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Hawaii and remote workers

CNN - What better way to survive a pandemic than to do it on a beach in Hawaii?

For anyone who finds the idea dreamy, Hawaii is offering free round trip tickets to Oahu to out-of-state remote workers who want to live and work there while contributing to the state's economy.

The state launched the temporary residency program, known as "Movers and Shakas," in collaboration with schools and businesses. It's accepting its first group of applicants until December 22.

"Movers and Shakas is a small step towards economic recovery and diversifying our economy," Jason Higa, the group's founder, told CNN.

"The pandemic," he said, "has normalized remote work for the foreseeable future, so we believe this situation presents an opportunity for local residents to return home, and for out of state professionals to experience Hawaii, not as tourists, but as contributing members of our community."

Fifty people will be chosen for the first cohort. To apply, you must be a remote worker and at least 18 years old.

Participants will have to move to Hawai'e within one month of being selected and must spend at least 30 consecutive days in Hawaii.

"Hawai'i currently has the lowest rate per capita of Covid infections in the country, also making it one of the safest places to live and work," according to the program's news release.

"Movers and Shakas" is specifically looking for individuals who want to contribute to Hawaii's local communities.

Those accepted into the program are required to commit a few hours every week to a nonprofit where they can use their knowledge and skills.

Though the program will accept remote workers from across the United States, it's also geared towards former Hawaii residents who want to return.

Among those people is Richard Matsui, a Movers and Shakas founder who recently returned to Hawaii from San Francisco.  He told CNN

"I was born and raised in Hawaii and my dream was to move back home. The pandemic normalized remote work and I took the opportunity to relocate home."

Matsui also pointed to one of the program's central goals: to help diversify the economy.

"Beyond bringing in valuable dollars into our local businesses, the real value of the program is bringing talented knowledge workers who will help to build our communities through volunteer work and to make our economy more resilient," Matsui said. "On the one hand, the pandemic is an enormous crisis, but on the other it presents Hawaii with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to diversify our economy."

 From CNN (edited)

Celebrity chef Vikas Khanna (audio)

 

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Managers and the pandemic

Businesses are still struggling to understand which of the pandemic’s effects will be temporary and which will turn out to be permanent. 

Three new reports attempt to analyze these longer-term trends. One is from Glassdoor, a website that allows workers to rank their employers. Another is from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a management consultancy. The third is from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), a British professional body. Read together, they imply that firms stand to benefit—but that managers’ lives are about to get more difficult.

One change that is all but certain to last is employees spending more of their time working at home. The Glassdoor report finds that less commuting has improved employee health and morale. Splitting the week between the home and the office is also overwhelmingly popular with workers: 70% of those surveyed wanted such a combination, 26% wanted to stay at home and just 4% desired a full-time return to the office. Perhaps as a consequence, remote work has not dented productivity—and indeed improved it in some areas. Flexible work schedules can be a cheap way to retain employees who have child-care and other home responsibilities.

Telecommuting offers other potential cost savings, and not just the reduced need for office space. Remote workers do not need to live in big cities where property is expensive. If they live in cheaper towns and suburbs, companies don't need to pay them as much. Glassdoor estimates that software engineers and developers who leave San Francisco could eventually face salary cuts of 21-25%; those quitting New York could expect reductions of 10-12%. As the report points out, remote employees are, in essence, competing with a global workforce and are thus in a much weaker bargaining position.

Despite its advantages, a remote workforce brings challenges for managers, as the third report demonstrates. The CMI surveyed 2,300 managers and employees. The survey shows that the experience of remote working has not been uniform. Of those working virtually, 69% of women with children want to work at least one day from home when the pandemic ends, compared with 56% of men with kids.

The results highlight just how important effective communication is to good management. They also unearthed an interesting difference of perspective: nearly half of senior executives thought they were engaging employees more in decision-making since the pandemic, but only 27% of employees agreed.

Ironically, though managers may have feared that remote working would allow employees to slack, it may be that managers have not been up to the challenge. Bosses may have spent too much time videoconferencing and not enough speaking directly with subordinates.

In a world of remote working, employees stress how the employer communicates with them. Not so much “management by walking around” as management by phoning—or Zooming—around. It is time to get dialing.

 

From The Economist (edited)