Best Practice Recommendations for Remote Work Now Available

Remote work, a work arrangement where work is conducted at an off-site location and employees use telecommunications technology to connect to the workplace, has been steadily increasing in prevalence over the past few decades but saw the largest increase during the COVID-19 pandemic when shelter-in-place orders forced organizations to accommodate remote work.

One of the latest SIOP White Papers, Remote Work: Post-COVID-19 State of the Knowledge and Best Practice Recommendations, looks at the state of remote work 4 years past the height of the pandemic and offers recommendations for this new normal.

SIOP Fellows Kristen M. Shockley, PhD, associate professor, Auburn University, and Tammy D. Allen, PhD, Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida, along with SIOP student member Ryan S. Grant, MS, industrial-organizational psychology doctoral student at the University of Georgia, wrote the paper.

The authors provided a valuable background and current state of remote work, covering the benefits and drawbacks of remote work, career outcomes, knowledge transfer and collaboration, and DEI. From an application standpoint, business leaders will find important takeaways in sections on What Are the Characteristics of an Organizational Culture That Allows Remote Workers to Thrive? and What Does an Effective Remote Work Supervisor Look Like?

The following recommendations are fully explained in the paper:

• Offer 2–3 days of remote/in-the-office work
• Engage in practices that promote employee autonomy
• Foster social connection
• Partner with employees to help them manage the boundary between work and nonwork
• Assist employees with their work-from-home office set up
• Ensure that the culture supports remote work
• Have clear promotion criteria and policies
• Manage the work, not the worker
• Support employee health and well-being
• Follow best practices for technology use

Allen offers the following advice for business leaders looking to prioritize the recommendations included in the paper.

“To the extent that culture drives organizational purpose as well as specific policies and practice, begin by ensuring that the culture is one that both supports and enables remote work,” she said. “Lower hanging fruit would include providing employees with assistance in setting up their home office and providing guidelines on sound ergonomic design.”

Data consistently show that the majority of today’s workforce want to work remotely at least some of the time. Thus, it is essential for organizations to embrace remote work policies as part of their overall talent management strategy and in doing so ensure that remote workers are provided with the same opportunities to develop and flourish as on-site remote workers. Maintaining science–practice partnerships can be a key strategy for organizations to ensure that their policies and practices are consistent with the latest evidence base.

“I-O psychologists have been studying remote work/telecommuting for many years,” Allen said. “We bring insights as to what the accumulated science conducted over decades tells us as well as what changes prompted by the pandemic mean for current practice. In addition, we understand and appreciate the issues from individual and organizational perspectives. Attention to the recommendations made in this white paper can be of value to those with existing remote work/telecommuting programs as well as to those who are considering it for the future.”