Remote Work Boosts Productivity Only If Done Right

Referring to the latest news, we know that nowadays people prefer to work distantly and we also know that this is productive, according to a Stanford study that shows the astonishing productivity boost of working from home. Simon Slade in his recent post says: “Creating a positive work environment that responds to millennial desires will ensure that your business becomes a coveted place to work and hires only the best.”

Despite that, most companies are still not allowing to make this possible, they even forbidding it. Scott Mautz in his recent article for Inc.com says: “They are afraid that if you work from home, you might goof off instead of working. To a fearful manager, that scenario sounds like the employee is wasting time instead of staring at their computer doing ‘real work.’” But reshaping your company this way is not enough. And yeah, replacing usual office with a distant office will not change anything, itʼll even provoke laziness.

In our software teams we have tried many ways how to manage 350+ people to work at home productively. And real changes has come only when we started to pay not per working time, but for the delivered result. That was the turning point. We tested this approach on dozens of projects and for the last few years of implementing this method, development cost was reduced 3-5 times, while programmers received over 50% more money for their working time. The idea was to make programmers motivated and interested in their tasks, let them be their own bosses—and it proved to work just great.