We hear a lot about the benefits of remote work. And there are many – myriad, even – a plethora of pluses. And yet, company after company is announcing a return to the office. Why?
For all the many positive factors associated with distributed work, there are legitimate practical, cultural, and operational considerations. Distributed work can be transformative… if your company’s culture, processes, and structure are well suited for it. But there are many companies that would be better off working onsite or designing a hybrid model.
Worse, it seems that many companies tried out remote-first transitions without a long-term strategy or a clear understanding of the risks. Given the direct effect flexible work has on people’s lives, treating remote work as an experiment is nothing short of irresponsible.
Leaders need to know ahead of time whether their company will be able to operate outside the office. Let’s explore the real reasons your organization shouldn’t go remote, grounded in the culture you have today—not the culture you hope remote work will create.
Caveat: debunking faulty assumptions
There are a couple of conventional ideas I hear repeatedly from leaders & executives, which are absolutely not valid reasons to keep your team in the office. Here’s why they don’t make this list.
Faulty assumption: Sales teams need the office environment to thrive.
This is a common belief of sales leaders: you need your pit. Gotta pump people up, get them vibing, and keep them working. However, pre-pandemic, sales roles were significantly more likely to be remote (15% vs 6% of all jobs). It’s always been possible to lead a sales team remotely — but you have to know (or learn) how to maintain a high-connection virtual environment. The challenge is culture and leadership skill.
Faulty assumption: Creatives can’t work in solitude.
This is entirely wrong. Most creative professionals thrive in an environment where they can move between brainstorming, idea-sharing mode, and dedicated focus to produce and refine work. Many creative teams get together for regular onsites and even virtual brainstorms, but they do the bulk of their work individually.
Faulty assumption: Some companies are too big to work remotely.
The trend of major tech companies returning to the office could be read as a sign that it isn’t possible to do remote work at scale. For reasons I’ll get into, this is a misconception. It’s safe to assume that these companies will figure it out – but they first need to have a transformation strategy.
Table stakes: Insurmountable reasons you can never ditch the office
These ones are obvious, and they also tend to be forever. If you have these factors at play, your company should almost certainly keep your HQ.
1. You build things or provide in-person services.
Obviously. While there’s often some element of traditionally in-person work that can be done virtually (tele-health screens, for example!), you can’t work a soldering iron, teach kindergarten, or build a spaceship virtually.
2. You manage or lead people who do their work onsite.
Boeing is a classic example of an all-too-common problem: if your people are working in person, their managers need to be onsite. Opinions vary about what rung of the corporate ladder “gets to” work from wherever they want. My take? In any company where work happens in person, leaders should spend at least some of their time onsite.
Right, now that the low-hanging fruit is out of the way, let’s tackle…
Forcing functions: Good reasons your team shouldn’t work remotely yet
3. You hire people with less work experience.
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned in the past five years: people who are new to the workforce are most likely to feel lonely, disconnected, or underappreciated in remote jobs. Whether you hire a lot of younger workers, people re-entering the workforce, or people in new roles, your people need more in-person time to learn workplace norms, build connections, and grow in their careers.
4. Your people are more senior and used to office culture.
This is an “don’t assume, but ask” factor – and it’s worth asking. People with a high level of expertise and highly honed ways of working may not be interested in disrupting all that – or they may struggle to shift to async, virtual-first modalities. Consult your people not just on their preference to work from home, but on whether shifting their day-to-day practices would be worth the potential hassle.
5. Your managers aren’t trained for virtual-first leadership.
Managing remotely requires a new set of skills and instincts. If you haven’t given your managers the chance to learn new skills, you could be setting your team up for disaster. Take the time to train your managers before throwing them into a whole new environment.
6. You’re implementing distributed work to solve a recruiting problem.
Theoretically, hiring people from anywhere widens the talent pool — theoretically. However, recruiting and retention problems generally don’t stem from a lack of available people: they’re organizational issues. If you have a culture issue that makes it hard to hire or keep good people, this won’t fix it.
7. You don’t have a plan for digital transformation.
Remote work isn’t just flipping a switch—it requires strategic planning, processes, and a clear digital roadmap. If you don’t have a well-thought-out plan in place, wait until you’re ready.
Culture factors: Issues that will undermine distributed operations
It’s an unfortunate truism that culture trumps strategy. When I see teams struggling to execute outside an office, my first guess is always a culture disconnect. Identifying culture factors takes self-examination and careful assessment – but it’s worth the effort, since they can make or break your digital transformation.
8. Your company has a low-trust culture.
Remote work thrives on transparency and trust. Not every company can pull this off. Maybe your work requires a high level of confidentiality, or maybe your leaders are less inclined to be open and transparent. If your company has a tendency toward secret-keeping; if your leaders have a closed-door mentality; even if your team keeps their calendars and documents set to private-by-default; this will only worsen when people work remotely. Distributed work amplifies your culture of trust. If information doesn’t flow freely in your company, you won’t be able to work asynchronously – and your productivity and morale will falter.
9. Your people tend to be “always on.”
Working from home erodes the boundaries between work and life – and for some professions, that’s a huge issue. While some companies support a healthy work-life divide because it improves retention and work quality, others tend to encourage people to work long hours. Overwork leads to burnout, fatigue, mistakes, and turnover. If your company has an always-on mentality, it’s wise to give people a physical office – so they know when they’ve left it.
10. Your company relies heavily on consensus and cross-functional collaboration.
Not every organizational structure is suited to remote work – and if your company is built around flexible roles, lots of context-switching, organically-evolving project teams and consensus-based decisions, you’ll be able to do all of this much more effectively in an office. Async work slows down information transfer, which is fine if roles and processes are clear and predictable. If your work is oriented more around people than systems, your team will require more discussions and nuanced conversations. Better to do those in person.
11. You have a strong culture of mentorship and/or apprenticeship.
Mentoring and training can be done very effectively across distances, but for some companies, knowledge is primarily stored in people’s brains rather than in a shared knowledge base. This can be the case in any size of organization, but it’s most common in family businesses and trades: experts train novices, helping them to develop both hard and soft skills. Above all, this attracts a personality type that learns through context. If this is your culture, make use of an immersive in-person environment to help those types thrive.
Know this: Distributed work isn’t a one-size-fits-all
In the early days of the pandemic, all-remote companies evangelized their high-functioning distributed teams and ways of working. We all hoped that a range of companies could implement the same essential practices, helping them thrive in a distributed environment. That was overly simplistic, and now we’re learning exactly how and why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Success as a distributed or hybrid company depends entirely on developing a strategy that suits your existing culture, ways of working, organizational structure, and digital readiness – rather than implementing another company’s best practices and hoping your organization will transform to fit.
Over time, great companies will develop their own strategies and models, and will ultimately incorporate distributed work in a way that creates huge benefits for profits, productivity, retention, and innovation. We’re currently in the exploratory phase, and the years ahead will see an explosion of strategic, well-considered approaches to digital-first, hybrid, and in-person work.
The best thing your company can do right now is an honest assessment of your unique needs. If you’re interested in exploring a customized approach or learning more about your options, reach out.
