Why Work-From-Anywhere Is Here to Stay

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Harvard Business Review

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4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, associate professor at Harvard Business School, was studying the growing work-from-anywhere movement long before the Covid-19 pandemic forced many more of us into virtual work. He says that more and more organizations are adopting WFA as a business strategy, one that not only reduces real estate costs but also boosts employee engagement and productivity. He acknowledges that there are challenges to creating and maintaining all-remote workforces but outlines research-based best practices for overcoming them. Choudhury is the author of the HBR article "Our Work from Anywhere Future."

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.6	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H.B.
0:16.0	Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HPR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. Over the past few months I've taped this show from lots of places, the basement
0:48.6	bedroom of my Boston home, my mother-in-law's closet, and by far the least comfortable but best for sound quality, the bottom of a holiday house bunk bed.
0:57.0	Like many people whose offices shut down during the COVID-19 crisis, I've had to get creative about when and where I do my job.
1:05.3	And what I've learned is that I and all of my colleagues, and probably many of you, really
1:10.1	can work from anywhere. Once there's a widely distributed vaccine, who knows we could
1:15.1	be doing it from California or London or Tahiti. Our guest today was studying
1:20.2	the rise of all or majority remote workforces well before the pandemic
1:24.7	started. He's talked to lots of organizations that are letting all or most of their
1:28.8	employees work from anywhere. He's analyzed the costs and benefits and he has some advice on how to do it well
1:35.1	not just during this crisis but into the future.
1:38.0	Raj Chowder is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School and the author of the
1:43.1	HBR article Our Work From Anywhere Future. Raj, thanks so much for being on the show.
1:47.8	Hi Allison, thanks for inviting me. How do you define work from anywhere as a business strategy and why is it different than work from home?
2:08.0	So work from anywhere in my mind is an emerging form of remote work which offers what I call geographic flexibility.
2:17.6	The traditional form of remote work is what we call work from home where the worker is getting control over how she spends her time.
2:27.0	So it's less commute, you can work in the morning, work at night, whatever suits you, and then you can have also control over your workspace, so you can work in
2:36.1	your PJs or work formally, like whatever suits you.
2:40.2	Work from anywhere offers all of that, but goes one step ahead, and it's a really important
	...

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