The future of work that respects, liberates and conforms to you
SOME insist we will eventually revert to what work was like before the pandemic— with everyone back in the office. The majority prefer a future where work is remote—when people work outside a traditional office environment. Most say that it will be hybrid — a mix of the two. Some say it’s not the where, but the who — that the future is made of distributed teams, where members are physically located away from each other.
All these work models are just steps to the real future of work: an asynchronous state. According to Remote, asynchronous work refers to the practice of working on a team that does not require all members to be online simultaneously. Asynchronous, usually shortened to async, means that not only are teams entirely remote and distributed, but they don’t even have to work in the same time zone, the same 9-to-5, at the same time.
The pandemic has shown us that work can be better when we have the time and space. When commuting was cut out, people had the extra hour to exercise, get more sleep, work on a passion project, take care of children, spend time with family. Being able to pop into the kitchen, or a nearby cafe or grocery store in between meetings, has proved invaluable.
The 5-day, 9-to-5 work week is an arbitrary, archaic notion from the bygone days. It made sense when everyone worked in factories. In a factory line, a uniform stretch of working hours made sense. Everyone had to be physically present to work on the product. Today, that product is not tangible. In the information age, the 5-day, 9-to-5 work week is no longer necessary.
This is where asynchronous work comes in. It means people work at the hours that suit their lives best, whether that’s 9am to 5pm, 10pm to 6am, or at intermittent hours throughout the day. It doesn’t mean less work and more slack—it just means that being asynchronous makes your work conform to your life, instead of the other way round.
GitLab is one of the world’s largest all-remote companies that have scaled as an async, no-office company. The organisation has a guidebook to async workflows, and highlights several major benefits.
Autonomy, agency, inclusivity
Async respects. People should be able to work when and where they want to. The idea that everyone is the most productive and comfortable in a 9-to-5, office setting, does not sound commonsensical. Everyone works differently, and should have the agency to be able to decide how they work best.
Async is inclusive. By removing the hurdle of time zones, anyone from any part of the world with access to the Internet can be included. By hiring from only one city—or expecting a new hire to move to this city, as is the norm — is inefficient, unfair and unlucrative. If your organisation is located in an expensive city like Paris or Tel Aviv, where only the affluent can live, you automatically limit your talent pool to those who are already privileged enough to afford these places.
Covering relocation costs for employees to move to your city is also detrimental: Seattle and San Francisco, home to tech giants and startups, have faced massive rising home prices. A study as early as 2015 showed that for every 1 per cent increase in technology workers, there’s roughly a half-per cent rise in home prices above and beyond the national rate.
But when your organisation is not limited by time zones or national borders, your talent pool is the entire world. Teams can and should be more diverse and inclusive, and async allows that to happen.
Higher efficiency and productivity
The beauty of async is that it benefits both the employee and the employer: it’s truly a win-win. Because not everyone has to be online, people can ‘default to action’. In a synchronous, traditional setting, one might have to wait for decision-makers or managers to come online to approve something, or set a task in motion. In async work, people default to action by starting on the task immediately, even if they later have to refactor and adapt, so they don’t waste time waiting.
A study that was conducted over nine months showed that generally, flexible workers were a lot more productive than their 9-to-5 peers. They achieved more, were off sick less often, worked longer hours, and were happier in their work.
By treating employees as adults, organisations will see that people do know themselves best, and can reap the benefits of increased productivity and happier workers.
Moving towards an async future
Like any work model, async isn’t perfect. Culture is especially fragile when people never meet outside a work context, or don’t have water cooler conversations or Friday evening pantry drinks to build relationships. Even though communication is supposed to be completely async, there might be inevitable calls in awkward time zones, where someone might have to be awake at six in the morning—especially when your organisation is just figuring out async.
Strong leadership who recognises the importance of async and what to look out for is the cornerstone. A good leader will understand that the learning curve—for themselves, as much as for the team they lead—will be steep, but rewarding.
Async isn’t just for scrappy tech startups either. GitLab has over 1,500 team members located in more than 65 countries, and Automattic has almost 2,000 across 97 countries. We communicate asynchronously all the time—when we send text messages and emails without expecting an immediate reply.
GitLab advises that async requires you to ask yourself if different conversations require different modes of communication—when sending a message, are you using the best format for this message, with enough context for the receiver, with the least amount of communication possible? The building blocks of async are: intentional communication, using the right tools (think Google Drive, Dropbox, Notion) and a willingness to default to action, and correct later.
When it comes to async, there is a lot to learn and unlearn. But this new way of connecting with one another often drives thoughtfulness that is usually rare in workplace communication.
Ultimately, async is not a goal in and of itself. The goal is to create a better environment for work, one that does not discriminate against time zones or locations, different lifestyles or needs. It is merely creating a system that respects you.
The writer is managing director of Hyper Island Asia Pacific
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