The differences between Work From Home/Remote Work/Hybrid Work
COVID-19 has impacted our life in a much bigger way. It has drastically changed our routines, our hobbies, our opportunities to learn, and especially our approach of work.
Last week, the ways of working had been an interesting discussion point across many Corporate and Startup companies. The CEO’s of many companies, including Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook — has addressed this point and clarified the way forward for their employees, and the rest of the world.
The most common words we could have come across while listening these debriefings has been — Work From Home (WFH)/Remote Work & Hybrid Work.
Though from a bird’s view, all these words may sound similar — those are fundamentally different considering the context that most employees today are contributing as a team towards a project.
Let’s dive deep into the different ways of working and what is in store for you.
Work From Home
After 6 weeks of COVID-19, we all must have been familiar with this approach. Not only the Private Corporate companies, but everyone including the Central Govt. employees of India adapted to this method to continue contributing to the work but to prevent the spread of the virus.
But, there’s an interesting fact — whatever we have been doing for the past weeks is not work from home but remote work!
Let me explain you with an example.
Ram is an employee of ABC Pvt. Ltd. contributing to the content creation team. His company has a dedicated office space with cabins and other facilities available for their employees, and they also offer the flexibility of work.
Ram and most of his colleagues work out of office, they schedule their in-person meetings mostly on Monday/Tuesday. It is a common practice and understanding that the team members will visit the office during the team meetings.
On a specific Friday, Ram feels like he has got a lot of individual work to do, and feels like he wants to work them out in a more settler environment. He decides to Work From Home while the rest of his team members may/may not choose to work out of Office.
Basically Work From Home is an option provided to many of the teams who need not be present at the Office space all the times as a part of the flexible work culture. However, there is an office space that’s set up where the employees choose to work, if they want to.
This is very similar normal working style, because of the flexibility offered, the employees have the option to Work From Office or Work From Home, which is a call they have to take considering their schedule and the nature of work to be done.
Remote Work
On the contrary, Remote Work is another interesting way of working where the entire team contributes to the work remotely, they conduct the meetings virtually. Most importantly, you will be working outside of your company’s office all the time and in many cases there is no dedicated office space — the employees can opt to work at cafe’s, co-working spaces or their homes whichever is convenient to them.
Let’s see an example.
Ravi works for XYZ International Firm contributing to the web development team. His team members are spread across all around the globe, across multiple time zones, they run a global business. The entire work experience for Ravi is virtual — his team meetings, one-on-one catch up with colleagues, etc.
Remote teams has no option of going to office, the employees meet occasionally in-person. Remote work requires totally a different style of approach and mastery on the virtual tools with extra-ordinary communication skills.
Basically, this is what everyone did during the COVID-19 times. None of the employees visited any office — all the business was done virtually, be it team meetings or learning webinars or manager/employee conversations, things happened in remote work!
Hybrid Work
Now, here comes the buzzword! Considering maybe in another 2–3 months (or a little more time), we all may have to go back to our offices again, which could be a switch from Remote Work to normal again - the CEOs are much interested in developing Hybrid teams.
As the name suggests — hybrid is the mix of both, it has the best of both the worlds, remote work and office work.
The recent announcement from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook is an example to this, Facebook anticipates to have ~50% of the employees doing remote work maybe at least in another decade.
According to many, hybrid is the future of the work culture. Many companies have realized they can easily adapt to the remote work, (thanks to the COVID-19 lock down!). But, at the same time they do not want to leave away the concept of ‘office’ completely - especially when few teams, like those work on hardware and other critical teams which requires a physical presence.
With the hybrid work culture in place, the employees can decide whether they want to contribute to the work through remote or do they want to work at office. When we say work through remote, it is not an occasional ‘work from home’ option that the employees are offered through the flexibility but an opportunity to continue work from anywhere in their own virtual environment. All the meetings, and other work related stuff happens virtually, and the employees may join the rest of the team for a monthly/bi-annual/annual event in-person depends on the company.
So, what’s next?
As we can see, many companies are agile and they are figuring out a way of approach to work and how they can run their business effectively. With the technology infrastructure that we have currently, we can anticipate to see a lot more flexibility for the employees to choose remote work in the future.
One of the most important lessons that COVID-19 has taught us, is the importance of health and how do we balance both our work and life. With remote work culture becoming more visible in a near sight — there is more scope for all the employees to focus on health, well being and spending quality time with family.
Work is interesting when we have the ‘choice’ to contribute from a location that’s interesting to us — that’s my opinion.
Which one do you personally prefer - Work From Home or Work From Office? Let me know in the comments.
