A randomized controlled trial published in the leading academic journal Nature finds two days of working from home improved job satisfaction and reduced turnover when compared to those working in offices five days a week.



The long-simmering debate over whether remote work hurts productivity or dampens worker performance has reached the peak of academic prestige: A study in the journal&nbsp;Nature.



Leaders eager to get workers back to the office often&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">believe</a>&nbsp;it leads to things like lower worker output and an erosion of workplace culture. But a new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07500-2" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">paper to be published Wednesday</a>&nbsp;in the leading academic journal by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom and his co-authors suggests new evidence for advantages to hybrid schedules. A randomized controlled trial of employees in a tech firm based in China found that two days of work from home and three days in the office reduced quit rates, improved job satisfaction and had no impact on performance, when compared with employees who worked full-time in the office.



“Everyone’s heard of&nbsp;Nature,” says Bloom. If you’re talking about flexible work arrangements with a CEO who wants people back full time, “having a large, randomized controlled trial—they can still ignore it, but it gets a lot harder.”



The study randomly divided 1,612 workers at Trip.com, a large global travel firm, by whether they had even or odd birthdates. One group was able to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays; the other worked in the office all five days. The researchers found that for those with hybrid schedules, attrition rates dropped by one-third over the six-month experiment period—and were even greater for non-managers, female employees and those with long commutes—while work satisfaction scores improved. The hybrid group also did not have significant differences on performance reviews or promotion rates, even for up to two years after the start of the experiment, and there were not significant differences in the lines of code submitted by the software engineers between the two groups.



That trial method—a real-life experiment on two employee groups randomly split by nothing other than birthdate—allowed the researchers to conclude it was the hybrid work schedule that caused the improvements in retention and job satisfaction, Bloom says, rather than simply being coincidental to other factors. “In many studies you don’t [have that],” Bloom says. “There are no differences between people born on even and odd birthdays.”



The study did not look specifically at workers who are full-time remote, or at arrangements where employees have personal choice over where and when they work, which remains a priority for many workers. That debate will likely continue. But the current study offers additional evidence to support the value of employees getting to work from home at least part of the time as opposed to full-time in the office.



In the paper, Bloom and his co-authors note that some may wonder if a possible explanation for the reduced turnover in the hybrid work group is that members of the full-time office group were frustrated they didn’t get the flexible schedule during the experiment. However, turnover rates for full-time office workers were slightly reduced from the six-month period before the experiment, the researchers write in the paper, suggesting that some may have “guessed (correctly) that the policy would be rolled out to all employees once the experiment ended.”



Another effect: The study found that managers at the company shifted their views of hybrid work over the experiment period. Before it started, managers at the company perceived that hybrid work would reduce productivity by 2.6%; by its close, they believed flexible arrangements could improve productivity by 1%. “There is value in experimentation,” the study authors write.



The paper follows months of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">debate</a>&nbsp;over the impact of remote work on company culture, employee productivity and potential downsides to innovation or collaboration. Bloom, who has studied remote work for decades, prompted a stir last year when a&nbsp;<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kqbngD8pemqxAkZmWCOQ32Yk6PXK9eVA/view" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">working paper</a>&nbsp;that reviewed existing studies on the topic pointed to research showing that fully remote workforces appeared to have slightly reduced productivity on average. But the studies also showed that when the work schedule was well-managed and hybrid at least some of the time, the effect was flat or slightly positive, Bloom&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2023/08/19/the-war-over-work-from-home-the-data-ceos-and-workers-need-to-know/">told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;at the time</a>.



Indeed, an early paper by Bloom looked at the same company, Trip.com (one of its co-founders,&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.trip.com/board-member/james-jianzhang-liang" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">James Liang</a>, is a co-author and former PhD student of Bloom’s).&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">It found</a>&nbsp;that among a group of remote call center agents who worked in person just one day a week, productivity increased 13% and turnover fell by half.



