A mere five years ago all manner of predictions were suggesting that by now a much higher portion of the workforce all around the world would be working remotely. Things haven’t quite turned out that way though for a number of different reasons.

In any case, the 9-5 workday template has been reduced to nothing more than a guideline of perhaps the amount of time which should be put into one’s professional work, even in the case of a remote worker. Time can only be equated proportionately to productivity in a few cases though, so if a certain worker is able to maintain productivity levels over a shorter period of time than that of another, surely they cannot be chained down to having to be at work for the whole standard eight-hour workday?

It is indeed some sketchy ground to have to navigate though, attested to in great part by the fact that it’s only really the newer companies which are employing the remote working model. The likes of WordPress are pretty much an organizations which exist entirely in the digital space. It was born like that and expanded in very much the same manner, with each new employee being added to the payroll pretty much being afforded the freedom to work wherever it is they feel like working from.

They don’t have to report to any office every single day of the week, with pretty much the only time that is a requirement being when there’s some sort of global meet-up scheduled. That meet-up further perpetuates the remote model under deployment because it’s pretty much just attending the meeting by tuning in via the internet and watching a live video presentation.

Productivity comes into focus again as a factor of the 9-5 standard working day time frame. Organizations which have been operating under the remote model from the day they were born don’t even impose this or any other timeframe on their remote employees. WordPress comes into view again as good example. It’s not about how many hours you lodge, but rather about what you’ve managed to get done. You are given a task which is challenging nevertheless, but the important thing is to complete that task. How quickly you manage to complete it is your business, but perhaps completing it quickly or easily demonstrates a unique skill which you may have, which in turn could perhaps be packaged up into some sort of knowledgebase and relayed to other team members assigned similar tasks.

Admittedly though, even some of the oldest tech companies around rather operate a hybrid system which involves somewhat of a following of the 9-5 workday template, but that is complemented with elements of being able to enjoy the freedom and responsibility of working remotely.

Google (the parent company of which is now ALPHABET) for one allows some employees to work remotely or in fact to drop in at work whenever they feel the need to use company resources, otherwise to maintain productivity levels, in-house employees can take advantage of the sleeping pods and take a nap at work! How about that for demonstrating that the 9-5 workday template is indeed just a guideline?