Of necessity virtue: off-site work

In a globalized and interconnected world, a crisis like COVID-19 affects companies in múltiples ámbitos: paralyzed negotiations, suspended events and meetings, cancelled business trips, forced workplace change, and many other situations that can directly affect the usual workflow. Outside, Chevron, Microsoft and Twitter have pioneered the adoption of off-site work, and in España Prosegur, Vodafone, and increasingly companies, they have decided to establish the off-site work as their main response. 

It is clear that the lack of practice, methodologist and the right tools, derived from urgency, will generate not a few inefficiencies and frustrations, but in any case be experiences to be taken into account.

According to the INE, in Españonly 27% of companies contemplate this type of work, although it allows to reduce costs, greater flexibility of the workforce also increases productivity, facilitates work reconciliation, reduces absenteeism and the estrés of workers, among many other benefits.

The opportunity to adopt a new model of off-site work allows us to imagine, in the not-so-distant future, companies without corporate headquarters, formed by a network of global and interconnected workers, where  the key requirement is to ensure that teams continue to add value to the organization on a recurring and iterative basis, which requires that the objectives be correctly set , well-defined roles, well-distributed tasks and appropriate tools are available. 

To ensure the éxito, Opinno has developed the remote sprint concept, a short duty cycle (1-4 weeks) of a relocated equipment, with clearly marked objectives, which ensures a ráask for value delivery and continuous improvement of the ways of work. The system helps to achieve the objectives by combining various methodologías ágiles de innovation, built on the basis of digital and collaborative tools.

In order to run this model correctly, you must define roles and assign responsibilities. The direction layer defines the business objectives and their priority within the organization. The gestióá  layer consists of team managers who define the objectives of projects and work teams based on the objectives required by the management layer, and are responsible for monitoring, designating the correct profiles and giving organizational support to the teams. The team's líder manages its progress and associated risks,  reports to the team manager and is responsible for keeping the team coordinated and aligned towards achieving the objectives of the remote Sprint. Finally,  the facilitator of the team supports and facilitates the work of the equipment, solving those blockages that prevent progress in both technological and methodical issues. In some ways, our off-site work model maintains control using the best practices of both worlds, to avoid failures and frustrations.

We are living in an emergency scenario that has surprised us all, citizens and businesses. We must face this period as an opportunity to rehearse these new working methods, which give us flexibility and efficiency. I am sure that, when the calm comes back, many companies will have extra lessons from this forced period of remote work, and that our teaching will be as entrepreneurs and as employees incorporate many of the tools and methodologías we have learned.

Given that our impact as a species on the planet is increasingly severe, it is quite possible that in the near future we may have to face other types of global disasters similar to that generated by COVID-19 and that they can manifest themselves in the form of pollution, floods, volume eruptions or any other type of environmental emergency. Businesses and governments need to reflect and define protocols to respond to these challenges so that, at the same time, they will catch us better prepared.