The debate about Remote work stems from the different perspectives that employers and employees have.
Remote, hybrid and in-office each have pros and cons
In-office is great for synchronous time. Collaboration, meetings and social engagement all happen well in the office. However, working out of the office isn’t great for asynchronous deep work. A lot of time is spent in commuting to and from the office.
Employees account for the time they do not lose in commuting etc when talk of the merits of remote work. On the other hand, managers completely discount that commute.
For employers productivity = work done in the time spent working at the office.
Whereas for employees productivity = work done in the hours allocated to work related activity. That includes traveling to/from work and the other inconveniences involved in actually making it to work.
Many of my teams work from home. They have free reign to define when they work during the day as long as the work to be done gets done. In terms of synchronous time, it’s important to be disciplined about having a common time across all team members that depend on each other.
We plan our in-office or in-person time periodically for the entire team to be together as needed. In-office time works great for planning, coordinating and setting the wheel in motion. Once the wheel is in motion, the touch points are more focused (sometimes between select team members) and fewer. Planned team wide syncs once each day and individual to individual syncs as needed work great for us. The rest of the time, it’s the individuals responsibility to be available to others when needed and to get work done on their own schedule. As long as you meet the goals in the agreed upon time, we’re all good. If you are struggling to meet your goal then it’s again the individuals responsibility to seek help from coworkers or their manager. It’s the individuals responsibility to ensure they meet their goal in the agreed upon timeline.
It’s ok to work alone as long as you deliver. The moment you realize you are likely to miss your goal it’s time to seek help and ensure you get to the goal line. Someone I know once said “Never lose alone. Use help from everyone you can to keep yourself from losing”
In my opinion, this form hybrid work is optimal for knowledge workers. As you will note, remote work is the ultimate in flexibility for employees.
Each role lends itself to varying levels of flexibility to work remotely. Some roles are in-office only, others can be completely remote and most can be managed at varying degrees of hybridization. As long as the role or function permits it, the remote model works for all who can take ownership and accountability of their contributions to the organization.
In general, Remote or hybrid works for employees that take accountability for their output and for those whose work output requires little interdependence with others.
Most importantly all forms of remote work is inherently goals driven. A managers role is to be a guide or advisor who collaborates to set the goal and the employee can channel themselves to get to the goal post.
Hybrid or remote work is great but only for organizations and employees who can jointly appreciate “flexibility comes with great responsibility”.