Some have been preaching for many years that remote work is not just an emergency solution for exceptional cases. Take Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress. Doing without offices altogether can be an opportunity to work productively and successfully. What is behind buzzwords such as "virtual companies" or "distributed companies"? And what do you need to bear in mind?

The year 2020 has introduced new abbreviations such as "WFH" aka Work From Home. Many a company was suddenly confronted with an issue that had previously been ignored: It had to work without offices. Those who were not prepared for this unsurprisingly fell into a deep productivity slump.

Less micromanagement

This happened simply because not even the basics were available: The necessary tools were completely missing or turned out to be inadequate. But it's not just about having the right tools. The way virtual companies work has to change fundamentally. How tasks are planned and distributed to employees works differently. Remote leadership for agencies and companies needs more freedom and more trust - and significantly less micromanagement.

Some of these companies (and their managers) are surely longing for the day when they can return to "business as usual". Perhaps the (occasional!) home office will then remain as a bonus to boast about in job advertisements. In practice, however, these organizations will continue to be fixated on and optimized for the office and physical presence.

Remote working is not a recognized alternative or even the more sustainable model at the moment, but the exception and is seen as a half-baked copy of "real work" on site. At the same time, people act as if "real work" and collaboration is only possible if everyone is in the same room or at least in the same building at fixed times.

It doesn't even occur to them that remote work could have its own advantages. Or that the model is the better option for some tasks and professional groups. Then it seems absurd that companies could benefit from being a "distributed company".

Example Automattic: Remote out of conviction

This makes it all the more surprising when successful companies have never been organized differently. Sometimes this arose out of necessity because there was no budget for an office at the beginning. However, the model was then retained because it had proved its worth.

The best example, among many others, is the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce: Automattic. Founder Matt Mullenweg likes to talk about how "experts" tried to convince him that this model would never work with more than one or two dozen employees. Today, Automattic has almost 1,300 employees - and still no permanent offices.

In fact, until not so long ago, the company even had something like an in-house coworking space in San Francisco: you could go there to get your work done and meet your colleagues. But it was used less and less. So Automattic saved these spaces.

This year, Matt Mullenweg felt vindicated in what he has been preaching for so long: the future of many companies is a decentralized structure without offices. "The illusion that offices are about work has been shattered forever," he wrote in a blog post. In the end, it's more about control than about creating a helpful and supportive working environment.

The 5 levels of distributed enterprises

He has developed a model for distributed or virtual companies that is based on the stages for autonomous vehicles. It is as follows:

Level 0: Remote is not an option

Remote work is not possible because you have to be present in person for the task. Think of tradespeople, salespeople or even firefighters. Of course, there may be situations and future developments that at least partially change this. Think of remote-controlled or semi-autonomous robots that help with firefighting. But as things stand today, this is not possible.

Level 1: Remote is only for emergencies

Many companies found themselves at this level before the coronavirus pandemic. Remote working would theoretically be possible, but there is no support for it. In an emergency, employees can work away from the office for a day or two. But in most cases, most of the work will be left undone. This is also due to the fact that even basic tools such as your own email account or calendar are difficult to access as soon as you are no longer in the internal office network.

Level 2: Remote is possible, but only in exceptional cases

The pandemic has forced many companies to move to this level: they have been forced to accept that many or all employees will be working remotely for longer periods of time. To this end, appropriate technical foundations were laid and new tools such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams were introduced.

However, the processes and thought models have not yet changed. Instead, attempts are being made to transfer previous working methods to the digital world. This works about as well as the "e-paper" version of a daily newspaper on a smartphone: it works with effort, but not really well.

In the case of remote work at this level, this means that everything continues to happen synchronously and you are constantly interrupted. Managers are concerned about the productivity of their teams, but do not change the framework conditions as a result. Instead, software is supposed to ensure that employees are actually only working on their projects or they have to prove that they are actually "present" via a webcam that is constantly switched on.

Stage 3: Remote as an opportunity

From this point on, working outside of an office is no longer seen as an emergency solution with many disadvantages, but (also) as an opportunity. You create a better working environment at home or in a coworking space and the company recognizes how valuable asynchronous working can be. Communication takes place more in writing. The personal component also plays an important role (without pandemic restrictions): teams meet for one or two weeks a year.

Stage 4: Remote is the new normal

Once here, the processes are consistently asynchronized. Work performance is evaluated on the basis of results and not whether and for how long employees are present in one place. Trust develops and becomes the basis for collaboration. Not only extroverted "loudspeakers" are heard with their opinions, but everyone, because there are many ways to participate in discussions.

Companies can attract talented employees who do not happen to live near the office or are willing to relocate. Employees' home offices are usually better equipped and much more geared towards individual needs than an average office. Meetings in real time are well prepared. Diversity is also strengthened because each person can do their work in a way that suits them.

