Remote work is pretty sweet. But how, specifically?

At Culture Foundry, we are a 100% remote company. We have offices, but they are purely conveniences. This structure has a lot of benefits for employees.

• There is no commute. Every week, employees get hours of their lives back. This time can be spent with family, friends or hobbies, instead of on the road.
• On joining, employees can stay embedded in their current social net. No uprooting of families because you have to move for the job.
• Alternately, if an employee wants to move, they can do so knowing that they have a job wherever they land. This makes moving much less stressful, because switching housing is no longer complicated with finding new employment.
• Employees have full control over work environment, within the limits of their home office. When it comes to setting up how they work, there’s no one dictating anything. Do you like listening to EDM? Do you like standing up? Do you like it well lit? Make your workspace yours.
• Every day is casual Friday. There’s less or no need to spend money on business attire.
• There is no limit on meeting space. In a normal office, meeting space is often calendared because of limited space. We have a zoom account and have effectively unlimited, scalable meeting rooms.
• Remote work requires a lot of text based communication, which means that often decisions are recorded in a searchable format by default. This makes understanding the twists and turns of a company easier.
• If someone needs to stay home to meet the cable guy or because a pet or kid is sick, their workweek is largely unaffected.
• Flexibility is built in. Yes, in office companies can have flexibility, but the base premise–that you need to be on site to be effective–limits that flexibility. At Culture Foundry, we’ve had people work from different countries or different states because of life circumstances or just for the fun of it.

Not every company can support remote work. You need a culture of trust, investment in tools, and a domain that supports it. (For example, I don’t think a construction company could get by with remote work for the people actually building). But if your company can, there are tremendous benefits for employees.