The newer study looked at workers in fields like marketing, software engineering, finance and accounting, helping to address concerns that past studies on lower-paid employees doing repetitive tasks with more objective measurements may not be generalizable to the workforce at large. “These are creatives, they’re in graduate or professional jobs, and they’re innovating, creating, training,” Bloom says of participants in the current study.



Trip.com, Bloom says, was seeking a way to reduce costs in doing the experiment, estimating that each employee who quit cost the company $20,000 in recruiting and training, the paper reports. As a result of the study, the company decided to extend the hybrid policy to all employees.



“There are good and bad things about working from home, but it turns out with hybrid they roughly net each other out,” says Bloom. “Employees were dramatically happier if they get to work from home two days a week, and as a result their quit rates fell by a third. &#8230; The company looked at this and said, ‘what’s not to like?’ ”

A unrecognisable woman works from home. Besides her is a delicious slice of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Naughty but nice!

This New Hybrid Work Study Could Help Reconcile The War Over Work From Home

Called back to the office and don’t want to go in for all the requested days? The consequences for opting out may not be as bad as you think.



The latest iteration of one of the largest and most widely respected surveys of U.S. residents about remote work, <a href="https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/WFHResearch_updates_July2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">released Monday</a>, asked workers what their employers did to those who worked on business premises fewer days than expected. The most common answer? Nada. Zilch. Nothing.



Some 35% of employees gave that response in the latest update from&nbsp;<a href="https://wfhresearch.com/research-and-policy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WFH Research</a>, a survey project started in May 2020 that tracks working arrangements and attitudes and collected 7500 responses in June. Nineteen percent said they received only a verbal reprimand.&nbsp;



Layoffs may be mounting and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/06/03/elon-musks-memo-didnt-just-demand-a-return-to-offices-it-promoted-overwork/?sh=2a4e9994739a">strict return-to-work policies</a>&nbsp;may seem like a way to weed out those who prefer working from their sofa as economic concerns grow. But the survey from WFH Research, as well as another major report on sentiment about remote work&nbsp;<a href="https://futureforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-Forum-Pulse-Report-Summer-2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">released Tuesday</a>, find that employees want to work remotely more than ever—and may not always face consequences for doing so.



“This is basically not being enforced in a lot of situations,” says <a href="https://www.jmbarrero.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jose Maria Barrero</a>, an assistant professor at ITAM business school in Mexico. “Not being there? Sure it’s breaking the letter of the rule. But it’s not really impacting the effectiveness of their organization.”



As more and more workplaces require some kind of office return—whether full-time onsite or in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/03/15/two-years-into-the-pandemic-almost-twice-as-many-workers-prefer-hybrid-schedules-to-fully-remote-work/?sh=6b3f784d77ec">hybrid arrangements</a>—some have experienced internal revolts over onsite requirements. Back in May, a group of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2022/05/03/apple-employees-write-scathing-hybrid-work-open-letter/?sh=15a750ffa34f">Apple workers</a>&nbsp;known as Apple Together wrote an&nbsp;<a href="https://appletogether.org/hotnews/thoughts-on-office-bound-work.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">open letter</a>&nbsp;to the tech giant’s leadership, asking “to decide for ourselves, together with our teams and direct manager, what kind of work arrangement works best for each one of us.” Apple later delayed that requirement, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-17/apple-delays-plan-to-have-workers-in-office-three-days-a-week" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg</a>.



To be sure, many professionals whose jobs can be done remotely <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/05/05/just-4-of-employers-are-making-everyone-return-to-the-office-full-time-survey-finds/?sh=3f5ef05ae1a2">aren’t being asked</a> to work onsite full-time, according to the survey data. The latest quarterly survey of more than 10,000 knowledge workers released Tuesday by <a href="https://futureforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-Forum-Pulse-Report-Summer-2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Future Forum</a> found that only about one in three globally are actually working full-time in the office. But only about one in five actually want to work at the office full-time—the lowest rate the survey has found in two years—suggesting a disconnect between the two.



