In March 2020, the daily routine of hundreds of thousands of workers in the US and around the world changed as they transitioned to working from home. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion about productivity, innovation, human capital and the future of work.
Without a doubt, the new world of remote work has brought benefits and challenges and has changed the way we do business. During a recent Table of Experts convened by the San Francisco Business Times, two experts, Colleen McCreary, chief people officer at Credit Karma, and Christian Nascimento, vice president of product management and strategy for Comcast Business, shared their expertise on a variety of remote work topics. Some of the topics they covered were, cybersecurity best practices, remote collaboration technologies, and how IT and HR can partner to make remote work a productive, positive experience.
Here are some of our favorite insights:
“Whether it’s a Fortune 1000 company or a local law firm, businesses of all sizes have had to pivot to keep their employees and their customers safe. And so they’ve relied even more on technology than they already did. You’re starting to hear businesses of all sizes talk more and more about digital transformation and about rethinking their IT strategy and their connectivity strategy to make sure that they’re able to keep their employees connected with each other and with their customers from wherever they may be working,” Christian Nascimento.
“When the lockdown began, a lot of former office workers fled their cities and states and even the country for greener pastures. And the reality that I don’t think we recognize enough in the conversation around remote work is how much about an employee is tied to their presumed zip code. From tax infrastructure to benefits, all of these pieces are tied to zip codes. I know that you’ve probably read that you can just go live from wherever and work from wherever now, but that’s actually not the case — especially for us, where we have certain laws governing what information about your members and customers can be taken out of the country. But a lot of what I read seems to be oblivious to all that. Combating that narrative is tough, so we had to rein in people’s expectations, and put a clear structure in place, and then provide context for why we had to make some of those decisions,” Colleen McCreary.
Read the full conversation here.
