COVID-19 has changed that view fundamentally – not just for the crisis period we are in but for the future too. I say that based on what we are being told again and again by leaders and managers in major organizations (corporate, public and non-profit) globally. The only question is how substantial this shift to remote working will be over time – and, as this report describes, there will be significant geographic, demographic and cultural variations in how this plays out. (...) The report inevitably has some limitations. It has been prepared on a tight timescale in response to the situation in order to be able to quickly share our learnings with the many organizations who are looking for guidance. Therefore, for reasons of expediency and to ensure reliable insights, it draws on past experiences as well as current insights relating to roles and situations where remote working from home was already and is currently possible. As a result, it focuses primarily on office-based work and on those roles where it has been possible to switch relatively easily to remote working. That said, we are discovering as we write that what we might call nonoffice-based organizations, ranging from hospitals to banks to supermarkets and delivery companies, have swiftly switched or scaled remote working to cope as best they can during the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. These ¡°newly remote¡± workers are innovating and adapting in real-time and we hope that the insights we are gaining around this can be included in an accompanying future report that will distill the best practices and learnings from this newly remote workforce. |