Still,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/7-7-percent-of-workers-teleworked-due-to-covid-19-in-april-2022.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>&nbsp;reminds us that as a portion of the overall workforce, those who can work remotely is small: In April 2022, 7.7 percent of employed people worked at home for pay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government agency reported, down 2.3 percentage points from March 2022 and down from 35.4 percent in May 2020 when the data was first collected.&nbsp;



Some workers did report penalties for slow-walking their office attendance in the WFH Research survey. Of the 3800 respondents whose answers were considered, 14% said they had a negative performance review, and 16.5% said they faced a reduction in their pay or bonus. Meanwhile, some reported being threatened with termination (15.6%) or fired outright (12.4%). It’s important to remember that in most states employers could terminate workers for not following return mandates unless you have a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/pandemic-preparedness-workplace-and-americans-disabilities-act" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">disability</a>&nbsp;or could make a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/coronavirus-workers-who-are-scared-to-return-to-the-office.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">discrimination claim</a>.



Yet Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford who collaborates with Barrero, said in an email he suspects punishments may not be more common because there are few good policies for enforcing such rules. He offers the example of a high-performing employee who <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/04/19/workers-facing-inflexible-office-returns-show-worsening-scores-for-stress-anxiety-and-work-life-balance-their-bosses-not-so-much/?sh=b6dd038525bb">returns to the office</a> for three days a week when four is expected.



“What should the manager do? Ignore it as the employee is performing well—but then look weak. Or reprimand the employee, but risk losing them by pointlessly disciplining them.” In a tight labor market, few employers have wanted to make those choices—or build resentment for rules that are inconsistently applied. “The old saying is ‘don’t set bad rules because they are impossible to enforce,’” Bloom said.&nbsp;



The results come at the same time demand for working from home is higher than ever, according to the report from <a href="https://futureforum.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Future Forum</a>, a consortium launched by Slack with other partners about the future of work. A preference for flexible work reached an all-time high in its <a href="https://futureforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-Forum-Pulse-Report-Summer-2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a> released Tuesday, with 55% of knowledge workers saying they want to work fewer than three days a week in the office.



Brian Elliott, who leads the consortium, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in an interview that few of the companies he speaks with are tracking how often office workers show up on site, and if they do have such a policy, many have relaxed them. “The mandate is being softened quite dramatically,” he says. More employers are focusing on coming to the office for specific purposes such as team meetings or collaboration opportunities, he says, and&nbsp;<a href="https://electrek.co/2022/06/03/tesla-pause-all-hiring-cut-staff-elon-musk-bad-feeling-economy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">despite speculation</a>, aren’t using return-to-office policies as a way to grow attrition amid economic belt-tightening.&nbsp;



That’s partly because they know doing so could hurt diversity, Elliott says. Future Forum’s survey finds that employees from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups value remote or hybrid arrangements at a greater rate than white employees. Some organizations, like Facebook, have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/19/facebook-diversity-report-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">linked remote work policies</a>&nbsp;to increased diversity figures. “If you were going to use this as a way to force some attrition, what a rough way to do it,” Elliott says, noting that’s not something he’s seeing.



While such attitudes could shift if a downturn proceeds, many workers may be counting on their bosses turning a blind eye to perfect office attendance if their jobs allow them to work from home. For now, says Barrero: “Employees know they can kind of call the firm’s bluff.”



By Jena McGregor, Forbes Staff

Afro american young man typing on laptop

In The Return-To-Office Standoff, Many Workers Say They Face Few Penalties For Staying Home

Restricted physical movement and social contact have increased the reliance on technology but what are the long-term side effects? We unpack the science behind screen time.



By Tiana Cline



As Early As 1955, people started panicking about the idea of too much screen time. The saying ‘square eyes’ came along with the invention of television yet today, we’re looking at screens more than ever before. The old adage of a work-life balance has shifted to achieving the perfect screen-life balance which is said to be better for sleep, brain development, mental health and everything in between.



“The problem with screens is not the screens themselves but rather the distance,” explains Dr Johann Lamprecht, a specialist ophthalmic eye surgeon based in Johannesburg. “If we look at the long- term effect of too much screen time, the most likely problem is the development of myopia, or nearsightedness.”



