Remote work and bias

- Remote workers just don't work as hard. How often do we hear that? That, my friends, is a bias, a pretty loud one. Since the world of remote work, that is a argument that has come up time and time and time again, and unfortunately, many companies treat their remote workers different than how they treat their in-person workers. Oftentimes, they are expected to work twice as hard just to prove they're working. When we think about the biases that exist towards remote workers, it is not just that one. Oftentimes, we are forcing people to have their cameras on without thinking about what the heck they've got going on in the background. All of our homes are not created equal, and oftentimes, I'm not comfortable sharing my house with my closest 20 coworkers. Some people have kids running around in the background, some people've got dogs running around in the background. All of our lives are set up differently, and asking someone to share the inner workings of their personal home on video every day, day in and day out isn't necessarily fair, especially because for a lot of people, especially those in leadership, their homes look very different than a lot of the people within their organization. Another bias that exists for remote workers is that we are always on. We must always be working because my living room is my office and my kitchen is my office, and my bedroom is my office. Where when you're an in person worker, eight to five, eight to five, and you're done. But because my whole life is my office, oftentimes you receive messages at all hours of the night, asking you to do whatever, simply because you are expected to be on. It's imperative that you create inclusive environments, not only for your in-person staff, but also your people who are at home and creating a unified experience for the two of them, not only so that one does not feel more powerful, more equipped than the other, but also so that they find a sense of community amongst those two separate groups.