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I have been working remotely for 15 years, and I couldn’t be happier. Like many white collar workers with the ability to work from wherever, I have worked from airport concourses, hotel rooms, coffee shops, relatives’ houses and conference hallways, to name just a few. And I have done so successfully because getting work done is more about the work itself than being in any particular place at a certain time.
Most of the time though, I work from my office where I have an ideal desktop setup, which includes gigantic monitors, a trusty keyboard, good coffee and flawless high-speed internet.
Last month, I decided to try an experiment: For one week, I would work from the road in my travel trailer. I had a cellular hotspot, a laptop and an iPad I could use as a second screen in a pinch.
What could go wrong?
When Remote Takes You Back to Dial-up Days
I’m old enough to remember the days of dialing into the local internet provider and enjoying criminally slow speeds. Even regular web browsing required patience. My week working from a hotspot made me feel like I had gone back to that time. To be fair, it worked okay most of the time but when it crawled to a slow trickle, I can’t say I wasn’t a little frustrated.
Modern cloud applications do incredibly poorly in this environment for the most part. Applications like Zoom, Teams and Google Meet just don’t work when you have a terrible internet connection. So, I ended up dialing in with the phone function of my smartphone.
But what was more surprising was that loading an application like Gmail, Slack or Asana took me back to a time when I sat waiting a minute or two for ESPN to load. Messages were delayed or, worse, they never got delivered. Projects would sit spinning. One misclick and I just wasted a couple minutes.
What did work? Fortunately, I do a lot of work in Word and Google Docs and enabling offline capabilities with the latter basically made these tools work flawlessly. It saved my week.
Related Article: Stop Blaming Technology for Poor Collaboration and Productivity
Internet Access Isn’t Universal
While the internet is fairly ubiquitous in more populated areas, people like me who have long been working on gigabit fiber often forget that many places in the US (and around the world) don’t have the type of internet that can support the robust connections needed to work.
That’s one of the reasons why the US is spending $42 billion on internet infrastructure. Closing the last mile gaps for many people is expensive, and these gaps are in communities that desperately need but can’t afford to make these investments.
As companies turn to remote work as a way to increase diversity, there remains a divide that is difficult to overcome. If your house or the place you can work out of doesn’t have fast, reliable internet, you can’t enjoy truly equitable access to jobs because most of the remote jobs out there just can’t be done on cell phone hotspots or other sketchy sources of internet.
Related Article: It's Time to Redesign the Virtual Workplace
What Organizations Can Do to Bridge the Gap
Companies can’t wait for the years it will take to get our infrastructure up to snuff. If you have employees in communities with poor connectivity, or if you want to attract a truly diverse workforce that can truly work from everywhere, there are a few accommodations you can make:
- Providing alternate means of communication — specifically phone connections. While satellite internet is more available today than ever before, the US and most other countries have built out strong landline and mobile networks to connect people.
- Test your applications to see which ones degrade with poor connectivity. Not all of your apps will behave well in low connectivity. Better to know than be surprised when someone can’t join a call because they can’t connect to the app. Test your most critical applications first and consider alternatives if there aren’t ways of overcoming degradation.
- Have offline and cloud-based alternatives. Offline-capable applications, whether they are app or browser-based, are critical for those people with episodic internet access. Cloud applications that allow in-app editing instead of having to download large files can also help people with limited connectivity.
- Commit to inclusivity. If diversity is part of the pitch for remote work at your company, realize that connectivity stands in the way of that goal. Look for creative ways, including offering backup internet options, to increase access to critical work tools for remote workers.
Related Article: Managing Tech Stack Complexity: When Does it Make Sense to Diversify?
Providing Better Remote Access Is Worth the Investment
Working remotely in areas with slow or unreliable internet and other connection difficulties comes with its fair share of challenges. Whether it’s temporary and self imposed or it’s the place where an employee lives, thinking about your remote work strategy is critical.
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With the right IT considerations and infrastructure support, organizations can help ensure that their remote employees can work effectively and productively, regardless of their location. By taking into account the unique challenges and needs of all remote employees, organizations can create a supportive work environment that fosters inclusivity, support and productivity.
