A Finger on the Scales of Remote Work and Work-Life Balance
We all knew it was bound to happen. Science fiction movies have been showing scenes of people working from anywhere for years. At the same time, futurists have been predicting that increased technological productivity will reduce the need for humans to work as many hours. Well, we are finally working remotely and work-life balance is 100% fixed. (right?)…. 2020 has been a big, fat, finger on the scales of remote work, and a bit of a heel grinding down on the scale of work-life balance.
So what does this have to do with compensation? As we have already discussed here in the recent past, paying remote workers in our new environment will require some new thought. A bigger issue may be figuring out to properly pay and reward the most highly productive when you no longer have the ease of patting them on the back or giving them public recognition. There is no doubt that the biggest issue is work-life balance. Solutions to that issue will require new thoughts on compensation succession planning and workforce tools.
Paying remote workers, when remote isn’t a “privilege”, but instead is a rule, requires some soul-searching by HR and Compensation professionals. Do our traditional job descriptions accurately portray a job being performed from someone’s sofa or basement? Are Geo Differentials a reasonable (and competitive) method for determining pay levels for our newly mobile workforce? In this case, we probably have 90% of the information we need, but we have not yet reorganized that information into something that is truly useful.
Paying our most productive workers has always been a challenge. It is likely that the remote world will expose the laggards and stars in ways that were harder to see when people worked in a group. I am predicting that pay ranges will widen as we tamp down on the pay of the slowpokes and ramp up pay for the fastest. The most productive workers are often those we ask the most from. This means, that without coaching on how to manage virtual workforces, we will likely overwork our productive people in our efforts to keep things stable and moving forward.
Work-life balance will be a doozy. Some companies will bring everyone back into the office before the end of 2021. Some companies will keep people working remotely perhaps forever. If you have been working from home, you know it isn’t always wine and roses. Your computer is too close to your living room or backyard. Your days can stretch from long before you are ready to be awake, to long after your kids have gone to sleep. Your life and work have merged into a blob of working, cooking, Zooming, cleaning, teaching, rinsing and repeating. None of this is healthy or sustainable and money can only fix some of it.
As we engage in our annual compensation planning exercises, it is a good time to start discussing some of these issues with the stakeholders on your team. Our final approaches will probably take a few years to fully work out. Broadly enacted remote work will change the competitive talent landscape forever. Those who fall behind may never get an opportunity to catch-up. Let’s change compensation and make it better. We can either take advantage of the thumb on the scales of remote work or be ground under the heel of work-life balance. Either we fix this, or no one will.
Dan Walter is a CECP, CEP, and Fellow of Global Equity (FGE). He has convinced himself he is a “Compensation Futurist” and works as Managing Consultant for FutureSense. Dan is also a leading expert on incentive plans and equity compensation issues. He has written several industry resources including the only resource dedicated to Performance-Based Equity Compensation. He has co-authored ”Everything You Do In Compensation is Communication”, , “Equity Alternatives” and other books. Connect with Dan on LinkedIn. Or, follow him on Twitter at @DanFutureSense.