I used to share author Malcolm Gladwell’s fears about remote work: It couldn’t be in people’s best interest to sit at home in their pajamas. Surely, remote workers would lose their “feeling of belonging” and no longer “feel necessary.” Gladwell may write from his sofa and coffee shops, but I would have agreed with him that “offices really do matter” for “collaborative, creative work,” as he wrote to CNBC attempting to parry accusations of hypocrisy.
That was before. Then came COVID-19. Companies across the globe closed offices, and everyone had to work from home. To my surprise, our employees did just fine. Productivity never suffered. No longer commuting two hours in a car, our teams were experiencing a different balance in their lives. Many people seemed happier despite the miserable global situation.
In August 2021, when we polled our teams about remote work, only 2% wanted to come back to the office full time (admittedly, I was part of the 2%). Could my colleagues—talented, hardworking professionals—not know what is in their “best interest”?
This enthusiasm for remote work challenged our leadership team to not merely accept remote work but test its full potential. Yet there is a tendency for CEOs to either defend remote work as the angel solving all their problems or view it as the devil bent on destroying corporate culture. With a less ideological view, informed by data and research, maybe we can see past the caricatures of all good and all evil. Maybe we don’t understand remote work and culture as well as we thought.
Culture without place
Until COVID-19, I felt that a strong company culture depended on togetherness. We had to work, laugh, and dance together to create a brand employees would love. Zoom calls and Slack could not create the camaraderie of FIFA and ping-pong at the office. I was wrong, but those assumptions fit my personality and leadership style. While other CEOs remain worried about remote culture, the past two years have shown their fears are misguided.
In November 2019, social media management platform Buffer, a remote-only company, ran its third annual State of Remote Work survey: 20% of respondents said that collaboration and communication was their biggest struggle with working remotely while another 20% said loneliness. After two years of pandemic remote work, loneliness remained a top difficulty (24%), second only to not being able to unplug (25%). Collaboration and communication slightly improved, with 17% continuing to struggle.
No, Gladwell isn’t crazy. Academic research, too, suggests that group cohesion forms more easily in face-to-face settings. Remote work may even cause ” . . . the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed,” as a study of Microsoft’s employees found.