Is remote work really slowing innovation?
A recent study done by Microsoft on it's employees concluded that after switching to remote working from 2020 to 2022 damaged communication and collaboration between different teams which resulted in slowing down overall innovation.
Many activists criticized companies who are unnecessarily forcing their employees to come to office. Teams don’t need to be face-to-face for eight hours a day to get the work done. They also point out that working from home effectively eliminates commute times.
Judging the whole process based on just 2-3 years of work is quite early and more organizations should give more time on it. Atleast they should test for 6-7 years or a decade to conclude if it's beneficial for both society or company or not.
What you guys think?
I've chatted with a TON of remote/hybrid teams about this in developing my product. There are a bunch of great things that many appreciate about flexible work. You mentioned the commute, thats one big part. It also creates more opportunities for the disabled and caregivers to participate in the economy.
And that's just the employee side, employers could potentially save $$ here on commercial real estate and the like.
It's also important to note that some types of work just can't be done remotely. But aside from those situations it sounds like a slam dunk in general right?
That said, like ~80% of people I talked to mentioned that when they moved to remote, their team stopped working together as much outside of planned meetings. It can mean less connection with your team and it also impacts visibility. Downstream if those issues aren't handled you get higher turnover, slower innovation, and employee burnout.
So yeah, there are issues here. But I do not think we should bring everyone back to the office because there are some challenges. I think the answer is to improve remote work through better tools and processes. Personally, I think companies that invest smartly in this direction will have an edge in the long run.
Thanks for bringing this up @uptimetracker - I think it's a really important topic.
Nicely explained. They really need to explain exactly on what type of work they did survey for. Because for some work remote or offline affect is completely negligible. I don't think a UI UX designer or developer need to work from office.
But some dev need to work with hardware employees who manages DC, so they need to have office work side by side. It's all depend on how much being present at office is required.
With companies outsourcing remote work from different countries are going to be tougher because many countries and cities are silently passing laws related to remote work so that even if the employee is working remotely he either needs to be from same country or state where company office is located.
Remote work is here to stay. Judging the remote work system is too early. We are still in adoption phase, so offcourse there be some distractions and conflict of thoughts.
Personally, I think the hybrid model is the way to go. Even though I personally really like working from home.
The hybrid model gives both benefit of saving time and not having to interact every day and keeps up the collaboration.
I think that totally losing social contact via the office can be damaging long term, both for the performance and on a more personal level. We are after all a species used to sticking together in groups.
I think Microsoft spent decades learning and optimizing how to be productive in big offices. Of course their first couple of years half-heartedly trying remote haven't been as productive! They aren't as good at it.
I think remote work is the future but it needs to be done in balanced way. Not 100% remote and not 100% office work.
Company should plan a schedule in which employees can take some weeks or a month as remote work and then some weeks or a month as remote work based on rotation routine.
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In what sense?
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