this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Good article. That being said, the examples provided against remote work ("salespeople were taking calls from the top of mountains on hiking trips") don't paint a true picture of what remote work has become. There is much opportunity for scheduled collaboration, and still some incidents of unscheduled collaboration (aka water cooler moments) via remote work.
Best quote in the article: "The number one thing people want out of a workplace is concentration space.. You're not going to get them into a place just built for social interaction. You've got to be able to concentrate...." That's where most workplaces are shockingly deficient. Most offices are designed to keep workers precariously balanced between concentrating on work tasks and the threat of immediate distraction by coworkers. "Open Office Design" necessitated more space for meeting rooms, and overbooking of meeting rooms necessitated off-site meetings.
Every article arguing for Return To Office conveniently overlooks several shockingly obvious points: PRODUCTIVITY WENT UP when people worked from home. Workers didn't have to spend hours of time commuting to/from work. Workers didn't have to spend money on gasoline and parking and day care for their kids or their dogs. Workers didn't have to lose an entire day of work if they felt sick but were unsure if they were contagious. Workers Didn't Have To Work From An Office. They still don't.
So don't.
Work from Home is a huge compensation increase; being asked to go back is a huge slap. If a company gave every employee a 15% pay cut no one would be shocked everyone left.
When I was in charge of my department, pre-covid, the entire team was spread out between half in various different offices, half WFH (including me). We have always been remote from each other.
One of the things I did was create a chat room called "Watercooler," specifically for this purpose.
Just to point out, latest research shows productivity is a wash. Essentially, experienced workers saw productivity boost, while new hires since WFH have shown low productivity growth over the last 3 years. The leading theory is experience sharing that happened in person, in a casual manner, had a much larger impact in growing the company talent over longer terms.
Firms need to adapt to keep their talent competitive. Some firms choosing to go back to office is just one strategy.
That reads to me like it's demonstrated to be superior for employees who understand their work and how to do it, but training employees to that point is not occurring. I don't think this problem is inherent to the format - every place I have yet worked has de-facto replaced most or all of their training program with an on-the-job copying of tasks and routines from more experienced employees. That crutch has been removed and the absence of quality training programs is further highlighted. Understandably, this will vary wildly with field and firm, and developing an analogue to that type of informal information sharing is already occurring from what I've read.
Doubling down on what the other guy said, the answer is structured training instead of mashing people together hoping they learn by osmosis