David Court

Iknow, I know. You haven’t come to the technology page to read more coronavirus stories. So let me start by immediately reassuring you this column isn’t really about Covid-19. Not specifically. This is about how the infectious disease that everyone is talking about will be a catalyst in transforming business in New Zealand and the wider world, into actioning something it has been threatening to do for years: remote working.

And it’s already happening. Go to any technology website right now, and you’ll see headlines about Google now holding job interviews on Hangouts. Or IBM stopping all domestic travel for meetings. Or Twitter encouraging all of its employees to work from home to prevent spreading the virus.

Will allowing staff to work from home hurt their businesses? It shouldn’t do. The vast majority of office workers only need two physical things to ‘‘remote work’’: a laptop and an internet connection.

I know this because a few years ago, when I