5 Types of Remote Work that You Have not Heard About
There are innovative alternatives to both traditional office and home office work.
We are introducing flexible offices, digital nomad offices, travelling companies and more.
More and more companies are moving towards having their staff work at least partly from home. This shift has come because of tools like video chat and secure cloud storage, as well as the increasing amount of work being knowledge work that can be performed at any location.
This shift has massively accelerated with the Coronavirus pandemic, where many companies were forced to have their staff work from home.
In the discussion on remote work, we often see that remote work is seen as a binary choice:
● Either work 100% from the office, or
● Work 100% from home
But in fact, there is a wide spectrum of innovative options that people often do not consider when choosing an alternative to traditional office work. Here we will show all alternatives to the traditional office work and look at the advantages and disadvantages of each.
1. Traditional Office Work
In the traditional office work, a company has a main office, and employees are expected to come to the office to work, and therefore generally live near the office.
1.1. Characteristics of traditional office work
These are the main characteristics of traditional work at the office:
● Most of the work is done in the office.
● Team members interact face to face.
● Team members live close to the office.
● Work schedule of team members will generally be similar.
● Work time can be tracked by how much time team members spent at the office.
● Data of the company is often stored on local servers and not on the cloud due to security concerns.
1.2. Advantages and disadvantages of traditional office work
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of traditional work at the office:
1.2.1. Advantages
● Frequent face-to-face Interaction of team members
● Easier for the management to build a certain work culture
● Less distracted from family and personal work
● Possibility to control the work environment
● Increased data security
1.2.2. Disadvantages
● Cost of the office
● Smaller talent pool to recruit from as team members have to be or at least to come to the office
● Less flexibility for team members, meaning less options to live abroad, travel and to combine parenting with work
● Potential interruptions from co-workers and from too many meetings
● Potential for diseases like Covid-19 to spread among the workforce
2. Flexible Office
“Flexible office” is a term used to describe a work arrangement whereby the team members mainly work from the office still, but have more flexible work hours and are allowed to sometimes work from home.
2.1. Characteristics of a flexible office
These are the main characteristics of a flexible office:
● Work is partly done from home
● Still a lot of overlapping time with co-workers at the office
● Team members live close to the office
● Data and software is generally fully available remotely
2.2. Advantages and Disadvantages of a flexible office
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of a flexible office:
2.2.1. Advantages
● Possible to have frequent face-to-face Interaction of team members
● Good balance in terms of workspace, allowing team members to work at home to avoid office interruptions and to work in the office to avoid family interruptions
● More flexibility to combine parenting and work
2.2.2. Disadvantages
● High cost of the office, especially for an office space that is probably seldom fully used
● Small talent pool, as team members are expected to live nearby
● No flexibility to work remotely or travel
3. Work from nearby home office
With a nearby home office generally workers do most of the work from home, but still are able to occasionally come to the office. This is what people think of when thinking of the home office and it is what is seen as the main alternative to office work.
3.1. Characteristics of work from nearby home office
These are the main characteristics of work from a nearby home office:
● Majority of work is done from home
● Occasionally work from the main office
● Flexible work hours
● Workers still live nearby
● All data and software available from anywhere
● Little shared time with co-workers, therefore less face-to-face meetings
3.2. Advantages and disadvantages of work from nearby home office
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of work from nearby home office:
3.2.1. Advantages
● Less interruptions from coworkers and less time spent in meeting
● More attractive to parents that have to combine family and work live
● Still possible to meet as people live nearby
3.2.2. Disadvantages
● More interruption from family
● Less structured work environment
● Less control on workers
● Less face-to-face interaction
● More difficult to build a organizational culture
4. Remote Home Office
Most people working from home offices still live close to the office. However, as people do not come to the office, they might as well live far away from it, as in a remote home office.
4.1. Characteristics of a remote home office
Same as home office, nearby but workers live far away from the main office.
4.2. Advantages and disadvantages of a remote home office
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of a remote home office:
4.2.1. Advantages
Same as for nearby home office, but additionally:
● Large talent pool to recruit from as talent pool is global
● Potentially lower cost for hiring in low wage countries
● Potentially less burdensome employment legislation
● Advantage for team members to live in a place where they enjoy living
● Possibility to continue the work relationship with team members that have to move away from the main office
4.2.2. Disadvantages
Same as for nearby home office, but additionally:
● No face-to-face meetings, even on important occasions
● More difficult to get cohesion and culture in a team that is dispersed around the globe
● Potentially complicated tax implications
● If time zones are different, potentially less shared work time
5. Digital Nomad Home Office
We have seen above that home offices can be either nearby or remote. If the home office is remote, then we can let our workers travel, in other words be digital nomads. So we have three types of home office:
● Nearby, contant residence: Nearby Home Office
● Remote, constant residence: Remote Home Office
● Remote, travelling: Digital Nomad Home Office
5.1. Characteristics of a digital nomad home office
The characteristics of digital nomad office are almost the same as those of a remote home office with the difference that:
● Team members do not have a constant residence, and travel. Travel can be frequent, for example, every few days a new place, or can be infrequent for example changing place only once or twice every month.
