We’re all starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic, and businesses are thinking about how to adjust to the new normal. A major part of that normal is the explosion of remote work positions. According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, there’s a new trend to add a director of remote work into the corporate hierarchy.
Traditionally, decisions about whether an employee could work remotely were decided by human resources. They had to judge whether the job could get done without risk to the company. But companies have discovered that when you have many remote workers that a separate director position may be justified. Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Quora have already created the position formally, and many others have an informal director.
In addition to the standard HR tasks around remote work, these directors are researching things like how to downsize office space and discussing tax questions that arise in a work-from-anywhere environment. They are also working with IT teams to ensure that the infrastructure for a remote work environment is strong and that employees have all the tools they need to perform their roles. It is these overlapping challenges between departments that have pushed companies to go beyond HR and create a separate role that can reach out to all the teams.
By doing this, according to advocates, companies can push forward into a new normal of remote or hybrid work without sacrificing company culture. It’s an intentional way of moving into these changes as opposed to how we were pushed into it in the first place.