The era of remote work was ushered in by the coronavirus pandemic. Here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, it’s time for businesses to get it right.

Prior to the pandemic, remote work was scarce and reserved for very specific jobs. Freelancers, mostly, some contractors, certain sales positions, etc. When COVID forced everyone to go remote, businesses learned a lot. For one, there are a lot of benefits to employing remote workers, like a bigger talent pool. They also gained insight into how some people produce better work at different times of the day, which means that flexible scheduling is really important moving forward. The problem is, pre-pandemic, remote workers were an afterthought, seen as somehow less than their in-office counterparts. Now businesses know that couldn’t be farther from the truth, and with remote work sticking around, there are some key considerations businesses need to make regarding remote employees.

The very first thing that business leaders need to do is convey the importance of remote workers to all employees. Everyone needs to understand that just because someone isn’t in the office, or is only in the office on occasion, that doesn’t mean their role isn’t important. Every employee has a purpose, a job to do. If a remote worker didn’t have that job, it would fall on the shoulders of someone else. In-office employees sometimes view remote workers as less-than, or as if the worker is somehow “special” because they “get” to work from home. But they do not consider what that actually means. At least, they didn’t before COVID. Now that view is likely a bit different, but it’s still important to make sure that every employee knows that they matter, and that every employee realizes that everyone else is important too.

Which leads into the next consideration, which is that employees need to understand that everyone is measured on the same metrics. Whether in-office or remote, when it comes to performance reviews and potential promotions or inter-office jobs, every employee is measured equally. What businesses tend to miss, though, is this means that all employees are evaluated as if they are remote. Yes, you read that right, everyone should be measured as if they are remote.

This piece is really important. You cannot evaluate a remote employee as if they are in-office. You simply have no context to do so. But you can act as if in-office employees are working remotely. Many businesses miss this piece and try to either evaluate employees with the same job title in different ways depending on location, or they try to evaluate remote employees as if they are in-person. The problem with that is, again, you have no context. There is limited face-time with remote employees and limited interaction in general in most cases. You must compare production to production, business processes to business processes, deliverables to deliverables, and leave out anything that references in-person interactions differently than general interactions.

Businesses and business leaders must continue to adapt, adjust and be flexible through the pandemic. Right now, the focus should be on running the business efficiently, not where or when people are getting their work done. And when the time comes for people to return to the office, it’s likely that not everyone is going to join in that return. Some employees may be upset that they cannot continue to work remotely, while others will beg to come back. That balance will have to be determined by each business individually. Some businesses may let their employees decide where they want to work, while others may dictate that a return to the office is mandatory, and still others will keep their entire workforce at home.

While it seems that nothing is certain in 2020, one thing is for sure: the way business is done on a global scale has shifted. It will shift again with the widespread use of expedited vaccines, but business as we knew it will not return. We will develop a new normal, and until we get there, no one really knows what it’s going to look like. As long as business leaders and employees continue to have an open mind and work together to solve problems, it really doesn’t matter what the new normal looks like.