Lamprecht explains that the eye grows before the age of seven and again during the teenage years. The longer the eye is, the more nearsighted you become. “If you spend all day, every day, on a screen – especially during your early developmental years – and you’re focusing up close the whole time, you’re sending your brain signals that your eyes need to grow. It’s long-term, you cannot reverse that growth or make your eyes shorter again.”



Increased screen time isn’t the only link to myopia – reading can also cause nearsightedness. In East Asian countries, for example, there is a myopia epidemic which began in the 1980s. According to a Lancet journal, nearly 90% of adults in this region are nearsighted and this is due to lack of exposure to natural sunlight. Being hunched over a book indoors is just as problematic as too much time spent on a tablet, phone or e-reader – our eyes need bright, ambient light for optimal eye growth.



“In terms of near work, the recommendation is a 20-20-20 rule. For every 20 minutes, for 20 seconds, look at something [more] than 20 feet away – that’s about six meters. When something is six meters or more away from you, the light rays from that object are essentially parallel. For your brain and your eyes, that is distance vision,” says Lamprecht. “When you’re in constant focus, your eyes have to work constantly. That is the trigger for axial length growth – the front to back size of your eye which is then stimulated and eventually becomes a form of shortsightedness.”



Another screen time side effect is digital eye strain, also known as computer vision syndrome (CVS). While digital eye strain is temporary and hasn’t been linked to any long-term health issues, it can affect both adults and children.



“The type of content you look at plays a big role. If you’re concentrating on an Excel spreadsheet the whole day, it is very different to watching a movie. Staggered images and interactive images differ,” adds Vincent Mahlangu, Acer’s product manager for commercial displays and gadgets.



“Newer screens are built to protect your eyes without compromising the color quality. Today’s technology manages the light at the source to ensure compliance with the two standards for color balance and blue light reduction.”



While older monitors that flickered saw people picking up additional accessories like screen protectors or computer glasses to protect their eyes from CVS, today’s devices have this technology built in. What’s more is that there is a big difference between looking at a LED or LCD screen: “LED or OLED displays are organic. It’s been proven that LED displays – light emitting diode technology – release less than 50% of blue light compared to normal screens. It is inevitable that you’ll find flickering with LCD displays due to backlight scanning and local dimming,” says Mahlangu.



Mahlangu adds that brightness and color accuracy go hand-in- hand with eye health. Reducing the light of your screen may lead to eye strain so choosing a display that offers 100% color accuracy (which is as close as possible to what the human eye sees) is a good, long-term investment for anyone who is worried about excessive screen time.



Blue light, on the other hand, is naturally occurring – it’s one the several colors in the visible light spectrum and our exposure to it mainly comes from sunlight. Natural blue light exposure compared to what is emitted by an artificial, electronic source is surprisingly minimal and cannot cause retinal damage.



It may, however, interfere with sleep and in the long run, this plays a role in both brain development and mental health. One 2020 Harvard University study reported that different colors of light have different effects on the human body and being exposed to blue wavelengths at night supresses the secretion of melatonin, the ‘sleep hormone’.



According to Dr Michael Rich, director of the Digital Wellness Lab in Boston, healthcare organizations are considering technology addiction a pathology, similar to substance abuse, yet the use of screens has only accelerated with Covid-19 which means we need to start looking at the science behind screens before declaring what is good, bad or mentally problematic:



“It’s not a true addiction in the sense of having physiological changes when withdrawing from a substance. The word addiction is so stigmatizing&#8230; the overuse of screen time isn’t a standalone diagnosis but rather a syndrome driven by underlying psychological issues that were subclinical outside of the interactive media space or undertreated.”



“Screen time has been on the increase for the last 50 years and it’s not going to get any less,” says Lamprecht. “If you stare at a blue light filtered screen with the perfect prescription, glare-protected glasses for 10 hours, you’re still going to get digital eye strain, tension headaches and neck pain. It has got to do with the amount of time that we are exposed to screens, more than the screen itself. Positive screen time is about self-regulation, building good habits and going outside.”

