Is Remote Work Effective?

Would an entirely remote workforce outlast a competitor that only worked together in person?

Remote work has been fascinating to watch over the last few years.  Everyone I know loves the flexibility at home, the environment they’re working in, and the ability to screw around with chores and games all day if they want.

I’ve even heard of people picking up second or third jobs – masterfully balancing the different requirements from the comfort of anywhere in the world.

However, a lot of notable companies are adopting increasingly aggressive Return to Office (RTO) policies:

I decided to explore the advent of remote work and challenge my belief that an all-office workforce is more effective in the long run.

Here’s what I learned:

Bureaucracy hates remote work

The bureaucratic machine works more effectively when it has complete control.  Remote work makes that hard.

In 1911, Frederick Taylor popularized the idea of standardization.  His book called out the difference between a manager and worker, leading to incredible advances in human productivity.

These gains were typically limited to non-creative work.

Taylor’s work created the foundation for Henry Ford to mass produce the Model T, but came with a massive drawback: workers were treated and viewed as cogs in a machine, defined by their skills and not their thinking.

What do factory workers from the early 20th century have to do with remote work?

The hierarchies that dominated factory work became the standard way to organize modern business.  Layers of management above the labor force and working class, all designed to enable command-and-control processes.

Middle management was created in a factory.

But the rise of remote collaboration showed how possible it is to function without managers in the way of everything through the adoption of asynchronous work, lateral communication, and a previously unseen level of autonomy – all of which undermines the need for traditional management.

A lack of proximity requires more trust.  Bad managers can’t micro-manage their team as easily.  The skill sets required for remote management exposed managers who didn’t actively bring value to the organization anymore, especially if their team continued to operate effectively.

Bureaucracy likes to focus on inputs (à la factory work).  Remote work shifts the focus to outcomes.

Remote work thrives or dies with culture

Results-oriented work still needs acceptance by the company culture.

Teams and leaders that fail to bring accountability to their teams will suffer consequences of a disengaged workforce.  It’s harder to monitor your team’s activity when they don’t share a roof, which leaves more responsibility on the shoulders of the teammates to keep their word and self-motivate.

It doesn’t matter if someone works less than before the pandemic if they’re delivering high quality work, but it’s not guaranteed that shifting to remote work will yield higher productivity.  Remote productivity depends on how reliant a team is on synchronous work – a property of culture.

Most companies are built for synchronous work: relying on discussions, meetings, and back-and-forths to move the ball down the field.

Remote work makes synchronous interactions extremely hard or exhausting: Zoom fatigue is a product of too much synchronous work.  Endless video calls and meetings are terrible for getting anything done.

It’s foolish to believe a synchronous culture will thrive in an asynchronous environment.

Ask any fully remote company that existed prior to 2020.  Zapier and Gitlab have thrived because they’ve built their culture around principles and guides for handling the needs of a fully distributed workforce.

They share traits like:

But for every Zapier and Gitlab, there are probably 10 companies drowning their productivity in poorly-built remote work policies, prisoners to the belief that their culture can overcome the shift from high-fidelity, in-person work to hybrid or remote arrangements.

Strong cultures overcome the disadvantages of remote work by addressing topics of burnout, meetings, and work/life boundaries as first-class citizens in their workforce strategy.

As Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

RTO policies may have nothing to do with productivity

Some return-to-office policies are based on a lie.

Proponents of in-person work talk about higher efficiency, but what if it has nothing to do with productivity at all?

Think about this:

Some companies are tied to long-term lease agreements for office spaces.

RTO may be driven more by financial obligations than a genuine belief in the superiority of office work.  Many of those businesses, likely stricken with a terrible case of bureaucrat-itus, failed to think through the long-term impacts of their real estate decisions.  They figure if they’re paying for the space, they want to use it.

Unoccupied space still needs maintenance, and they’re less attractive to sell.  It’s also possible that the groups in a company making decisions about real estate aren’t engaged with the folks responsible for addressing RTO or remote work.  

Misalignment leads to weird decisions.

RTO might be a strategic move to filter out employees that don’t want to come back.

If the company doesn’t want to support a remote workforce (for any reason), forcing people back will inevitably excuse people who don’t accept it.  Nomads that don’t want to see their coworkers may willingly leave the company, which is less expensive than firing them.

It’s actually a brilliant power move on behalf of the company.

