Global remote work is rising and the advantages are obvious: employers save on costs and gain higher producvity; employees save money, cut the commute and work with fewer distractions.
When we talk about cutting the commute, we don’t mean just forty minutes a day on public transit Some people commute three or more hours a day by train or by car or even by ferry. Commute times in major North American cities have crept up over the past X years, averaging 34 minutes in Toronto and 56 minutes in LA.
Before we went remote, our Chief Revenue Officer, Peter Rooney, spent three hours a day commuting to and from our downtown office. Going remote has meant that he can reinvest that time into his work and personal life.
Last week he joined Danny Page of the Running Remote podcast to discuss our remote transition and the transformative potential of globalized remote work.
Advantages of Global Remote Work
When asked why Canadian Payroll Services wasn’t always remote, Peter said that “the old way of running business was that everyone comes into an office and because of all the collaboration, you’re more productive. Covid has opened up not only our own eyes but those of businesses all over the world about how collaborative remote work can be.”
Like so many of you, before Covid we were one foot in the old way of doing work, one in the new way. We had a remote work policy and part of our team worked from home full time, but we also maintained a full, downtown Toronto office. While we’d been planning a remote transition, it was provincial lockdown orders in response to Covid, that sealed the deal for us.
After only a few months we realized that we were just as productive and collaborative as a distributed team, as we’d been while collocated.
While we’ve always been remote work advocates, the Canadian Payroll Services team better understands the experiences of our clients and their employees. As Danny says, we, like so many of you, have “moved past acceptance to approval” of remote work.
The importance of approval of remote work, and really embracing it, is that you quickly begin to see its deeper, less obviously measurable impacts. Global remote work can be a great equalizer in terms of where someone is based or what they look like.
“All that matters is the work,” says Danny. Remote work can improve upward mobility and fairness, by integrating people from different cultures and countries into your team as complete equals. And as Peter puts it, “diversity is refreshing.” It injects new ideas and energy in your business.