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August 15, 2021 06:39 pm

The Case Against Working Remotely Full-Time

A new article in Time magazine argues it's time to "follow the science" on working from home. "The solution for the future is a structured hybrid model, acknowledging that working from home doesn't work long-term for most jobs, while still giving workers flexibility." (Alternate URL here.)One way to do that would be to allocate time slots — perhaps specific days — of in-office working for all employees to maintain workplace productivity and collaboration, while also allowing working from home to continue outside those hours... For some, remote work leads to increased productivity, as well as job satisfaction, particularly for those working in technical jobs that require minimal teamwork... But the science tells us that workers like them are in a minority and, however topical their case is, we should be cautious about applying such a drastic change across our economies. Since before the pandemic began I have been assessing multi-disciplinary collaboration in a work-from-home environment for my PhD research at Imperial College, London. Individuals employed on creative projects in virtual teams reported feeling more like a 'worker', and less like a member of a family. One respondent said of employers: "They don't see how early you show up in front of your computer...They don't see how hard I'm working." But more damaging than the effects of working from home on individuals, is what it does to teams. Remote work often breaks the mechanisms that allow a team to work together creatively. Studies have found that the best creative work occurs when a team is in a state of flow, or focuses its collective attention on a single problem together, known as 'team flow'. But remote work makes it harder to keep everyone engaged in solving that problem. In my study, many respondents said it was hard to gauge when a team member had zoned out during a Zoom call. There is currently no digital technology that can reliably create 'flow' remotely, and we shouldn't pretend there is. If it did exist, it wouldn't have taken the necessity of pandemic restrictions for us to work remotely — managers and employees would have already embraced it. There's other evidence that points to this problem. Utah-based virtual whiteboard app Lucidspark found that 75% of 1,000 respondents surveyed in September last year said collaboration was the thing that suffered most when working remotely. "It is clear from my research that fully autonomous working from home across all industries is neither desirable nor sustainable," the article concludes. "That's why we need to carve out a third way, where teams that thrive on collaboration are given mandatory times each week when everyone is expected to be in the office."

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