Distributed Workforce Is the Future of Work, and the Future Is Now, Says Jon Arnold

While there have been people working remotely for years, the concept of a distributed workforce never became a widespread and mainstream thing until governments mandated all but the most essential workers to work from home, to avoid catching and spreading the COVID-19 virus. Once governments loosened restrictions and normal business resumed, many employers wanted their employees to return to the office.

However, by then, the genie was already out of the bottle. Employees realized that they could be just as effective, if not better, while working from home. In fact, global labor productivity surged in 2020, data from the International Labor Organization showed. Employees now knew that they could perform their jobs effectively without having to wake up earlier and endure terrible commute conditions. Many employees are now resistant to return to the office full-time, and there is a tug-of-war between them and the management. 

According to Jon Arnold, independent technology analyst and principal of J Arnold & Associates, many companies that brute-forced their employees back to the office experienced decreased productivity and morale. Meanwhile, other companies realized the benefits of having a distributed workforce, allowing employees to work from where they are most comfortable. They acknowledged that some employees are most productive in the office, while others perform better outside. Other companies instituted hybrid schedules, where employees head to the office only on certain days of the week. These companies use communication technology as a bridge to allow them to function even when employees are not present in the office. 

Due to the pandemic, usage of video conferencing and collaboration platforms grew exponentially. The companies that developed them also encountered strong growth, because they were at the right place at the right time. Usage of these platforms persisted even after the pandemic and Arnold says this is because they offered a great solution that addressed people’s needs. He adds that change happens on a large scale with these new technologies and that they're profoundly impactful. Change is rarely incremental, and it happens significantly faster than how it used to in the past.

In his more than 20 years as a consultant and analyst, Arnold works with businesses to develop strategies to implement digital transformation, especially with regard to the impact of disruptive communications technologies. Prior to founding J Arnold and Associates, he led the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) program at an international business technology analyst firm, helping organizations adopt the then-emerging technology in the early 2000s.

According to Arnold, digital transformation, at its core, is about transitioning from an analog world to a digital one. In his earlier work with VoIP, he helped companies transform their communications systems from analog phone lines, using touch-tone and rotary dial phones, to communicating over the internet using software.  

“Prior to transitioning from analog to VoIP, voice was never thought of as data, because it traveled on a circuit connection, and it came and went when the phone call ended. It just disappeared and there was no trace of it. Meanwhile, digital calls are data, and that's the biggest change here. Once something is in data form, it can be measured, captured, manipulated, and shared. So, it creates new forms of value for the business. Once something is in digital format, there’s less cost involved, and it can be automated.”

Arnold says it’s this digital transformation that allowed businesses to have a distributed workforce, and in some cases, this transformation was forced upon them by the pandemic. In just over three years, the nature of work has changed so much, and most of those changes are here to stay. Remote work and a distributed workforce have been called the “future of work”, but Arnold says that changes happen so fast and that this is the present state of work. 

“As shown by many organizations being unprepared for remote working during the first stages of the pandemic, digital transformation can happen really fast, especially when driven by necessity,” he says. “Furthermore, the changes it brings are often at an incredibly impactful level. Companies usually get caught flat-footed thinking the next major initiative will be a five-year project, when in reality, it should be a two-year project because it'll already be too late by then.”