Flawed Perception of Remote Work- In the news
Most of you have seen this article already- Bosses are fed up with remote work for 4 main reasons.
The crux of this article, and the assertion made in it, are fundamentally flawed.
The problem is not with remote work.
The problem is with managers who cannot manage remotely.
The problem is with workers who cannot work remotely.
We need to differentiate between roles that can truly be performed remotely and those that are best suited for in-person or site-based collaboration. Do remote workers get energized during team off-sites? Yes. Does this mean that working in the same space day in and day out is the answer- no.
Have we already forgotten the burnout and endless distractions from forced in-office work?
During and after the pandemic, we made the mistake of trying to make every role a remote role.
It was the future of work!
The truth is, not everything and not everyone can thrive in a remote work environment.
We didn’t look at what could be done remotely and then empower people to do remote work well.
Effective remote work requires skilled management and disciplined workers. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
It seems that “skeptics” are upset that remote work didn’t magically work for everyone all the time.
Let’s break down each of the 4 claims in the article.
1. Remote work is bad for new hires and junior employees. There is merit to this, absolutely. In-person interactions can help with onboarding and training and can also help junior employees get “face time” with senior employees. This is more about a shift in culture.
Your in-person onboarding won’t work online. You’re in-person office politics and biases don’t translate to remote.
This is an uncomfortable truth.
Just as the factory-heavy cultures of the industrial revolution didn’t translate directly to the office cultures…the way you’ve done things for the last 40 years won’t translate directly to the new hybrid/remote future.
There are plenty of companies that hire, onboard, and promote remotely- it is a culture shift that takes time and dedication.
2. Remote work can cause more problems than in-person work. This section was about misaligned schedules and incorrectly executed policies. Of course, you create issues when you do the wrong thing.
How do you fix this? Planning and execution.
The section shoehorned in mental and physical health issues, as well as hostile work environments and then left it alone.
I remember going through my degree study 20 years ago and learning about “sick building disease”, and how on top of that office work led to mental health issues- so it was important to mitigate these issues. This is where a lot ping pong and meet-up spaces in offices came from- allowing you to fake work-life balance in order to improve mental health. Remote workers need to balance work and life. It isn’t magically done just because you aren’t in an office.
And a hostile work environment remotely would also be one at the office- but employees might be more willing to call it out if they don’t have a hostile manager constantly hovering over their desk.
3. Remote workers put in fewer hours compared to in-person workers. This section talks about a trend where people spend less time working and more time on leisure activities. Yes, that is true.
But what they conveniently leave out is the work getting done.
If someone isn’t getting interrupted by the co-worker with the flu coughing incessantly next to them, or the one person on a “working lunch” who is watching YouTube too loudly, or the ping pong table and yelling over whether the opponent put their hand on the table, or constantly getting up and mingling at the breakroom; or the myriad of other things that take people away form work in the office and cause them to constantly lose focus or need to task switch- they might get more done in 3.5 hours less at home.
It doesn’t help when people who should not be working remotely are posting to social media about how much they don’t work. They need more structure and should be in office- or their role is unnecessary and should be eliminated.
4. Productivity plummets on days when everyone works remotely. This is mostly anecdotal and does actually call out what I set forth in the previous section about how time at work (in the office) gets co-opted by socializing and fire drills and productivity is hard to pin down there. Are we measuring output or outcome? If people are more productive with less time and effort, why would that be seen as reduced productivity?
The only data shown for this drop is an anecdote given to the Wall Street Journal about subscriber counts falling on days when teams worked remotely. But there is data given to prove it, or explanation as to why a company’s new subscriber numbers would be affected by teams working from home.
They do, however, link out to an article about productivity decline in 2022-2023. But remember, this was post-pandemic. The decline was the first time in post-war era (where people were coming back from war, having not worked) and saying this once-in-a-century experience where the whole world effectively shut down should have no effect on overall productivity.
While they do say that labor churn can be a factor (job changes and high turnover), they do not address quality vs quantity, or over-hiring and role-fit. Are we measuring the impact or the output? How many hours worked in the office vs. how much work actually got done? Or did companies over-hire and now they have 20 people doing the work of 9? That will radically reduce productivity.
Blaming remote work oversimplifies the problem. It removes the capabilities of managers and workers as a factor, and removes the cultural shift necessary from the company, managers, and workers for success. Remote work is not a magic bullet, and people upset that they were not able to harness the benefits without putting in the necessary work are doing harm to those who can and have been remote workers for years.
There is a balanced and effective approach, but knee-jerk reactions that swing the pendulum from one extreme to the other are not how to do it.
