom meets will go the way of two spaces after a period and give way to fewer, shorter, more effective virtual meetings-if you’ve come up to speed on virtual facilitative leadership.

5. Please, senior leadership will stop saying “your direct manager will decide if you can work a remote or hybrid arrangement.” It’s just a cruel joke on staff and front line managers.

In the meantime, the metaverse can wait…I hope. It makes me dizzy.