Taiwan missed the 2020 remote work revolution. Can it catch up now?

Hi Taiwan

<aside> 💡 It’s been a rough week with Level 3 COVID-19 restrictions rolling out, and many decisions being made within a very short timeframe. Though we have not yet reached the highest alert level 4 at the time of writing, citizens and residents are practicing “self-lockdown”. Most non-essential businesses, as well as schools and other businesses have closed, and pictures of desolated highways and empty alleys are circulating the web.

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Empty Huaxia Market Street in Taipei's Wanhua District.

Shifting to a work-from-home and remote work culture

In the midst of all this, is there is enough attention being drawn to the shift from offline work into a remote and work-from-home culture? Taiwan has handled the pandemic so well over the past year and a half, that surely an emergency switch from in-person to a digital workspace within the time span of a mere week was not what many saw coming.

How prepared are largely offline-functioning Taiwanese companies and institutions to handle the shift?

I’d say it varies.

**Schools island wide have closed, forcing educational institutions to move online, utilizing e-learning solutions such as virtual classrooms, learning management systems and digital whiteboarding.** The Taiwanese government has resources to support this, but I have not yet found out the exact types of tools and software that is being utilized. I will update as I find out more information.

However, over the past week, I’ve been contacted by many who are struggling to make the seemingly immediate shift from offline to online work. With a growing number of non-essential businesses shuttered island-wide, it’s essential to bridge that gap.

Local companies are still struggling to let go of offline control and let their employees work from home. A culture of top-down management permeates most industries and Taiwan’s workforce suffers from a culture of chronic overworking, spending long, often unpaid hours in an office environment, often with minimal productivity. Bosses and managers are not easily persuaded to let employees work from a space that cannot be monitored.

Many brick and mortar businesses that operated largely in-store and offline will be increasingly affected as the situation progresses. The travel, tourism, hospitality, and food and beverage industries had already been struggling, and many have now many more have suddenly been left without a Plan B.

What are the core benefits of remote work?

Digital workspaces will not only #FlattenTheCurve, they provide endless other unique benefits:

• Working remotely gives employees the flexibility they need to have a better work-life balance
• Better work-life balance not only fosters productivity and creativity, it builds trust
• No commute? More time for productivity
• Digital office? Companies can save on office space and pay less for office materials. Going remote drastically reduces company expenditures.

• Remote teams increase a company’s ability to hire international talent. Once your local team is remote, it becomes less of a barrier to hire specialists from abroad.

The basics of creating a digital workspace

Creating a digital working hub with an arsenal of online tools is vital. Here’s a great basic overview of essential work-from-home tools when starting from scratch. I’ve broken important tools down into more detail below:

• Planning — The essentials of creating a work-from-home friendly culture and space don’t need to be overwhelming. It helps to start with a solid implementation framework, in which company’s consider how they want to function, how they would like to best connect with their employees and how they envision them working. In coming up with this type of plan, company’s will learn about new skills and gain a new perspective on how things are done in other departments.