Using Data to Drive Decisions Around Remote Work

5 minutes min read |
Traffic in the City

The debate over remote work can be summed up in one sentence.  Two uninformed sides arguing against each other for three years, with one side seemingly throwing in the towel in January.  Any guesses to who blinked first?  

First, a little history on the twists and turns remote work has taken since the pandemic.  Messaging from company management teams typically went something like this:

  • 2019 – Remote work is not possible.  We don’t have the tools and trust is low. Plus, we need to honor our agreements with commercial real estate companies (and pay exorbitant rent per square foot). 
  • 2020 – We have to deal with the uncertainty around a new Pandemic.  Everyone that can be remote should be remote.
  • 2021 – We’re seeing a little bleed from Productivity that we think is due to remote work.  But the Pandemic is still here and we can’t make changes.
  • 2022 – We’ve figured out how to live with COVID-19 and for now, we can accept Hybrid work although we know some employees will remain fully remote.
  • 2023 – We’re losing productivity, some employees won’t come back and the real estate lobby is pressuring companies to continue their lease.
  • 2024 – We give up.  We will implement a Hybrid-first policy in the attempt to avoid a fully remote workforce.

What did we learn?  Big revelations.  The main one was that companies really didn’t have a remote work policy when one should have been developed in January 2020.  Yes, you read that right.  Before the pandemic.  Now, the impact of that is laid bare.  Employees don’t want to come back (even with all the arguments for proximity bias) and Management thinks employees are abusing the privilege of work from home.  Management thought, wrongly, that they could snap their fingers and make them return. 

This shoot from the hip reaction served no one well.  Each side was contentious, notably whenever prominent work from home experts posted on LinkedIn.  Nick Bloom stood out as one of the few who used data to support his thesis that hybrid (2-3 days in office, 2-3 WFH) was the likely endgame.  At the end of the day, neither side was using data to back up their argument; most of it was based on emotion.  

Workers argue the following:

  • Flexibility: Remote work offers employees greater flexibility, leading to higher job satisfaction and better work-life balance.
  • Productivity: Most remote workers say they notice a spike in productivity, as they can avoid distractions commonly found in office environments, such as interruptions from coworkers or long commutes.
  • Cost Savings: Employees save money on commuting expenses while employers can reduce rent and overhead costs.
  • Health and Safety: After the pandemic, employees became more self-conscious about their surroundings, which included sterilized office spaces.
  • Environmental Impact: By reducing the need for commutes to work, employees will leave less of a carbon footprint.

Then Management fires back:

  • Collaboration and Creativity: This is a cousin to proximity bias – being physically present in the office can foster spontaneous interactions and collaborations among team members, leading to increased creativity and innovation.
  • Company Culture: Office environments can play a key role in nurturing company culture. Face-to-face interactions build stronger relationships among employees and promote a sense of belonging.
  • Communication: We’ve seen this proven out time and again – in-person communication is often more effective than remote communication using Zoom or email. Direct communication leads to faster decision-making and better execution.
  • Mentorship and Training: Being present in the office means more mentorship opportunities and real-time training.  These are especially important for new and younger employees (Gen Z, we’re looking at you).

Work-Life Balance: WFH can blur the boundaries between work and personal life.  What does that lead to? It can, if not managed properly, lead to burnout and decreased productivity. RTO will establish a healthier work-life balance.

Data security

So, those are both sides’ POVs.  And yes, one side won – employees.

According to Axios, Just 6 out of 158 U.S. CEOs said they'll prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time in 2024, according to a new survey released by the Conference Board.  In addition, a separate survey of chief financial officers by Deloitte, conducted in November, found that 65% of CFOs expect their company to offer a hybrid arrangement this year.  That one’s important because of the outsized influence CFOs exert on an organization via a direct line to CEOs.

As Brian Elliot, a former Slack executive, says, remote work wasn’t attempted before for one reason: "we never did it because we didn't have any experience doing it and we were afraid it wouldn't work."  Now they have the tools and experience to make it work.

Gen Z and Millenials will increasingly be the ones driving decisions about working arrangements.  It’s time for executives to meet them in the middle.  The way to do this is having data points that will guide decisions.  After all, this is a business decision and therefore requires compromise and tradeoffs.

Too often, feelings have been at the center of the “Return to Office Wars”.  Ed Zitron at Business Insider is onto something: “Managers and executives make calls based on perception rather than hands-on experience or data.”  That sums it up.

At RampLane, we support companies by giving them data points to show compliance with their remote work policies, especially around home workspaces.  HR typically adds RampLane and Designated Home Workspace as a section in their Employee Handbooks so it becomes a formal part of the onboarding process – but one that is also recertified annually by each employee.

Management needs to set expectations for workers and have a standardized approach to their office arrangements.  A simple message like: “If you work from home, it's a privilege – all we ask is that you are compliant with our expectations around a WFH space” will do the trick.  Remote work doesn’t have to be the wild west.  With the right compliance mechanism in place, the remote work question can be put to bed and executives can “sleep at night”.

Originally Published onThu, 04/04/2024 - 06:44 | Updated on Thu, 04/04/2024 - 08:54
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Data
Leadership
Strategy
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