The success of telework depends on it being assumed as a company culture rather than a way of working.

Often the focus is more on the action of teleworking than its management model. Beyond the emergency action following COVID-19, this model requires you to activate a series of mechanisms in advance:

  • Prepare our systems. You can’t collaborate remotely with local systems, and that’s something you can’t improvise. We must be aware that not properly planning our information and communication systems can have an impact on our productivity and the security of the information we manage. But, in addition, it is recommended to validate if our internal processes will work in the same way remotely.
  • Prepare our people. Telecommuting involves a paradigm shift. Some companies insist on digitizing working people, without realizing that, nowadays, these people are already digitized from their personal environments. Rather, it is about helping them acquire skills that increase their performance. And, above all, generating sufficient levels of trust that allow empowered people to contribute more with lower levels of direct supervision.
  • Prepare our management. I know managers who doubt that the people who telecommute can be as productive as those who do it in the company. To avoid falling into these demagogues, we must have a management system that allows us to know the performance of those who work remotely. Someone could say that this system should exist independently in all cases, not just in telecommuting. And they would be right. But when you want to change an entrepreneurial culture, it is very important to plan the future based on the Data, to reduce resistance to change.
  • Prepare our managers. In companies with traditional presenteeism-based business cultures, many resistances come from directive or supervisory lines. It is true that most changes should be cascaded. But, sometimes, when the previous points have not been activated and acted in an unplanned way, these directives must excessively exercise functions of correcting inefficiencies, with the consequent demotivation.

In summary, the implementation of a teleworking model requires a well thought-out decision, it cannot be the result of fashion. Like any other cultural change in the company, it requires an internal management model that takes into account both systems and people. We can only say that we have achieved successful teleworking when we can demonstrate that the collective performance of the organization is not conditioned by the physical presence of the people who comprise it. So yes, we can affirm that we have changed the culture of our company.