Premise:
Currently there is a big debate going on around the world with respect to where do we work from.
There is a camp of people who think they are more productive and save time, money and attention by working remotely.
There is another camp which believes that working remotely has a lot of limitations, specially around preserving the company culture, innovation or helping new hires integrate with the organisation.
Both have their merits but not in the ways that we would think at first glance. It is easy to decide one camp in which we want to belong – work remotely or from the office.
However, it may not necessarily be the best thing to do. As with anything else, this is a spectrum and we need to fine tune where we are, decide where we want to be and then act accordingly.
As with everything else, there is no case to be made for either extremes. Some people are more productive when they are working remotely and are better able to maintain their work-life integration. Some people are more productive when they work in the office, which helps them clearly separate their work life with their personal life.
So, the preference to work remotely or from an office depends on many factors. Some of them are as below:
Nature of your work:
If your work primarily requires you to be working on tasks that you can complete on your own, you probably might find that working remotely is much more productive as you are working without much distractions. These tend to be lower in the pecking order of the organisations.
If your work requires you to interact with many colleagues on a continuous basis, you might find that working from an office with all your colleagues in, is more productive. These tend to be higher in the pecking order of the organisations.
Your personal preference:
Each one of us has a natural preference about which mode of working is best suited for our personality.
Some of us like the hustle and bustle of the office and the casual, unplanned interactions with our colleagues to be an integral part of our work experience.
Some of us like to work without being disturbed by people walking around the office just to connect and chit chat, which takes away a lot of their time. So we prefer to work remotely.
Stage of life:
Each one of us is at a different stage in our life.
Some are early in the career and so do not have many commitments outside of work that they need to take care of. Some of us might have young kids who needs to be taken care of. Some of us might have to deal with the challenge of raising teenagers.
Some of us might have to take care of our elders. Some of us might have to go out to look for a partner or spouse. Some deal with the loss of parents, friends, etc. Some of us need to deal with our own health issues.
Each stage of life requires us to allocate time, energy and attention differently and has a different set of priorities. There might be some stages of life where we might be better off working from office and other life stages where we might be better off working remotely.
Geographical Spread:
Another important criteria that needs to be considered is the composition of your team and how are they distributed geographically. The spread of the team has a significant impact on the decision of whether you work remotely or from an office.
If the entire team is located in a single city, it might make sense to come to the office. If the team is distributed across cities or even countries, it might make sense to work remotely.
Team composition:
Another factor is the actual composition of the team. Do most team members want to work from home or prefer to come to the office. The nature of the tasks that the team is responsible for also has an impact on this decision.
The Back to Office mandate and the backlash:
There are many leaders who are mandating that their employees return to office, at least 3 times a day or something similar. This is the trade-off that the leaders make on this debate. However, there is a huge backlash against these mandates.
The reason for this is pretty straightforward. No body likes to be mandated to do something. This is equivalent of not treating them as grown intelligent adults.
The mandates takes away their sense of autonomy and mastery over their own schedules and actions. As Dan Pink states in his book Drive, these are two of the three key aspects that help keep the employees motivated to bring their best to their work. The third being Purpose.
Any blanket mandate like this doesn’t take into account any of the above aspects to be considered and arrive at a nuanced solution for this dilemma. Hence the backlash and the pushback from both the extremes of the spectrum and why the trade-off doesn’t work.
So, how do we solve this dilemma, you ask. Here are some ideas to consider:
Productivity or Effectiveness:
Instead of looking at the entire situation from the lense of productivity, we could look at it from the lense of effectiveness. What arrangement would be most effective for the team, as a whole, to achieve their goals? Have an open discussion about it.
Approach the entire discussion with curiosity, apply our imagination and creativity to arrive at the optimal state for each team on the spectrum.
Learn new modes of working:
Currently, everyone assumes that for certain kinds of works, it is better to be in office and for some other kinds of work, it is better to work remotely. Can we apply our imagination and come up with new ways of working?
Reap the benefits of remote work while working from office and the benefits of working from office while working remotely. It is possible. All you need is to think outside the box and accept that the compromise of a few days in office and a few days remote doesn’t help anybody.
You could create “Do not disturb” zones in your office, where people who want to do focused work can work from without being disturbed every few minutes.
You could offer creche services or pay allowances for pet care or child care or elder care for your employees so that they can focus on their work and not worry about taking care of their loved one’s.
You could create policies or spaces that allow people to take care of their own health – physical, emotional and intellectual.
You could think of creative ways that allow for people to spend as less time as possible in commute. This could be in the form of policies or the spaces from where people could work from.
You could create virtual office hours and coffee corners and open coffee corners, which are zoom calls that run for the entire day, just for people to step in and out whenever they have some time to hang with others, to allow for serendipitous encounters like the one’s we have in our offices.
You could create options for young talent or new employees to shadow existing employees virtually, so that they get to know people and feel welcomed and become part of the tribe instead of feeling alone and lost.
You could allocate budgets for teams to get together in a single location on a regular basis (quarterly, half-yearly or annually, depending on the needs of the teams). And then allow for them to work remotely for rest of the time.
Responsibility of the Leaders:
As leaders, we would need to learn how to lead differently, depending upon how the team ends up working, virtual, hybrid or in person.
We need to figure out how do we check in with our teammates and their individual preferences and the life stages they are on.
We need to figure out how often do we need to check in with whom and what do we do in these check-ins.
We need to be deliberate about the culture of our team by creating norms on how the team will work, interact and track progress.
We need to collectively decide how the team will celebrate successes and how to learn from failures. Everyone needs to be on-board about this and learn the inter-personal skills required to work either remotely or from an office.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, I strongly believe that the decision on whether a team will work remotely or from office needs to be delegated to the respective teams and let them be accountable for the results that they are expected to deliver.
Mandating the trade-off of working some days in office and some days remotely doesn’t help anybody. It only takes away the focus from working towards the results you want to achieve to the debate about the location of the work.
This also ends up creating bitterness and frustration amongst everyone involved in the debate, no matter which side of the spectrum you lean toward.
Leaders, are you listening (or reading)?
PS: After having published this blog, I came across this blog on Kellog Insight that I think is relevant to this discussion. Hence adding it to this post as an addendum. You can read the blog here.
