Five paradoxes of global remote working

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As workforces become more dispersed and global, it's easy to assume employees can manage on their own and take charge of their working day. But, as Hannah Prince explains, there are a number of unexpected areas where HR may need to step in. The traditional nine-to-five way of working – everyone sharing a central office space and taking communal morning tea-breaks – is a thing of the past. Employees now ask for more flexibility to meet the needs of their busy lives. Combined with technological advances, this has led to increased demand to work off-site and across the globe, resulting in more virtual and global team working than ever before. At Insights Learning and Development, we carried out a study to understand what it feels like to work in globally dispersed teams and explored peoples’ experiences working in different physical locations and time zones. In short, the research found that employees in these teams required much more than just a laptop and Wi-Fi connection.

What do employees need?

Our data revealed that the needs of globally dispersed employees fall into three main categories:

• identity and belonging – to feel part of a team and connected to others;
• trust and autonomy – to be trusted to work flexibly and to have freedom over working environment, location and hours; and
• education and support – to be given the right backing, in order to feel a level of mastery over this new way of working.

These findings suggest that to create the optimal employee experience in a global and virtual environment, organisations must create a mutual sense of belonging, trust their employees to do their jobs and offer the right support to be successful in their roles. But in addition to these needs, our research als