Current situation: How did we get here?
When COVID-19 restrictions dropped, the masses did not run back to the office. In fact, according to the first studies post-lockdown, remote work improved many individuals' physical and mental health, enabled newcomers into the workforce as geographical obstacles were overcome, and increased a healthy work/life balance for many. It seemed we had found a better way to work for everyone!
However, during 2023, individuals, teams, and organizations have started to report dramatically longer lead times, decreased ownership of work, less pride in what is being created, and there seems to be less and less innovation happening.
As a senior agile coach, I see this trend in digital development across industries, national borders, and cultures through our clients and teams.
One factor in this equation has changed over time: the frequency of remote work. Before COVID, remote work was occasional, not the norm. I knew of a few teams with weekly designated remote day(s), but most teams worked together co-located.
Now, I meet individuals who have been working on the same projects for months, sometimes even years, and have never met those they work with… and many of these people live in the same city.
What remote work causes long-term
When people don’t meet face to face, we lose the easygoing chit-chat that happens when we get our morning coffee together, when we see each other in the hallway, or when we talk about what to have for lunch. These are often the moments we share things about our lives outside of work, spontaneously discuss information we came across, or build on ideas, as these settings seem less formal than official meetings.
The personal connection to each other weakens or is absent:
Knowing our colleagues makes them human. We can accept their mistakes and imperfections better, we can also be more at ease with our imperfections and mistakes in front of them. The “How’s the wife doing after her surgery?” or “How did your kid handle that tough football match?” creates empathy and a bond that cultivates trust.
Building momentum for ideas or hypotheses:
To make innovation more probable, we need informal moments to test what others think of our ideas or discuss something novel or different, like whether we should show our work first to the neighbouring team before the official demo. If someone thinks the idea isn’t great, it’s just an informal discussion, and one’s pride isn’t as hurt as it could be during a formal meeting with someone taking notes. There are many ideas individuals may drop if the only places to discuss these are formal meetings.
Shift from a collective good to individual gain
I have noticed a massive shift from “us” thinking to “me” thinking. Before wide remote work, teams were more united with a shared mission. Now, we have shifted into separate individuals who want to stay in comfy pants, drinking just the right kind of coffee from our very own mug, and we quietly accept the quality of the outcome being worse. It is my right to stay home when my kids have a later school start; it is my right to stay home when it’s raining, or I didn’t bother to wash the dress I would have wanted to wear. We don’t even have to explain why we stay home anymore.
Why is it so difficult to solve the issues of remote work?
To fix this, I have heard and tried many approaches myself. “Start each online meeting with a few minutes dedicated to personal chat.” Usually, this feels forced and kind of fake. The longer we drift apart from each other, the less I care about how their kid’s football match went, and the less inclined I am to share bits for the same reason.
How about just forcing everyone back to the office? Many companies are doing it, like Zoom, Microsoft and Meta. If everyone has to return, I guess that means I also have to give up my comfy pants and slow mornings. And how would everyone else in my team react? They are not used to being told what to do!
Right after COVID, many studies were conducted around remote work and worker well-being, some of these studies found that remote workers were 22% happier and that there was an improvement in worker’s mental and physical health. Later on, in 2023, we see more studies concerning productivity that now find an 18% decrease in productivity between remote and in-office workers.
…and there we have it.
The individual vs. the collective good of the team and outcome.
When the focus is fully on the individual, it is impossible to get the benefits of a real team; the ceiling for what you can produce is set at the individual's capacity. If the focus is fully on the collective output and the individual needs are neglected, people will tire. Finding the right balance between the collective output and the individual needs is key.
The individuals’ needs have run in front of the teams’ and what we should achieve. No wonder something that used to take weeks now takes months or even sometimes becomes impossible.
All of us are mere mortals and tend to look at things very short term, we see not having to use an alarm clock, not having to pay for transport or lunch, doing that extra load of laundry, and being home when the kids get back from school. We don’t always see what this disengagement does to ourselves, to the people we work with or to the results of our labour.
This disengagement slowly eats away at one’s satisfaction regarding work, as the ownership and pride diminish. We then start to look for this feeling elsewhere, which results in work becoming increasingly more of a means to an end rather than something we really care about.