● Work is done from a temporary home office, which could be an AirBNB or a hotel or it could even be a cafe.
5.2. Advantages and disadvantages of a digital nomad home office
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of a digital nomad office:
5.2.1. Advantages
Same as for remote home office, but additionally:
● Even larger talent pool as many people, especially millennials, love a digital nomad lifestyle
● Highly motivated workforce
5.2.2. Disadvantages
Same as for remote home office, but additionally:
● Less structured work environment
● Workers more focused on travel than on work
● Less stable work time, as work can be interrupted by travel
6. Remote Micro-offices
A remote micro-office is different from a remote home office, as the office is a company office at a remote location. For example, a company could decide to reduce its 100 person main office to 50 people and instead have 5 additional offices with 10 people each all across the globe.
This can be a very interesting alternative, as even a relatively small company can at the same time recruit globally and have workers living in different locations while also ensuring that the team gets enough face-to-face time.
6.1. Characteristics of remote micro-offices
These are the main characteristics of remote micro-office work:
● One main office and several smaller remote offices
● Workers in the remote office work mainly from the remote office and not from home
6.2. Advantages and disadvantages of remote micro-offices
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of the remote micro-offices:
6.2.1. Advantages
● Frequent face to face Interaction of team members
● Easier for the management to build a certain work culture
● Team members are less distracted from family and personal work
● Possibility to control the work environment
● Possibility to recruit from a large talent pool
● Building community among workers in the micro-office
6.2.2. Disadvantages
● Costs of setting up and maintaining up offices in different locations
● Not enough flexibility for workers who want to work from home
7. Digital Nomad Office
When we have several remote micro-offices around the globe, we can in fact allow for workers to live a digital nomad lifestyle but still work mainly from the micro-offices. We call this “Digital Nomad Offices”.
A digital nomad office is different from a digital nomad home office, as the worker, even though he is travelling like a digital nomad, is still working at the company offices.
For example, a company that currently employs 10,000 people in a large expensive office building could instead set up 50 micro-offices of 40 people each, for a total of 2000 people. The micro-offices could be at locations around the globe, like Bali, Paris, Rome, HImalaya, Delhi, Goa, Cape Town etc. The employees could check availability of each location on a monthly basis and change their location every month but continue to work from a company office.
7.1. Characteristics of digital nomad offices
The characteristics of a digital nomad office are the same as of a remote micro-office with the difference that the quantity of offices is large and employees are encouraged to move around different offices.
7.2. Advantages and disadvantages of digital nomad offices
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of the digital nomad offices:
7.2.1. Advantages
Same as for remote micro-office, but additionally:
● Possibility of living a digital nomad lifestyle
● Possibility to bond with different teams across the globe
● Recruitment from a large talent pool, as many millennials would love such a work arrangement.
7.2.2. Disadvantages
● High cost of setting up several offices across the globe.
● Potential instability in the workforce if they are moving too much between offices
8. Travelling company
Similar to the digital nomad office is the travelling company. In a travelling company the main offices of the company travels together with the company. For example, the founders of a young startup of 20 people might decide that they want to travel and take the team with them. So the whole company or at least a large number of the team members travel as a group and set up a temporary office at different locations.
8.1. Characteristics of travelling company
The characteristics of a travelling company are similar to that of a digital nomad office, with the difference that the whole company is travelling together.
8.2. Advantages and disadvantages of travelling company
These are the main advantages and disadvantages of a travelling company:
8.2.1. Advantages
● Possibility of living a digital nomad lifestyle
● Face-to-face interaction
● Possibility to bond with whole team while travelling together
● Potential for tax savings
8.2.2. Disadvantages
● Cost of travel
● Talent pool is reduced as few people are willing to constantly travel
● Potential to put too much focus on travelling
● Difficult to ensure a constantly productive work environment
9. Conclusion
With work that is location independent, technology that facilitates group collaboration and new ways of organizing work in small agile teams, remote and home office work has become an interesting alternative to traditional office work.
Neglected but very interesting for both the workers as well as the company can be the following models of work:
● Remote home office
● Digital nomad home office
● Remote micro-offices
● Digital nomad offices or
● Travelling companies.
The models show that an awesome quality of life quality can be combined with awesome work.
