Compulsory Remote Work and the Future of Work–The New Normal?

As the coronavirus COVID-19 sweeps into our lives, remote work (and remote learning) are rapidly becoming the “new normal” for many of us, ushering in a new means of communication and collaboration. We thought it would be an interesting topic to dive into for our Futurum Tech podcast. In this episode, I’m joined by my fellow analysts and colleagues at Futurum Research, Sarah Wallace and Fred McClimans, and all three of us have decades of experience working remotely. While using video communication platforms and various other collaboration platforms is as common as checking email for the three of us, we know that’s not necessarily the case for a whole lot of folks who might be finding themselves working remotely.

We thought it might be helpful to kick off this week’s show by sharing some of our thoughts and best practices, along with tips on how to make it through these next weeks of remote work so that you can not only experience maximum effectiveness, but perhaps also learn to enjoy the many benefits of some pretty awesome collaboration and communication platforms and tools.

In the podcast, we offer a bunch of advice and share some of our best tips. Here are just a few:

• Probably the most important piece of advice is to try and make sure you’re working on a hard-wired connection—plugged into your router, not operating on wifi. That way, you can be assured of maximum quality in your video collaboration efforts.
• Schedule calls with your team with defined, predictable windows so that you can begin to establish a routine.
• Find/create a dedicated workspace during the time you’re working remotely
• Make sure the lighting in your workspace is good (poor lighting on video is no bueno) and keep your laptop (or phone) at eye level when engaging in video collaboration. When you’re looking down into your laptop or phone it provides a super nice look up your nostrils — and that’s not a good look for anyone.
• Get a good microphone and when you’re working via video collaboration, plug into your device with earbuds, headphones, or get a pair of wireless headphones. You might not notice the difference in the quality of your communications, but your team will definitely notice.

We’ve got more advice, but for that, you’re going to need to tune into the podcast.

THIS WEEK’s FAST FIVE

• Chinese auto giant Geely and its low Earth orbit satellites.
• Cisco rewires itself for the cloud era.
• The DoD puts the brakes on the JEDI contract, previously awarded to Microsoft.
• Hackers are taking advantage of the panic around COVID-19 to do what they do best: Hack, hack, hack.
• Popular video game becomes a virtual library and provides a major assist when it comes to freedom of information

This Week’s Tech Bites Winner: There is a giant asteroid racing toward Earth, suggesting tsunamis could crash into the ocean and trigger waves hundreds of feet high. Scary? Sure. Well, the asteroid, known as 1950 DA is has something like a 0.3 percent chance of slamming into the Earth — in 2880. So yes, technology definitely bites sometimes. Especially when publications publish articles like this, designed to inspire fear, and people read and share, without really grasping the realities of the timeline. 2880. That’s a heck of a long time away!

Our Crystal Ball:  We agree that the current situation where many are experiencing remote work for the first time, will likely change how both employers and employees feel about remote work, video conferencing, and the use of collaboration platforms to do their jobs.

INFORMATION: This Futurum Podcast features Shelly Kramer (@ShellylKramer), (Fred McClimans (@fredmcclimans) and Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace). If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes or SoundCloud. For inquiries or more information on the show, email the team at [email protected] or follow @FuturumPodcast on Twitter. To learn more about Futurum Research please visit www.futurumresearch.com.

DISCLOSURE: Futurum Research is a research and analysis provider, not an investment advisor. The Futurum Tech Podcast (and all related written notes and materials) is a newsletter/podcast intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Futurum Research does not provide personalized investment advice and no investment advice is offered or implied by this podcast.