This is a side point, but I get mildly infuriated when articles like this state “Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not.” Oh? Clear evidence? I can’t find any. Can you? There are 3 journal articles referenced in that sentence, none of which say anything about productivity. I poked around Google Scholar and find that productivity gain / loss is still unknown, and depends greatly on the work and the field. Do you have to use actual physical stuff in an office? Definitely lower productivity working from home. Do you work with a team that’s all in the same office? Also a solid productivity loss. But if you don’t work with anyone in your office and all your stuff is online? No probably no productivity loss (but I didn’t find a specific reference there).
I’ve seen a ton of posts saying WFH is so clearly better for revenue and productivity, and it’s more about the sunk cost of the office space rented or a boss wanting to lord over his employees. And yes, I like that narrative and it works well for me, but the actual research just isn’t there and it bugs me that it’s stated like a solid irrefutable fact. It’s not! it’s a gray area! it depends!
This has been studied for decades since the 90s. Oracle and IBM both did big “floating office” trials several diff times and much has been written about them. A lot of the downsides really come down to team psychology more than anything to do with efficiency or productivity or collaboration. Simply put, people are significantly more empathetic towards people they are in a room with, and significantly more likely to feel hostility or animosity towards someone who isn’t. You’ve almost certainly experienced this if you’ve done a lot of work with remote teams - even when everything is fine there’s almost a universal instinct to talk shit about the other team.
There are well understood ways to deal with this, mind you, but you actually have to be proactive about it. Most CEOs simply don’t understand this, or are too lazy to deal with it.
This is a side point, but I get mildly infuriated when articles like this state “Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not.” Oh? Clear evidence? I can’t find any. Can you? There are 3 journal articles referenced in that sentence, none of which say anything about productivity. I poked around Google Scholar and find that productivity gain / loss is still unknown, and depends greatly on the work and the field. Do you have to use actual physical stuff in an office? Definitely lower productivity working from home. Do you work with a team that’s all in the same office? Also a solid productivity loss. But if you don’t work with anyone in your office and all your stuff is online? No probably no productivity loss (but I didn’t find a specific reference there).
I’ve seen a ton of posts saying WFH is so clearly better for revenue and productivity, and it’s more about the sunk cost of the office space rented or a boss wanting to lord over his employees. And yes, I like that narrative and it works well for me, but the actual research just isn’t there and it bugs me that it’s stated like a solid irrefutable fact. It’s not! it’s a gray area! it depends!
This has been studied for decades since the 90s. Oracle and IBM both did big “floating office” trials several diff times and much has been written about them. A lot of the downsides really come down to team psychology more than anything to do with efficiency or productivity or collaboration. Simply put, people are significantly more empathetic towards people they are in a room with, and significantly more likely to feel hostility or animosity towards someone who isn’t. You’ve almost certainly experienced this if you’ve done a lot of work with remote teams - even when everything is fine there’s almost a universal instinct to talk shit about the other team.
There are well understood ways to deal with this, mind you, but you actually have to be proactive about it. Most CEOs simply don’t understand this, or are too lazy to deal with it.
I’m interested by these ways to deal with this issue. Do you have examples of thing I could do to improve the online team mood I’m a member of?
Right now I’m 2 days WFH, but could still be valuable since I’m looking for 100% WFH next.