“Work from Home” versus “Remote Work”

Recently, there was a thread on Reddit that suggest that, instead of calling working from home “Working from Home”/WFH, it should be termed “Remote Work.” The idea was to remove the image in the mind of the Return to Office (RTO) crowd of folks chilling in their PJ, and focus on the work part of that. You’re not in an office, you’re just remote

On one hand, I got the point. As we commonly say, so long as the work is getting done, does it really matter where we’re sitting? WFH highlights the “from home” part, creating images of sitting on the couch in pajamas, and doing laundry and watching soaps when, in scare quotes, you were “working.”

But I think “remote work” doesn’t quite capture it.

During my career, I typically worked with teams that were global. It was rare that everyone in a meeting could be in the same location. Conference calls were the norm. We started doing these from our desks, especially as tools like Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom became the norm. Joining a conference call from a conference room with speaker phones were simply awful for everyone involved.

I personally interacted with my colleagues while at home, other offices, data centers, airports, and Starbucks. It’s just how we worked, and we were effective.

Transitioning to everyone WFH during the COVID-19 quarantine was pretty seamless. We were working with folks the way we always did. It was just that everyone was in their house, not in some combination of houses, airports, and far flung offices.

I can see how “Remote Work” applies, but it still, in my mind, has an element of “othering” the people who are not physically present. Not only does it feed those who dislike WFH, but risks putting those not in that office in that same bucket.

I’d like to propose instead of either “Remote Work” or “Work from Home,” this be described as “Distributed Work.” Everyone is co-equal, whether you are physically in the primary office, a different office, on the road, or working from home. It also talks less about where you are working, and more about how work is done. I think this is an important distinction. <