What could we do?
A complete back-to-the-office world is very unlikely and not necessarily something we want. Most of my clients want a healthy balance between the happy individual and better collective output.
Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing regarding your company balance:
- Enabling the people to experience a well-organised, face-to-face training/workshop/trust-building session.
Showing people the power of being in the same space goes a really long way. My personal favourite is to tempt people to a shared space with breakfast and the possibility of learning together. This can be in the form of official training, inspirational information sharing by learning what others have discovered,a book club, or whatever the people in your organisation would be willing to meet up for.
- For important decision-making, planning, difficult discussions, or when the stakes are high – meet in person and plan it well.
We have to make it very explicit if we want to meet someone in person at the office. Stating this wish in a calendar invite does not guarantee success, you must discuss it with everyone individually. I often write explicitly that there is no way to join remotely and omit any automatic video links. Yet, despite all efforts, the expectation to be able to join online last minute is still a reality. However, when you get everyone together in the same room for important moments, you set a new norm and shift the balance toward the collective output.
- If your company is having difficulty delivering, set a time limit for fully on-site and then adjust.
Sometimes, the situation requires an example of something different. It can be a particular team or group of people that is willing to be on-site to highlight the difference and collect learnings. Once the trial is done, discussions over how to proceed should be had: should the trial be extended? Should the team now try working differently?
- Create offices that are so great that people flock to them.
This can work, and generally, I fully agree with the office providing what people need to be creative and meet their needs. Generally, I feel that a warm atmosphere, where you feel welcome every day, goes a long way—spaces where people can naturally bump into each other and where concentration is possible. At one client, they saw a performance improvement when the executive floor coffee machine broke, and everyone gathered in long lines to get their coffee from the same machine after lunch.
- In fully remote work, launch important things in person and meet regularly.
Remote work is not a way to save money, it is a way to allow individuals as much freedom as possible regarding their everyday location. However, successful, fully remote companies still meet in person regularly. When they meet, they spend days experiencing and working together, making decisions and getting to know each other. This fuel and preparations will take the remote society across a stretch of social drought until they meet again in x months. The remote teams have mutually agreed ways of working that usually are very disciplined where handovers break as little as possible.
- Encourage the teams to have explicit on-site days where everyone is at the office to get the balance right.
Many companies are dedicating specific weekdays to on-site work and reporting improvements in output and speed. Letting people pause to collect the effects can be crucial to get individuals to acknowledge and assess if it has been worth giving up some individual freedom for the good of the collective output.
- Invest in the collaborative mode you are in.
When in person, reap the benefits from being in the same space. Plan this well with possibilities to enjoy time together in differing forms.
When working remotely, it is not enough to have a decent internet connection. Make sure you have proper online tools, quality cameras, and great microphones. Hybrid tends to get a bad rep, as many perceive it as “you can join online or in person,” which tends to be either bad for the remote joiners or take all the benefits away from those in the same space. Whatever your choice of collaboration, do it well.
The technical setup is important because we often lose facial expressions, as what can technically be transported is not as fast and wide as what we see live. Many work remotely in dimly lit bedrooms using just the camera on their laptop or omit the use of cameras completely.
We sometimes lose parts of someone’s sentence as their internet connection breaks up, their microphone isn’t plugged in right, or there is background noise, which may make it hard to concentrate on what they are truly saying when energy is being used to understand the individual words.
The way you work will impact you. Make sure you stand behind your choice.
All of us need and want purpose in our lives. We work roughly 1/3 of our 24h. Many of us find some of this purpose in our work. Creating something we are proud of is a big factor in what makes us happy. We need to tap into that sense of purpose and pride.
Each of us also tends to couple development with happiness. We love getting better. We learn effectively from our peers and can build on each other’s ideas. This development is way more likely to happen when we meet physically.
We don’t have to go back to 100% on-site to have a possibility of survival, but it is crucial we are conscious about what constant remote work does to the individual, the team, and the company as a whole.
*Owl labs https://owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work/2021/ and Ergotron studies.
