Will Remote Work Continue After the Pandemic? These Companies Say ‘Yes.’

Google Cloud also will disclose that Anthos on Microsoft Azure is being tested with customers and Anthos support for virtual machines is in early preview with customers.

Whether they’ve liked it or not, San Francisco’s tech workers have spent most of 2020 learning how to be effective and supportive while working from home. For some, the eventual return to the office cannot come soon enough, while others have grown to enjoy the flexibility remote work allows in their daily life.

When we checked in with a random sampling of companies in our growing community, we were surprised to learn that all nine of them generally agreed with the following statement: “Employees are generally more productive when they are working from home.”

There are caveats, of course. Remote employees require a kind of digital infrastructure to promote connection and inclusion in company culture — especially after others have returned to the office. So, while remote employees can match or even exceed the productivity of their in-office peers, a remote workforce also presents a challenge for HR leaders as they build corporate culture.

Many of the companies we spoke to already had a head start in supporting remote work, with a large pre-pandemic distributed workforce or teams spread across multiple offices worldwide. While it’s premature to predict exactly when we’ll be heading back to the office, their experience managing remote teams before and during shelter-in-place orders will help make distributed teams and flexible schedules an enduring feature of the modern workplace. 

EPAM’s excerpt from the article

On HR Innovation: “We have the capabilities, platforms and culture for sustained remote work and EPAM is keen to maintain flexibility and choice for EPAMers while balancing client and business requirements. To allow for continued growth, we will be implementing a flexible working arrangement solution in our offices that involves a new workplace management and workspace ‘hoteling’ booking program.”

Kate Pretkel is Head of Global People Programs and North America HR at EPAM Systems, a digital product design and development agency.

The original article can be found here.