Remote First Vs Remote Friendly

It's impossible to talk about remote office work and not mention COVID-19. Without a worldwide pandemic forcing us indoors, most of us would still be office workers thinking that remote work was a rare perk that only senior employees enjoy.

To think of remote work as forming part of our everyday lives might have been unfathomable to our past selves. But here we are several months later, pondering whether remote working is sustainable.

Now that a safe return to the office is possible in parts of the world, where will companies expect their workers to perform their duties? Knowing that we've had a small taste of work freedoms, will organisations introduce flexible remote office workplace policies that incorporate components of remote working?

This article unpacks the different levels of remote working and how organisations might enforce them in a post-COVID climate. More specifically, we're looking at the nuances of remote first and remote-friendly, two separate terms that are often used interchangeably but have crucial distinctions.