Level 5: Remote nirvana

Matt Mullenweg sees this as the "Nirvana level", which may not be achievable. It is intended more as an incentive. At this level, distributed companies are always better, more successful and more productive than their competitors with offices. Employee satisfaction is at its maximum.

Dropbox becomes "Virtual First"

In general, companies such as Automattic, Buffer or Doist have it easier because they have relied on distributed teams from the outset. They did have to ensure that their model would still work with a growing team. But the basic ways of thinking and acting were already in place.

It is more difficult for companies that have to adapt - as has happened during the coronavirus pandemic. On the one hand, they often realized that remote working is not as bad as they always thought. On the other hand, some employees really enjoyed this forced experiment.

Dropbox, for example, stated in an official announcement that 90 percent of its 2,800 employees felt productive at home and no longer wanted to return to a strict five-day week in the office. They also saw disadvantages in working remotely. "Non-stop video conferencing, constant notifications and social isolation" were cited as examples.

However, Matt Mullenweg would point out that Dropbox would just have to dare to move to the next level. These "disadvantages" are signs that the office mindset has been transferred unchanged to the remote world.

It seems that Dropbox wants to work on exactly that. There will be offices called "Dropbox Studios" all over the world. These include existing locations such as San Francisco, Seattle, Austin and Dublin. But there will also be "on-demand spaces for team meetings" elsewhere. The press release states:

As a result, Dropbox is expected to become more geographically distributed over time, and teams will have more freedom to choose where they live, work and find new collaborators

The company intends to dynamically adapt where these "studios" are available according to demand.

But as the step-by-step model above explains, organizational changes are also part of the new, location-independent working world. Dropbox refers to this as "non-linear working days". In future, the company will only define "core collaboration times" in which time zones overlap. It encourages its employees to create their own schedules outside of this. "Dropbox wants to prioritize impact and results instead of hours worked." Sounds almost as if someone there has taken a leaf out of Matt Mullenweg's book ...

Dropbox is also just the latest example from the tech industry. Twitter and Square have already announced that they will allow temporary home offices as an alternative indefinitely. And Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg predicted that 50 percent of his employees will be working remotely within the next ten years.

8 tips for virtual companies

But how do you find your way in the new world of distributed working? The company behind the todo app Todoist has put together eight useful tips in a blog post to make remote work work better:

1. find your own solutions

Just because another company is successful with a certain tool or a certain way of working doesn't mean it's right for you and your company. Always look at what the fundamental problem is and then look for a solution that fits. Example in the post: The company tested Slack as a communication channel because so many were using it. However, Doist found that it wasn't a good fit for their global team.

2. set to Remote First

In organizations that rely on a hybrid model, remote workers quickly fall through the cracks. They are forgotten when it comes to communication and promotions. Instead of just enabling remote working, it should be actively encouraged. It should become the new normal.

3. use asynchronous communication

Her example mainly revolves around international teams. But even people who don't live all over the world have their own personal "time zones". Some people start their day early, others prefer to work in the evening. Some need several hours of uninterrupted concentration, others work in short bursts.

4. use synchronous communication in a very targeted way

Nobody claims that every question, every problem, every challenge can be solved via chat. But instead of seeing synchronous communication such as meetings as standard, they should be a well-planned and prepared tool for special moments. This applies, for example, to complex issues, emergency situations or for team members to get to know each other better.

5. document work processes and rules

The better you record how something should be done in a way that everyone can understand, the fewer queries there will be. Good documentation also ensures fewer misunderstandings and conflicts within the agency or company.

6. be careful with new hires

Not everyone is well suited to a remote working environment. You need to be able to plan your own work and take on more responsibility. Communication skills also need to be strong (especially written). Matt Mullenweg, for example, has explained that they don't do interviews at Automattic, they do application chats.

7. trust is the foundation of everything

This is a particularly difficult point for many a leader. Productivity is not when someone looks busy (sitting at their desk in the office, for example), but when results are achieved. There must be confidence that employees are working on their tasks to the best of their ability.

8. don't ignore the negative sides of remote work

Because it is equally clear that such experiments have failed in the past. Just think of prominent examples such as Yahoo and IBM. So you should by no means assume that this topic is a sure-fire success. Rather, you need to look at what went wrong in such cases and how you can counter this. It is also important that everyone involved is aware of the advantages and disadvantages for them personally.

My conclusion for agencies and companies

What many people do not yet understand: More creative freedom does not reduce productivity, it increases it. As various studies have shown, "more money" as a reward only works for very simple tasks. As soon as people have to put in even a little intellectual and creative effort, this lure turns into the opposite: The bigger the reward, the worse the result. See this animated version of a lecture by Dan Pink:

Generally speaking: People want to do good work, they want to develop themselves and they want to live a self-determined life. If remote work is implemented correctly, it can give employees' productivity, satisfaction and health a positive boost. And, as mentioned above, such flexible working models open up companies to candidates who would not have been considered in the past.

Featured image: Olia Danilevich