Young woman doing home finances in the evening

Work-Life Balance Or Screen-Life Balance?

Dutch-born Sid Sijbrandij built a developer-tool business valued at nearly $3 billion without ever opening an office. Now he’s cautioning companies against doing telecommuting halfway.



Sid Sijbrandij knows the perils of working from home. In 2018, after years of toiling exclusively from a small room in his 47th-floor apartment in a San Francisco high-rise, the entrepreneur developed foot problems. So he moved in a treadmill desk alongside his Zoom-friendly green screen and three monitors. 



But GitLab’s CEO says the problem isn’t remote work, but how it’s practiced. Unless you’re employed by one of the handful of companies that have fully embraced the new work reality, Sijbrandij (pronounced&nbsp;see brandy) thinks you’re probably doing it wrong. His radical take on remote work: It’s effective only if you go all in. Partial measures will create tiers of employees who will split the workforce over time, driving away top-performing remote workers who don’t want to compete with lesser-achieving on-site colleagues. “We’ll see some companies . . . go back [to the office] and try to make the best of it, and I think they’ll struggle,” he says.&nbsp;



How GitLab does it: The only time staffers meet in person is for the company’s annual all-hands gatherings, held (in pre-Covid times, anyway) in lively and relatively cheap locations like Greece. Another pillar of GitLab’s remote-work absolutism: radical transparency. It publishes a public online&nbsp;<a href="https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">handbook</a>&nbsp;detailing how it approaches pretty much any topic. You won’t find individual employees’ salaries, but you will find its executives’ strategic objectives for the current quarter and the exact formula for calculating wages in the 67 countries in which GitLab staff live, from Kenya to Morocco to Serbia. (There’s also a section on how and when to talk to Sijbrandij, and one on his cat.) Anything not in the handbook, which would run to 8,400 pages if printed, is likely in an internal Google Doc. Every meeting at GitLab has at least one companion online doc.&nbsp;



Sijbrandij also relies heavily on documentation to allow GitLab staffers to work seamlessly. Employees update docs and take notes, or share information asynchronously in Slack channels and video messages. Resolved decisions or plans get merged into the handbook, which tracks it all. “Every time you have to wait for permission or sign-off for someone else to do something, that’s a problem,” he says.&nbsp;



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How To Play It by Jon D. Markman</h2>



Microsoft is the best way to play the rise of software developer tools. The enterprise software giant in 2018 purchased GitHub, an open-platform competitor to GitLab. The $7.5 billion all-stock acquisition gave Microsoft access to the Linux community, a showcase for its own developer tools and services and a way to monetize the developer community. In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, its Intelligent Cloud division, where GitHub landed, reported $39 billion in revenue and $13.9 billion in operating income, gains of 21% and 20.9%, respectively. Although Microsoft shares are up roughly 28% in 2020, company outreach to developers and the growth of its cloud business could lift the stock to $290 in a year, a gain of 41% from current levels.



Jon D. Markman is president of Markman Capital Insight and the editor of Fast Forward Investing.



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He has built one of the world’s most valuable startups, valued at $2.8 billion in 2019, without maintaining offices for any of its 1,300 far-flung employees. It helps that GitLab—which provides a suite of software tools that help developers build,&nbsp;manage and secure their apps—plays in a high-tech category that’s even more important as businesses push sales and customer interactions online.&nbsp;



Even among other pre-pandemic no-office highfliers—notably Automattic, the company behind WordPress—Sijbrandij has long stood out. “We are probably not as extreme as Sid is,” says Dave McJannet, CEO of remote-only cloud infrastructure startup HashiCorp, valued at $5 billion. Today, though, Sijbrandij’s radicalism is drawing a vast following. Downloads of GitLab’s free&nbsp;<a href="https://about.gitlab.com/resources/ebook-remote-playbook/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">e-book</a>&nbsp;on remote work have exceeded 70,000 since its March release; employees are in high demand for webinars.&nbsp;



