By: Ignacio Barros
In early May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent an email to his staff telling them that many of them would be allowed to continue working from home forever, even after the end of the lockdown. The announcement came with the hashtag #lovewhereveryouwork. The following week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that within the next five to ten years, 50% of Facebook’s workforce could be working remotely (1).
Before the pandemic, remote work was already increasing rapidly around the world, in a trend that showed no signs of slowing down. The coronavirus has come to consolidate and reinforce that.
But, personally, I believe that remote work will not rule out physical-face-to-face work in organizations, but that both will coexist in proportions that will vary from industry to industry. And in fact I see enormous benefits to face-to-face work that remote work can never replace. And in this article I expose 4 aspects worth taking into account.
The human being is a social being.-
Remote work puts pressure on relationships between teammates by eliminating the spontaneous social interactions that are necessary for productive and integrated work. Casual exchanges in the cafeteria or hallways lay the foundation for trust by creating a connection outside of work itself.
According to Alex Pentland, director of MIT Connection Science, “Employee trust, solidarity, and mental health are based on hundreds of affirmations and gestures of support that we offer to those around us on a daily basis: expressions of understanding or empathy, courtesy gestures, greetings, and so on.” It is these subtle connections that engender psychological security, the belief that one will not be punished when one makes a mistake. That psychological safety breeds an engaged workforce.
Remote work can undermine innovation and long-term growth.-
Remote work, by its nature, limits the fluid exchange of knowledge and information within an organization. No matter how advanced our digital tools are, the fact that certain things simply cannot be communicated remotely is inevitable. What ends up happening is that some people keep their big ideas to themselves and there is less experimentation between teams, which ultimately leads to slower innovation overall. In fact, a study by Harvard Business Review and Humanyze, a provider of analytics software, showed that remote workers communicated nearly 80% less about their tasks than team members physically working at the same company. In 17% of the projects sampled, they simply did not communicate at all.
Remote work also avoids real-time problem resolution. Instead of bringing all the necessary parties together in one room to discuss the details, everyone must sync their calendars and take a Zoom call where discussions can be awkward and disjointed, and depend on the quality of internet connection in homes.
There is no remote corporate culture or mystique.-
No matter how advanced our technology becomes, the basic facts remain the same: We are social beings who rely heavily on non-verbal communication. We’re designed for face-to-face interaction that even the best digital technology can’t replicate. Remote work doesn’t allow co-workers to build meaningful relationships and mutual trust in the same way that working together in the office does. Research from a Google study of 1,153 global workers shows that remote employees are more likely to report feeling mistreated and left out by their colleagues. Specifically, they worry that their co-workers will say mean things behind their backs, make changes to projects without warning them beforehand, or lobby against them. Makes sense. When the human element of business is lost, people are reduced to mere inputs. Whether intentionally or not, we begin to judge each other based on what one person can produce. Mutual purpose, connection, and trust are replaced with judgment, comparison, and fear.
The future of work is dynamic.-
I’m not arguing that telecommuting is bad. On the contrary. In fact, remote work is an essential part of dynamic work. In a dynamic work environment, companies keep their physical offices, but allow people a mix of face-to-face and remote work. The benefits of this coexistence are numerous. Employees get the flexibility they want but maintain the social connection and interaction they need. Two or three days in the office per week allow for that spark of creativity and connection, while the remote factor takes care of the productivity boost. By reducing commuting, people no longer need to live close to their workplaces, making it possible for them to relocate to more affordable locations outside the business hubs of cities where real estate prices have skyrocketed in the world at large. For companies that provide it, a dynamic work environment can lead to reduced costs without the strain on relationships and productivity. Businesses may rethink the size and location of their office spaces because they have fewer people in the room at the same time every day.
In short, as we navigate this pandemic it is amazing to see how quickly we have adapted to remote interaction, but physical offices are not going away. Many, if not all, companies will try to balance themselves somewhere in the middle, where they will work both from home and from the office so that people meet and work together, while taking advantage of the economic advantages that telecommuting brings.
Sources:
(1) CNN Business Perspectives, JT McCormick, Jun 2020