Work From Anywhere does not mean anywhere is good for work

Our ground rules after 14 years of running a WFA business.

Work From Anywhere (WFA) should not mean anywhere your employees can get an internet connection. It’s important for employees to have a conducive, focused, safe place to work, and your company needs a thoughtful WFA policy in place.

In the last year and a half, there has been an abundance of advice for how companies should embrace Work From Home (WFH) or Work From Anywhere (WFA).

WFA even made the Harvard Business Review cover recently as the “future” of work, and the New York Times has a great series going on remote work. There are some valuable points made in these articles.

There are advantages to a fully remote workforce, such as reduced real estate costs with no office, hiring talent outside of your HQ locale, and the productivity a team gains from being able to focus (no more water cooler convos).

For staff, they get to live wherever they prefer, remove commutes from their lives, and enjoy a better work/life balance. 

Bear Group started as a distributed, remote-only company 14 years ago, so we’ve been doing WFA for a long time. Both the company and our employees have enjoyed the benefits of the work from anywhere approach. WFA seemed somewhat radical when we started, but the bandwidth, technology, and applications — from Git to Jira, Slack to Zoom — have all made working as a distributed team possible, with technology as the hub for communication.

One key message that is missing from the conversations I’ve seen, is that yes, working from anywhere is entirely possible these days, however, that does not mean anywhere is a good place to get work done. 

Companies will need to establish policies around locations that are appropriate to get work done. I would argue (unless you are a virtual barista) that a coffee shop is not one of them. 

Working from anywhere is entirely possible these days, however, that does not mean anywhere is a good place to get work done.

Having a central location for your work life, such as an official home office, spare bedroom, quiet basement, or private office at a co-work space, is incredibly important. If your work requires any amount of focus to accomplish a task or communicate with coworkers, having this dedicated place to work is key.

Where not to work

Here are some places you shouldn’t try to get work done. I’ve tried working at all of these, and they do not offer anywhere near the level of productivity you can achieve in a central work location.

In transit:

• Planes with WiFi
• Cars with Hotspots
• Trains
• Airports
• Back of the minivan at your kid’s soccer practice

I do sometimes pop open an offline document or Evernote and get a little planning or writing done in these situations. But WiFi is almost always unstable, and certainly not secure enough to connect to anything important. It is definitely not the place to hold a meeting.

Congregate settings:

• Coffee shops
• The Beach with a hotspot
• Libraries
• Parks
• Gyms
• Mall food courts
• Etc.

There is WiFi at all of these places and it’s a great time to catch up with friends or check your Apple news feed. But it is a bad place to get anything meaningful done, as the distractions (even for those who say they can tune them out, or work with headphones on) are terrible.

Less-than-ideal Work From Home situations:

• Sharing a small space with five roommates
• Sharing a workspace with kids or a partner (who isn’t working at the same company)
• Working at a kitchen table
• Working from bed

I've got three boys, and obviously kids pop in and distractions happen, but that can’t be the everyday constant if you expect to be any level of productive. Also, many places, like the couch or bed, might be comfortable for an hour or so, but they're not ergonomic enough to sit for hours on end.

Open co-working spaces:

• I find open co-working spaces some of the worst places to get things done, and I have no idea why they are so popular. In my opinion, it is so strange to have a large room of noisy people all working on different things and working for different companies.
• I have made co-working work at a place where I can get a dedicated office space to call my own. So basically... an office. Mainly used when my kids were younger and home for the summer from school.

Planning for Work From Home / Work From Anywhere

As an Employee: Before (or soon after) you take a new gig that is fully remote, make sure you have a plan for a central workspace. You will not be happy floating around between spaces. Many companies, including ours, have a stipend you can use for good WFA equipment like a standing desk, great chair (or yoga ball), headset, and external monitors, so you are well set up in your dedicated workspace and keeping things ergonomic. We started offering remote ergonomic evaluations as a benefit for our employees, which is something worth looking into for your new home workspace.

As an Employer: Establish a Work From Anywhere policy that outlines acceptable remote work situations for employees. Expect your employees to invent new boundaries because the internet is everywhere. 

After you’ve been at it awhile, you’ll likely get some folks asking if they can work from their parents’ place for a month or work from Prague for the summer, for example. 

We have a policy around extended work at different primary locations, and it actually has worked out well in most cases. There are several important factors to consider:

1. Time zone. Will their working hours still align closely enough with what’s expected of them / their role?
2. Internet. If the employee is going to be working at a non-home location for an extended period of time, will they have access to a secure, high-bandwidth connection to the internet to be able to do their job? 
3. Work space. Will they be able to have a dedicated work space? Typically, this means going to one spot for a longer period of time — not a different hotel each night. So, for example, backpacking around Europe isn’t an option, but working from an AirBnB in Maui for a month where they can stay engaged with work is an option.

As a starting point, our Employee Handbook includes sections to set the ground rules around work hours, non-office locations, and working from alternative locations for extended periods of time. See the Distributed Employees section of our our Employee Handbook.

The “Work From Anywhere future” has been here for a while now. 

When we first started more than a decade ago, I assumed most employees would think about it like I did and set up a dedicated home office. So I was surprised when one of our early developers brought his smartphone to code on during a client trip to Chicago during our first year in business. (Needless to say, the “work from phone” approach is not a productive means to get things done.) 

Running a remote company is awesome, and has tremendous benefits for all involved. As an employer, it’s a good idea to set the ground rules for an acceptable workspace for your organization so everyone is on the same page, and expect to help your employees set up a dedicated office location if it is not going to be the traditional office space.

About Greg

Greg Bear is the owner and president of Bear Group, a 25-person, remote-first website development firm. He built his first web page in 1994, led startups through the Seattle internet boom, and launched Bear Group in 2007 from his home office (pictured) in Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood.

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