The Remote Work Fallacy
It's funny that the day JPMorgan Chase & Co. ordered workers back to the office due to lower remote work productivity, Stripe announced $20k for every employee opting to make remote work permanent. Apparently they’re operating under contradictory assumptions. Who’s right?
Old processes on new paradigms don't work
My two cents: As with any foundational change, companies and employees need to reach a certain level of maturity before they can make it work. It doesn't happen by accident. This change needs to be driven systematically. Simply imposing old processes on a new paradigm and expecting things to magically fall into place - and if not, revert back to the previous suboptimal "normal" way of doing things because this experiment proved that the new way doesn't work - doesn't cut it. This lesson should have been learned from previous changes: Digitizing shitty processes doesn't make you a great digital company, it makes you a company with shitty digital processes.
Stuck in evolutional infancy
There is a design concept that describes this first iteration towards something new: Skeuomorphism. Digital objects are designed to mimic the appearance and behavior of their physical counterparts to build on mental models already in place. The early iPhone, for example, used wobbly buttons on screen to show users that they can be tapped; the "save" button in any program has the floppy icon on it, although younger users no longer know what a floppy actually is; cars used to be built like carriages, although there was no functional need for it. While this makes it easier for humans to adopt new tools, it limits the potential of what these new tools can really achieve to the confines of the old. Regarding remote work, most companies haven't evolved beyond this Skeuomorphism stage.
What works?
There are some companies out there, however, with a lot of lessons for anyone caring to look. Simply copying them without the specific characteristics of each individual company in mind won't work either. We therefore help our clients in designing their Employee Experience systematically. Leveraging the strengths of on-site and remote work in such a setup will be a central success factor of every company going forward.
No matter what setup will prove to be best, one thing is certain: The answer won't be found in the dichotomy of "everything as is, just remote from now on" and "let's roll everything back to the old normal".
What are your thoughts?
Further reading:
Let's talk about EX, baby: Why organizations must prioritize Employee Experience
Bodo Schaefer: Das Homeoffice ist kein Zukunftsmodell (German - PDF)
About the author:
Alexander Braun is the founder of the digital strategy consultancy CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION, which was acquired by the technology and management consultancy Capco in March 2020. In his role as Executive Director at Capco Alexander advises companies from the Financial Services industry on their digital strategy and the development of customer centric innovation. He is the author of books on Artificial Intelligence / Chatbots, the impact of the internet and technology on business models, and the potential of the Blockchain for trust in democratic processes and institutions.
RoadCo
When I last heard you talk about this I immediately asked myself, how do they measure productivity. I think it's always better to measure end-results. That being said, as much as I have observed teams struggle to build a new virtual corporate culture, nothing can replace the value of information flow within an office for the success of a company. I think it will take a while before we find the right balance.
Meeting culture and company processes are often not really fit and optimised for remote teams or mixed remote/on-site teams. But the real problem often sits much deeper and is of a more general and broader nature: managers and managed individuals alike need to learn to actually measure productivity. Most of us are still entrenched in a mindset where secretly we think we are paid for our time plus a couple of hours over-time. But this concept does not scale well when transferred into the world of remote work and leads to inconsistent ratings of productivity.
And the challenge is to combine current experiences (it works!) with the right medicine for daily pain points (I am just sitting in front of the screen), all based on an appropriate infrastructure and user friendly, cloud based software...