What can environmentally conscious corporations do in a remote-first world?
verum remote work index
The United Nations believes remote work can assist in reaching 14 of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
As countries modify their regulatory frameworks, we can anticipate a wave of new and updated regulations looking to foster sustainable aspects of remote work.
Laurel Farrer, collaborates with the world's leading businesses and governments to increase virtual job accessibility, train distributed leaders, and design economic initiatives. Her research and results demonstrate How Virtual Jobs Are Saving The World in three key areas:
Economic empowerment: When workers are geographically dispersed, so is their impact on communities, industry innovation, and the global economy.
Diversity & Inclusion: Equal remote work earns equal opportunity. Period. It turns out that when managers are focused on the what of results, suddenly the who, when, and where don't matter as much
Environmental Sustainability: Remote jobs create less waste and shorter commutes, which mean lighter carbon footprints.
VERUM Remote Work Index
Enabled by Cognitive CWX
Quantify the level of remote flexibility inherent to every role.
Align remote work with your cooperate ESG goals and reporting:
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Surface insights on impact to carbon footprint reduction
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Visibility into DEI impacts
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Inform workplace strategy
By incorporating the Verum Remote Work Index across the business, companies can evaluate impacts to their overall carbon footprint reduction goals and cost savings goals – both the cost of employment as well as real estate costs. The RWI can inform and direct a company’s workplace strategy and ultimately, feed all of this data into the Environmental Social Responsibility and Governance (ESG) reporting process.
The genesis of developing the Verum Remote Work Index concept came from thinking about how corporations will likely struggle communicating the impact of remote/hybrid work beyond the simple measure of employee satisfaction. It’s one thing to say that moving to a hybrid work model made employees of the company happier and perhaps more productive, but what material impact did the change have on the company’s overall business? The bottom line? And how can you report it?
The Verum Remote Work Index (RWI) in its simplest definition is a calculation by a company’s human resources department of the level of flexibility inherent to each role based on internal data collected during the pandemic. Thus, a position assigned an RWI of 65 means that the position allows up to 65% of functions to be performed outside of the office. Every single future job description could contain an RWI so candidates can search job opportunities based on their preference for working from home or working from anywhere.
This RWI score is all inclusive, meaning that FTEs/ Part-Timers, Contactors, etc., every type of work is assigned an RWI. Beyond that, the RWI is instrumental in evolving a company’s hybrid work model as companies seek to strike the right balance of working from home and working from an office.
Similarly, as companies evolve their hybrid models towards performance outcomes workplace will change to more virtual work and the RWIs will change as well. Likely, they'll change more towards a higher index than a lower one, meaning a more "remote capable" workforce. The need for office space will evolve too, again moving towards less need for physical space than more.
