Over the past three years, I’ve had roles with commute times that varied from 15 min to 1.5 hours (one way). I know I’m not alone in this situation — as this appears to be the norm in most metropolitan areas. If we were to take this calculation and project it out on an annual basis it would look something like this:
Beyond the time spent/wasted on commuting, there is also a clear impact on the well-being of employees who have commutes longer than 30 min (see an excerpt below from this article).
Lower life satisfaction and happiness;
Higher anxiety.
Less sense that their daily activities are worthwhile.
Workers with a one-hour commute are:
33% more likely to suffer from depression.
40% more likely to have financial issues.
21% more likely to be obese.
Workers who commute more than 30km are more likely to have a relationship breakdown — and above 50km they’re more likely to die sooner.
Meanwhile, 79% of remote workers report improved productivity and 80% report improved morale.
Given the broken nature of the traditional working arrangement, it is clear that people should embrace the movement toward remote work. However, this isn’t to say that remote work doesn’t come without its challenges including:
Limited interaction with other employees
No time/resources allocated toward personal development
Inability to build a strong professional network (which may be a limiting factor when looking for new opportunities)
To help solve for some of these challenges, I’ve listed a few ways remote workers can manage their career development/advancement.
‘Show Up’
Challenge
It’s easy to feel as though you’re a second-class citizen at the company — especially when the majority of the team is located at a particular location.
Solution
Participate in company-wide discussions. It is important to make sure that your voice/opinions are heard. It’s easy to get uber-focused on productivity and lose sight of the fact that you’re a member of a team working towards a bigger goal.
Set up 1:1s with co-workers so that you can build a personal relationship — this doesn’t have to happen over coffee.
Grow Your Network
Challenge
Remote work likely means limited interaction with people outside of your immediate circle (family/friends) — this makes it difficult to have a network that you can rely upon if you had to search other opportunities.
Solution
Go to meet-ups/networking events. This really depends on the place you live and how developed the community is in your local area.
Reach out to people on LinkedIn and other sites. It is important to have a compelling reason as to why people should connect with you — often transparency and a conversational approach is fairly effective
Participate in online communities (e.g. Github if you’re a developer). A lot of new opportunities come from working on a project or helping someone out in the community
Take advantage of co-working spaces — just because you work remotely doesn’t mean you have to work from home. It will give you a mental transition between work and home but also allow you to interact with people in the community as well.
Meet Up With Your Co-Workers Periodically
Challenge
It’s hard to build a relationship with co-workers when you’re just a face on the screen. Despite our best efforts, it is hard to simulate the power of in-person interactions.
Solution
Take the effort to meet up with co-workers on a regular basis. You should expect that most of your time during these visits should be spent talking with people (not necessarily working).
A remote worker at Stripe (Aditya Mukerjee) put it best: “At the end of the day, you’re optimizing for relatedness — the feeling of being connected to other people and caring about them — not the number or frequency of your in-person interactions. Relatedness is “the universal want to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others” — some people need this to happen in-person to satisfy their need for human interaction, but others may not. If you’re able to satisfy this for yourself through virtual interactions, you can probably get away with meeting in-person less frequently (or even at all — I know a couple of people who are totally fine never meeting their coworkers in-person, but I think that’s rare).”
Conclusion
Remote work significantly increases your access to new opportunities, increases your overall productivity and improves your chances of maintaining your desired work-life balance. The freedom granted through remote work comes with the heightened responsibility of having to manage your own career. An inability to manage your personal development through some of the above actions (and more) will likely limit your overall employability.
For those interested in learning about remote work opportunities, I’d recommend checking out the sites below:
Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/)
Who Is Hiring? (https://whoishiring.io/)
Moonlight Work (https://www.moonlightwork.com/)
Remotive (https://remotive.io/find-a-remote-job/)
We Work Remotely (https://weworkremotely.com/)
Remoteok (https://remoteok.io/)
Angel List (https://angel.co)
Remote Customer Jobs (https://remotecustomerjobs.co/)
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