Nothing seems as much of a hot button issue in the business world as the issue of white collar workers either staying remote or returning to the office. It gets defined, as so many topics do, as consisting of two factors:
- Factor One: Workers are happier, more productive, and collaborate just as well (probably better) remotely.
- Factor Two: The only reason employers are wanting to resume in-person work is because they want to control people, and the people managers are bad at their jobs.
There are bits of truth in there, but there is also a lot of nonsense.
Let me step back and explain my perspective. I was a people manager for over 25 years. I have interviewed thousands of candidates for positions ranging from entry level call center agents, to senior managers, to laboratory scientists. I’ve managed people in-person, remotely, and overseen business units transition from in-person to remote work twice. Both were as planned moves completed years before COVID forced many to quickly take the leap to remote work last year. In those processes there were missteps and lessons learned through trial and error. These observations are my own based on seeing how those transitions both succeeded and failed.
Now let’s bust some myths:
Myth #1: Workers Are More Productive Working From Home
Like many of the statements about working remotely, this is based on the absurd notion that all workers respond the same way to the same changes. If you replace “working from home” with “eating company supplied pickled beets for lunch everyday” the logical fallacy is apparent. I’m sure there is someone out there who loves pickled beets (maybe?) and having them provided for free would be a motivator. That doesn’t make the blanket statement accurate.
Not surprisingly, sending people to work remotely from home gets you a myriad of results. Some people truly find their element, and shine in remote work. They are not always the ones who did great when in the office. Removing stressors associated with commuting, pet care, variations in children’s schedules, etc. are all real potential benefits.
Equally predictable is that there were about an equal number of people who cannot handle working from home very effectively. A small group would be those that couldn’t separate from work if a work PC was right there. They would log in for no reason, and end up working more than they should.
The far more prevalent problem was those who clearly needed more structure than they were creating at home. Employees who used to commute an hour each way to the office with almost no issues, suddenly couldn’t make it 15 feet down the hallway on time. Employees who used to show up at my office a week before a deadline with a completed project, were now weeks behind. It was rarely one area, but across the board collapse.
We would hold virtual town halls with senior management where the employees were able to give open feedback. From these a very interesting trend emerged. The most vocal advocates of continuing remote work because it made them “so much better at their job” were dominated by those who were having their actual productivity tank since going remote. Something to keep in mind the next time you see a comment from someone about how much it has improved their productivity to work remotely.
Finally there was the plurality of roughly 45% who maintained roughly the same performance whether in person or working from home. As a general group, they were longer tenured people who knew their job, and didn’t require much management intervention in either location.
Myth #2: The Issue Is That The Managers Are Bad At Managing Remote Employees
This is another one that is pretty much nonsensical. Just like the employees, the managers ended up with mixed results when everyone began working remotely. Some were terrible at it, and others were better as remote managers than they were in person. Either way it took adaptation. When delivering feedback or coaching, the visual cues, body language, and other forms of non-verbal communication were mostly gone from the equation. This resulted in employees coming away with the impression their manager no longer cares about them, and the manager’s thinking the employee didn’t really care about their performance/job. A lot of routine interactions have to be re-invented for remote work.
Myth #3: We Can Collaborate Just As Well Remotely
Have you ever gotten upset by an email, text, post, etc., only to find out it was not sent in the tone it was perceived as when you got it? That is the same when everyone goes remote. Throw in those who don’t want their cameras on, and the collaboration is degraded even further by those who only “ghost attend”.
The reality is that an adjustment has to be made where the trade off in reduced collaborative engagement vs. the benefit of allowing remote work. The collaboration will partially recover over time as people adjust their skills, but there will still always be a bit more obstacles to compensate for.
Myth #4: Everyone Is Happier Working From Home
Not even close to true. You will have a certain percentage of any group that will not want to abandon the office, and they are more likely to be individual contributors than they are to be management. Most, but not all, people do not want to be failures at what they do, and we soon saw many who were not successful working remotely wanting to come back on-site, or transfer to another business unit that was. Everyone has a different set of variables in their home-life that factor in. That doesn’t mean it is abusive. I had cases where elderly in-laws were in the same home, and getting out of the house, even just to go to work, was a needed change for some. The problem soon became that for them to come back on site to work, a manager would need to do so as well, and there were no volunteers.
Myth #5: Everyone Can Work From Home
Working from home tends to be a touchstone example of an upper-middle class 1st world problem. The assumption that everyone lives in a home with a spare room just waiting to be turned into an office, and that they have a high end fast internet connection is simply not based on reality. Particularly when we began sourcing new employees to be remote from the outset for entry level positions, we saw many who would simply not be able to meet the tech and workspace requirements. They mostly missed those because of living in low cost housing.
Myth #6: I Will Have The Same Opportunities If I Am Remote Or In Person
This is specifically about blended environments where some people are in person, and others are remote. Those in person with management will end up with more opportunities. That may not be “fair”, but it is how humans work.
I’m your manager. You see me sitting at my desk, and I don’t appear to be in the middle of something. You stop in to mention an idea for a new process. I tell you to work on it and bring me what you find.
You have the same idea at home. You see I’m signed in, but have no idea if I’m free, or dealing with a serious issue. You hold off.
Six months later a new position comes open. Both versions of you have the same performance. The in person version has a project they developed on their resume, that the remote version doesn’t. Also, when I get asked about the two versions of you, I will probably sound more enthusiastic about the in person version. The working from home version…well that person meets expectations consistently, and sounds nice when I talk to them on Zoom. The remote employee will have to put in very specific effort to bridge that gap.
Myth #7: All Jobs That Can Go Remote, Should
Some jobs work better for either results or security in person. They can be done remote, but there is a potential risk and revenue factor in doing so.
One of the units I managed was inbound sales for a bank. In managing sales it is very important to keep healthy competition with peers as a factor. That is built in when you see your peers doing great in real time next to you, it pushes results from those who don’t want to be bested. You do not get the same effect with remote bulletin boards, chat messages, emails, etc. That doesn’t mean you can’t convert a sales group to remote work. It is just harder to maintain the drive, and if the sales start to slide, so does the pay of the frontline employee, and you get people happy to be home, but now dissatisfied with their income. Now you risk increased turnover.
Risk to the business is also a concern. Financial and Medical data has high value to hackers, and the more dispersed it is to home locations, the more opportunity for risk there is.
You call about your credit card. Is it going to a location with layers of monitoring security, or is it going to someone’s dining room table? You can secure the PC by having it be company issued, and locked down, but you don’t know if they are snapping shots of customer information, or even just recording everything with another device.
None of these are insurmountable, but they are potentially costly issues that need to be accounted for in the decision making process. They are complex problems that are more grounded than “my boss just wants to control us”.
In Summary
Sure there are some power hungry CEOs who may just be jerks and don’t want to do it, or don’t want to have to eat dead costs of rented office space no longer being utilized. There are also people who just want to do it because they think it will mean they can slack off more, and hide it easier. Neither of those are more than red herrings when it comes to defining the issue.
Remote work is certainly here to stay as a very common reality for many. Anyone who tells you it is all good or all bad, is just trying to find someone to make them feel more secure in their simplistic opinion of a complex issue rather than convey knowledge.