Remote work - a risk/reward analysis

Remote work and home-office are here to stay - that’s for sure. Slack and Dropbox were amongst the first companies to announce that they would switch to a permanent remote-working model. But is 100% remote really the savior we have all been looking for?

While there is arguably a light at the end of the tunnel, which could enable a return to normal life soon, the question arises: What should we do with remote working? Have you thought about what would happen, if you told your employees or you as an employee were told to come back to the office full-time? What are the up- and downsides of remote work itself? Let’s find out!

A two-year study conducted by “Great Place to Work” of more than 800.000 employees at Fortune 500 companies found that most people reported stable or even increasing productivity levels after employees started working from home. They measured employee productivity from March to August of 2020 – the first six months of stay-at-home orders – and compared it to the same six-month period in 2019. The results showed that productivity had improved while working from home (full-time).

Without daily commutes and lengthy in-person meetings, employees likely found they were able to get more done. However, the biggest impact on remote work productivity came from the same factors that influence in-person productivity: company culture and leadership. Strong leadership lead to productive remote work and poor leadership to less productive remote work.

On the other hand, Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington from Harvard University found in their study, that employees were 12% less likely to be promoted when working remote, which could lead to employees being concerned about being overlooked when it comes to job promotion while working in remote jobs. According to them remote work attracted latently less productive employees. When all employees were obliged to work remotely due to COVID-19, those who were hired into remote jobs were 18% less productive than those who were hired into on-site jobs. Extending remote opportunities to onsite employees similarly attracted less productive employees to on-site jobs. The sorting of employees by ability meant some employees opted out of remote work, because they did not want to pool with less productive employees. Their suggestion to learn how to better evaluate remote employees follows the same direction: Strong leadership leads to better remote working results. So, the first conclusion is: when working remotely, you need even stronger leadership skills than while working on-site.

So, remote working - in the form of working from home - itself still seems to be a pretty good thing - but how much is too much?

Google did what you should do too: Ask their employees. Wonder what they said? Even in a post-COVID-19 world, only 8% wanted to go back to the office full-time, while 60% would consider going to the office some days per week.

In contrary to what many would think, only 10% would choose not to come to the office at all. Surprised? A little bit maybe? At least I was!

I did a survey too and it pointed in the same direction – even though I have to admit that the number of participants was slightly less!

If you think about it, the result does make sense, if you consider the possible downsides of remote work as well.

A study done in the UK shows that possible downsides of only working remotely are missing your colleagues and the social side of work (35%), feeling disconnected from the team (30%), fewer opportunities for interesting conversations (25%), experiencing (feelings of) loneliness and isolation (24%) and too many pointless meetings and catch-ups (24%).

So, even though remote working itself has a positive effect on productivity, the downsides should not be overlooked. The blurring of boundaries between professional and private life and the pressure to always be available are contributing to burnout and stress. A recent survey found that 73% of working professionals feel burnt out. Home-workers are spending more time staring at a screen and suffering from a so-called “Zoom fatigue”. According to a 2020 survey directed towards CEOs carried out by KPMG done in the UK, 69% of companies plan to reduce office space after the pandemic.

If the option to work from an office full-time will no longer be available, then what are the implications for employees who are expected to work from home? Not everybody has a spare office room in their home available to work from. Research found that two thirds of renters do not have a private workspace at home. This means that two thirds of employees simply cannot close the door not to be distracted or find somewhere to have a confidential conversation, when it is time for one-to-ones or performance reviews.

Although it was funny to watch toddlers interrupt other people’s Zoom meetings, such distractions and interruptions do more than destroy focus and waste time. They flood the body with cortisol and other stress hormones, disrupting almost all our internal processes. Simply put, constant distractions equal heightened anxiety and stress levels. Studies show that remote workers often experience symptoms of anxiety and depression at a higher rate than people commuting into traditional office spaces.

For many, having somewhere quiet and private to work from means retreating to the bedroom. Not only is this less than ideal from a physical health standpoint; it is a disaster for mental health as well. When employees work and sleep in the same space, the brain gets confused. It is hardly surprising that reports of insomnia and sleep disorders are skyrocketing - another cause of stress. A lack of suitable workspace isn’t just a mental health issue. It’s a productivity issue. The long-term effects could therefore harm productivity!