GitLab’s own globetrotting setup got its start in Europe. Sijbrandij had worked at a submarine company and helped run an online app-review startup on the side when, while managing web projects for the Dutch Ministry of Justice, he came across an open-source project from Ukraine called GitLab with hundreds of volunteer contributors. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I thought we would spend the next 10 years convincing the world how to do remote better,” says GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij, 41. “Instead, Covid did it within months.” </blockquote>



In 2012, he reached out to its creators, Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov, telling them he was going to build a business atop their project. A year later, Zaporozhets joined as cofounder and CTO; he is now an engineering fellow. Sizov joined in 2014 and is a senior developer. Sijbrandij set about building GitLab the company—named after Git, a popular system for tracking changes in source code—to sell subscriptions to software tools that help manage projects built on the open-source tech. Sijbrandij, Zaporozhets, Sizov and six others got together temporarily in California in early 2015 to participate in the prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator—the only three months they’ve ever spent working in the same space.&nbsp;



Most of GitLab went back to Europe afterward. Sijbrandij, enamored of the startup scene and with an eye to fundraising, stayed behind. Today, GitLab&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/09/17/gitlab-doubles-valuation-to-nearly-3-billion/?sh=1fd10cce1794">has raised $476 million</a>, most of which is still on its balance sheet; it sells a suite of 10 different app tools, from development to security, for up to $99 per user per month, bringing in over $75 million in revenue last year from more than 15,000 customers, including Nvidia, Siemens and Goldman Sachs, which later invested.&nbsp;



The trend of companies moving their operations online, especially since the start of the pandemic, has pushed even more development to the cloud, meaning business is booming. But customers are increasingly likely to call not for software support, but rather a crash course in how GitLab runs its business.&nbsp;



“Ten to 15% of our engagement with partners is helping them see how we do things,” says Michelle Woodward Hodges, GitLab’s vice president of channel partnerships.&nbsp;



Not everything is rosy about remote work, especially now. Sijbrandij is quick to note that he has struggled with not being able to travel; parents on his staff have faced extra child-care demands. GitLab has sought to address that through Friday holidays and has encouraged staycations. “It’s important for everyone to remember that this is not work from anywhere, this is working from home during a pandemic,” Sijbrandij says. “This is not normal times.”&nbsp;



One irony of spreading the remote-work gospel: More companies following GitLab means its secret is out. “We’ve had an advantage where if you were outside a metro area, there were few options to join a fast-growing company. We’re going to have a ton more competition now, and that’s going to drive wages up,” Sijbrandij says. “I think that’s a great thing for the world. I’m super looking forward to that.”



-By Alex Konrad, Forbes Staff

sid_sijbrandij_gitlab_ceo

No Office, No Problem: Software Unicorn Gitlab’s CEO Warns You’re Probably Doing Remote Work Wrong

Remote and flexible working policies are increasingly popular, but put companies at huge risk when it comes to cyber security. If starting your own business, these pointers could be useful.



IF YOU’RE A MODERN, PROGRESSIVE COMPANY, IT’S highly likely you’ve got some sort of flexible remote working policy. Unfortunately, with this greater freedom comes greater risk, and remote workers are often the brittle link in a business’s security chain. Employees in general, according to beleaguered IT professionals, are lackadaisical about security software, lackluster about the Wi-Fi they use, and apathetic about their physical security too; writing their passwords on Post It notes and sticking them blatantly on their laptops.



And cyber security is not something to be ignored.



“Cyber-attacks are increasing exponentially,” explains Lukas van der Merwe, a specialist sales executive for security at T-Systems South Africa. Working globally, T-Systems picked up a peak of four million cyber-attacks in 2017. In 2019, this number was a breath-taking 53 million. Every IT security expert interviewed for this article viewed a cyber breach as a matter of when, not if, for most companies.



Remote work is also on the rise. Says Johnny Kromer, a technology executive at Nashua Communications: “We have definitely seen an increase in remote workers, almost all customer solutions today have to be installed with a different percent of mobile access.”



