As the founder and CEO of MindaClient, a small software company in Ireland, I often get asked about remote working and how we make hybrid working actually work.
My answer is very simple – three days in our Kilkenny City office and two days from home, with a lot of flexibility and different arrangements whenever life needs it. Our team has found that this has worked well over the years, and I think it says a lot about where the future of work is heading more broadly.
General trends for remote working in Ireland
After Covid, organisations shifted their mindset on remote working. This trend of remote working has continued in Ireland.
According to the study from EU Agency Eurofound, Ireland is ahead of the EU average of 20% and has experienced a 20 percentage point increase in remote working between 2015 and 2024.
As well as increased remote working, another encouraging trend is the rise of remote working hubs or hot desks across the country. The Connected Hubs facilities offer huge flexibility to employers and employees. They address the issue of isolation when working from home. I would say isolation, from a personal and work point of view, is the biggest downside of remote working.
Comparison of hybrid working in large and small organisations
Although some large and small organisations can both operate hybrid working policies, in practice they often have very different definitions of hybrid. With certain large organisations you are expected to commit to your days in the office. Many started back after Covid as 1 day and that has moved with many to 4 days. This has removed the flexibility of early hybrid working after Covid.
In a small team like MindaClient, it is almost the other way around. We don’t need to track who is in and who isn’t, we look at the work itself. If someone needs to swap a day, or work from home for a family reason, we just say yes, and that flexibility is one of the biggest advantages small companies have.
Challenges for upskilling new employees when working remotely
The challenge of upskilling, training or simply asking a question can often be overlooked for companies who work remotely. Although there are many benefits to remote and hybrid working, you can lose out on the physical aspect of collaborative learning and solving complex problems as a group. We manage to deal with this by being organised about our in-office days, using them for combined work, system reviews and team lunches once a month in the office. The team have done a great job of keeping remote days for focused, uninterrupted work and have committed to our hybrid policy.
With upskilling we constantly encourage our team to explore different courses and to view this as work, to be completed during the work day, not in your spare time. An example of this was an AI course we all undertook remotely and had group discussions around it in our monthly meeting. This allowed us to upskill remotely, while still encouraging group learning. Your Local Enterprise Office or Chamber of Commerce can point you in the direction of some great resources and courses to upskill and train your staff.
Where things are heading
Looking ahead, both in Ireland and globally, I expect a few clear trends:
1. Less focus on time spent at a desk and more on the value people deliver
2. More workflows built around systems with AI
3. AI tools to support onboarding and answer quick questions before people need to ask a colleague
4. The concept of fully remote or fully in-office becoming increasingly rare, particularly among small organisations
From my experience of hybrid working, even pre-Covid, it was never really about where people sit. It’s about giving people the trust to do good work while building a life that’s sustainable alongside it.
Brian Kelly, CEO, MindaClient
Listen: Bytesize E08
Kilkenny man Brian Kelly of Mindaclient discusses how people and companies are choosing remote working and how online platforms like Teams and Zoom allow for greater flexibility.
Bytesize is supported by Coimisiún na Meán with the television licence fee.