Companies can provide better non-financial incentives when they’re in person.

Offices often provide perks and amenities that can’t be replicated at home. They’re easier to see and talk about at the office, and give companies another lever to control their people with.  Are they bad?  No, but perks shouldn’t be the primary reason for RTO.

I’m a huge proponent of working together in-person, but I’m extremely suspicious of sweeping RTO policies that don’t acknowledge the power of hybrid and remote work.

Global trends are distracting

There are a lot of opinions on the impact of remote work (mine included), which creates a lot of noise.  Research is trickier than you think because you have to sift through a lot of different studies and data points, some of which disagree.

Remote work peaked in 2020 and 2021 then settled over the next few years as hybrid rose in popularity.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a drop in productivity during the spike of remote work followed by gradual recovery as the workforce adopted hybrid and RTO policies again.

Correlation, not causation.  There was a pandemic and some drama in Ukraine, after all.

As of 2023, it’s roughly estimated:

(based on my personal aggregate of many sources reporting statistics on remote work)

ALL OF THAT TO SAY:

It’s tempting to point to “data” and “reports” about how to handle remote work, but probably not helpful.  Teams should spend time evaluating their culture, goals, morale, and local impacts of their current arrangements.

Every team is different.  If the data suggests remote work is “better” but you’re experiencing tremendous burnout because people aren’t creating healthy boundaries between work and life, ignore the data.

Don’t be distracted by trends and truths that may not apply to your own culture.

There’s no simple substitution for proximity

Although remote work has perks, the biggest drawback is proximity.

I’m not against remote work, but don’t want to run a company from my spare room: I want to go to war alongside running mates in the room with me.  The advantages of remote work don’t outweigh the disadvantages for growing and developing a leadership team.

Here’s what I mean:

Proximity creates an experience

In Good Will Hunting, Robin William’s character talks to Matt Damon’s about the difference of knowledge and experience:

“So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.”

The experience of working in proximity to your team cannot be easily replicated in a distributed workplace.

Proximity improves communication

In-person communication is significantly more productive.  Think about the impact of talking to someone face-to-face:

Proximity doesn’t remove the benefits of asynchronous work: those tools are still available.  In-person interactions multiply those habits.

Proximity promotes professional development

Remote work needs to address the known drop in mentorship and professional development.  People spend an average of 30-40% less time in training and mentor-related activities through screens, according to WFH Research.

Another aspect is the water cooler.

Not the mystical place where teams collaborate more effectively automatically, but the concept of being around conversations that don’t have a hyperlink.  Examples of those rituals include:

There’s some opportunity in a non-office setting, but is a lot less likely to happen organically.

Proximity fights loneliness 

A lot of people have no reason to leave their house now.  I could probably live inside my four walls for the rest of my life if I wanted (no thanks).

Remote work naturally produces isolation.  Fewer people work from coffee shops and islands than social media wants you to believe – it’s not practical.

The isolation endemic impacts younger generations who never experienced the workforce in person.  The Wall Street Journal reported that new hires lack a lot of soft skills expected in the workplace:

According to the article, younger generations are far less likely to be self-motivated due to a lack of accountability for homework in virtual schooling. 

Learning to work in groups is a critical skill – not just for being productive, but for understanding how to navigate the tribe.

Proximity creates balance

The advent of remote connection made it common to be available 24/7.

Most people stay connected through their phones – something we never shut off.  Notifications, emails, and chats keep us up all night, driving anxiety and worry through the roof.  Something important might happen, so I better double check email again before bed.

Remote culture didn’t install work email and chat on our phones, but it blurred the line between work and life quite a bit.  When your house looks the same as the office, it can be hard to draw a line.

Async creates unrivaled flexibility with work hours, but redefines the notion of “working hours” in ways that disrupt balance.

For better or worse, a commute or an office building builds a clear separation between work and home.  It doesn’t guarantee digital freedom on your device when you leave the office – something that needs to be managed by the individual either way – but does physically change the environment.

New settings tell us when we’re done with work.

Remote vs office

Today, my company is a one-man operation: me.

I’m watching remote work closely as I prepare to scale my startup and begin building teams.  There are so many things I’d prefer to run in person:

Most importantly, there’s far more shenanigans and camaraderie when you’re together, and I believe goofing off will play a major role in taking over the world together.

It’s the culture, stupid.