What will happen to remote work when the pandemic ends? Luis shares his thoughts.
The state of Michigan is ending remote work policies as 55% of its population is vaccinated. Is this the end for remote work, where more states and other countries follow suit? No, it isn’t!
Some people are happy to go back to the office, and others are terrified of the idea. That’s why remote work should always be an option! Luis believes that it should not be mandatory how to work, but that people should choose based on the place they feel they can give their best.
Watch this space every day for the latest tips, news, and stories from the remote work world!
Luis:
Are vaccines the end for remote work? Welcome ladies and gentlemen to virtual coffee chat with Lewis. It’s a lovely Monday, and I have a vessel filled with my favorite beverage. Yes, it’s coffee. Let’s enjoy. Got to love that first sip.
Well, Michigan is ending its remote work rule at 55% vaccinated. Is this the end for remote work, where more states and other countries follow suit? No, it isn’t. Sorry to break it to you. It’s not the end. It’s going to create some unhappy situations. People will be unhappy because they will be forced to work into circumstances that they don’t love anymore. But, other people will be perfectly happy to be back to the office because that’s what they like. That’s where they have their friends, their buddies, the people they enjoy having human relationships with. And that’s beautiful.
Remote work has always been and should always be an option. Rules suck, to be blunt. Here in Portugal where I live, remote work was absolutely 100% mandated during the pandemic. I believe it’s still is. Don’t quote me on that. But eventually it will stop being, and that’s a good thing. Because I understand that there was an absolute necessity for it. There were exceptional circumstances, and working remotely was proven to be effective in helping spread the disease. So cool. I can understand why the state took that position. That said, I usually do not like the state to dictate how I, or anyone work. I don’t think that’s good. I think the way people work should be a decision that’s made between the place where they work and themselves.
So remote work, optional thing. Sure, a company can say, “We only do remote. We don’t want to have offices. And then that’s an option. That’s an option. You get to decide if you want it to work for that company or not. And the opposite is true. The company can decide, “Nope, we’re not doing remote work anymore.” And again, there’s an option there, and the employee can decide if they’re going to keep on working there or not. That’s it. It should be an option based on the business and on the person working or wanting to work there. It should never be mandated by any ruling body. Some companies will try it as non remote. Some companies will try for remote. There’s benefits to both. I personally believe that the benefits to remote outweigh the benefits of an office. But talent will flow accordingly.
So in general, will vaccine spell the doom for remote work? No, no. The cat is out of the bag. Too many people have seen that this is a lifestyle that they far prefer, and people aren’t dumb. They can understand that they were doing it during a pandemic, so it wasn’t optimal. But I bet that 90% of people working remotely at least run the experiment in their mind thinking, “If all else were equal, if we were back to our previous life, how good would it be if I kept my remote working arrangement?” I think that most people do enjoy that. Do you enjoy the possibilities of that? Some won’t, and that’s fine. Hopefully there’ll always be a place for those people, as it should be.
So no, it’s always good if the state can’t mandate how you work. Of course it’s important to state regulates certain things to make sure that there are competitive practices in place, et cetera, but definitely the … As Sun Tzu put it … Yeah, I think it was Sun Tzu, “The best way to,” but don’t quote me again fact, check me on that again. “The best way to rule a state is how you cook a small fish. Slowly over light fire.” And yeah, I think that we should not allow the state to decide what’s best for us. That should be a dialogue between the companies and the people working there. And it does seem that as far as we can see into the future, that dialogue will be more heavily tilted towards remote.
Hopefully we can find, together, an equilibrium that works in different ways for different people. But at the end of the day, what matters is that you are able to do the best work you can. And you have … The business that you work for gives you the conditions to do the best work that you can. For me, and for the people at thinkremote.com, that’s remote. We wouldn’t have it any other way. We love working remotely. We think that the benefits are tremendous.
So if you would like to join us, if you would like to learn more about remote work, please feel free to go to thinkremote.com, peruse our wide range of articles about how to work remote, how to be best and better at working remotely, how to travel the world as a digital nomad, and even how to run businesses remote. You can find that all on thinkremote.com. And of course if you enjoyed the video, please press like, subscribe, and share. This was virtual coffee chat with Lewis. See you tomorrow.