An often overlooked negative effect might also be a heavier operational load of self-management responsibilities such as IT troubleshooting, time management and task prioritization, which is a byproduct of more freedom and autonomy. As the success of distributed teams is often measured by results, workers can be tempted (or even mentally pressure themselves) to overwork in order to inflate their output. This can result in unpaid hours, lack of sleep, as well as poor engagement in personal relationships.

With all the freedom and autonomy remote working offers, we have to consider the harm it may do to people as well! The future evolves too quickly to have it all figured out by now and the impact of COVID-19 is clearly playing a part in many of the already mentioned mental health issues. But, between working fully remotely and going back to office, there is plenty of space in between. Let´s have a look at three of these so-called “hybrid” models:

Remote-dominant hybrid

First, there is the approach to go with as much remote as possible, leaving the old office days behind. That is why I would call it “remote-dominant hybrid”. This means that employees can start remote, work totally remote – if they want - and even relocate away from the office, but still keeping the office space as a place for interaction and for those employees, who choose to work from there. Quora switched to this model. Their CEO, Adam D’Angelo, said that he would not work from the office or be there more than once a month and that the leadership team also would not be in the office. Dropbox even went a little bit further and stated that “Dropbox Studios will be specifically for collaboration and community-building, and employees will not be able to use them for solo work.” With the risks of working from home all the time, this could be a step too far, for some employees.

The challenges that this model can bring is, that some people might not join or even leave because they miss the interaction with their colleges. Others might have the fear of being overlooked, which, similar to what the study by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington showed, might not be without reason. With the opportunity to video-call and stay home as you like, come the downsides of mental health issues. Working from home also makes it more difficult to separate between private and professional life as more and more employees complain that their workday never really ends. We have already seen what can happen, when you feel overwhelmed with mental health issues, from famous actors and musicians - and way too often you will find out about their problems only when it is already too late. It is also known that people learn very well from imitation. In consequence, less experienced employees need the office more than their more experienced colleagues. Respondents with the least amount of professional experience (less than 5 years) are more likely to prefer more time at the office. 30% of them prefer working remotely no more than once a week. The least experienced workers are also more likely to feel less productive while working remotely (34% vs 23% respectively). They are more likely to value meetings with managers or company training programs than their more experienced colleagues/co-workers.

There are many benefits to a fully remote working lifestyle – working from the beach or wherever you want – but let us not forget the hidden challenges and risks that come along with it.

Office-dominant hybrid

Other companies may be more skeptical about remote working and use the opportunity to establish a more office-centered model. If the entire leadership team returns to the office, this may give the impression that you expect this from your team as well. It is very easy to get office-centered when the leadership is in the office, since team members, who are in the office, tend to have more in-person conversation and collaboration with them after the remote team disconnects. Consequently, the in-office team might have more conversations without the remote team, thus forming a closer relationship purely as a result of working together in the office every day. In this case, remote workers can be left behind feeling as second-class employees.

On the other hand, if you go back to an office dominant hybrid model, people who enjoy remote working and see the benefits might not join your company. You could lose some potential great team members because of it.

Full hybrid

As Google’s research suggests, there is a middle ground for the 80% that do not want to go 100% remote nor stay in the office 5 days straight. Therefore, Google will move to a hybrid work week, where most Googlers spend approximately 3 days in the office and 2 days wherever they work best. Forbes even states that the 3:2 ratio seems to become the new norm. So could this 3:2 model even become the ideal tradeoff to get the best of both worlds?

It seems that the office is here to stay as well, but its role is set to change. Less than one in five executives say they want to return to the office model as it was pre-pandemic. The rest are grappling with how widely to extend remote working options, with just 13% of executives prepared to let go of the office for good. Meanwhile, 87% of employees say the office is important for collaborating with team members and building relationships — their top-rated needs for the office.

In Short

Numerous studies on the benefits and drawbacks of remote working have been conducted over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the downsides of home-office certainly include the fear of being left-out by co-workers working on site or not getting promoted as a result of not being present along with possible health issues.

However, the vast majority of employees – 80% according to Google research – would prefer the remote option at least to some degree, although for many, the social aspect of being at the office is definitely not becoming a thing of the past.

The full hybrid model with usually 3 days at the office and 2 days remote could prove to be the most promising solution because it can unite employee’s desires for both social interaction with the team and the comfort of working from home.

In any case companies should definitely promote more flexible work options, such as different hybrid models for the employee’s needs, in order to succeed in a post-pandemic world.