Driving Success With a Permanently Distributed Workforce

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Organizational Culture  

“The 9-to-5 workday is dead.” That’s what Salesforce said recently when it announced that it would be adopting options for a permanently distributed workforce. It’s not the first, but one of many primarily technology-based businesses to move to this model. In this case, it has three tiers of working: fully remote, a flex model that will see people in offices up to three days a week (which most employees will adopt), and an office-based model for a small number of roles where on-site presence is deemed critical.

The stated intent is to accommodate the 80% of employees who still wanted a connection to a physical workplace while supporting the almost half of employees who only wanted to go to a physical office a few times a month. I believe Salesforce when it says that—it has shown a number of ways that it is supporting its employees through the pandemic with expanded benefits and things like allowances to set up home offices.

But let’s also acknowledge that Salesforce, and organizations like it, wouldn’t be taking this step unless they also expected it to be good for them. Mutual gain is obviously a great thing—if employees are allowed to work in a way that they want, then it will increase their engagement and commitment to their employer. This will improve morale, which will drive productivity and reduce turnover. And there&…

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