So, how do remote workers open you up to ransomware, phishing, hacking and general cyber security lawlessness?



There are two broad divisions to be made here: digital and physical.



DIGITAL



Remote workers make you vulnerable simply by taking their devices out of the safe online space your IT department has set up in the office, and recklessly using the free Wi-Fi available at most coffee shops. Nothing that’s free is really free, as they say, and the cost of using free Wi-Fi to access your email, client information and more means you open the fence and share your online picnic blanket with a bunch of randoms who might have their eyes on your data. Since public Wi-Fi is unencrypted, it’s easy for hackers to target the individuals using it.



Remote workers are also at a risk of falling for email phishing scams, as generally most of their communication is done via email with their company.



Van der Merwe has helped clients recover from cleverly crafted phishing mails that made it all the way to the CFO for sign-offs on large amounts of money, authentically copying documents and even signatures from the inboxes they had access to. One client lost R1 million ($69,000) to such a scam.



There are some simple things that companies and individuals can do to reduce hacking risks – a) setting up a VPN, or virtual private network, which allows workers to safely access the internet from any Wi-Fi connection; b) Ensuring workers have adequate anti-virus software. This is a bit of a pain point as many remote workers use their own devices and are reluctant to give their companies access to their computers, but this should be a non-negotiable requirement. c) Password documents that list every login are a huge no-no – with most corporates not realizing that these documents are available to anyone on the internet (if saved incorrectly on the Cloud). It is recommended you rather use an online password program that is encrypted; d) 2-factor authentication for logins is one of the easiest ways to secure access, and you can set it for most online programs through their security settings (including social media like Facebook); e) Set up BYOD (bring your own device) policies with strict rules around security measures and the ability to remotely wipe a device, whether a phone or laptop.



PHYSICAL



The other risk is taken far less seriously, with most companies focusing on their digital perimeter rather than any physical one. Some physical risks include:



a) Open laptops when heading to the loo: best practice is to enable auto-locking after a certain period of inactivity; b) Over-the-shoulder hacks: don’t, for example, work on vulnerable files in a public space like the Gautrain (rail service in Johannesburg) where people can peer over your shoulder;



c) Eavesdropping: ever said your ID number or password out loud in a coffee shop? Yeah, don’t do that; d) Unshredded documents: you could have your identity stolen through unshredded documents – this is a real risk; e) Passwords physically written down: the Post It note password on your laptop is a terrible idea.



BEHAVIOR CHANGES



“Train staff, then train them some more! Most companies could do more security training and still be unprepared,” says Jon Tullett, a senior research manager for IT services sub-Saharan Africa, at IDC South Africa. “An employee who sees security as an impediment is on the side of the attacker, since they’re likely to circumvent safeguards in the name of productivity.” Businesses need to make security a priority with clear policies in place, and regular training of staff. Overall, internet security is something companies should take far more seriously. Every expert interviewed was horrified at the belligerent indifference most businesses take to their vulnerabilities, and everyone viewed breaches and security scares as a certainty in the next few years. South Africa has already had its taste of this,



with government departments, newspapers and ISPs (internet service providers) alike all coming under fire in 2019 alone. As Van der Merwe says, “Most people trade off convenience for security.” But be one of those people at your own risk.



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">IF THE WORST HAPPENS… BUSINESS (CYBER) INSURANCE</h4>



Vera Nagtegaal, executive head of Hippo.co.za, says that your insurance should look at the following aspects:



REPLACEMENT COST: Insure your tech items for the value of replacement and not necessarily what you paid for it.



WHAT’S INCLUDED IN COVER: Should you insure your laptop, enquire whether there will be cover provided for software as well, as this can be quite costly, and find out what kind of damage is covered.



CLAIMS TURN-AROUND TIME: Some providers can authorize and/or pay out a claim within two to 24 hours, others take a few days and some could take even longer.



REPLACEMENT PROVIDERS: Enquire about the service providers they use to replace your cell phone and research reviews to ensure they are reputable and have good warranties on new devices.



-by Samantha Steele

Tag: Work from Home

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