Remote work is amazing . . . ly risky to implement.
Article 3 of 10
In my last piece I lauded the advantages of accommodating remote work and suggested you had no choice but to accept it and solve for it. In this article, I want to talk about how dangerous remote work is.
I said remote work is awesome. I didn’t say it was easy.
When It comes to allowing remote work, you need to tread lightly, because the downside is tremendous. You can’t afford to get this wrong.
There is a reason so many companies struggle to shift to remote work and ultimately abandon the effort. In the words of the great Ron Washington, “It’s incredibly hard.” In order to design a successful model we need to understand where things go wrong.
Eight Common Failure Points
1. Communication
We’ll start with the most obvious and the most common. Communicating is easier when you occupy the same physical space. It doesn’t require thought or planning. It is simply done. Shifting to remote work will often cause a precipitous decline in internal communication. Initially, this is seen as a good thing, as those casual office conversations are replaced with “doing the work.” But over time this becomes a problem as the old means of staying informed across departments is eliminated. Remote employees speak only to those who are within their group, and communication silos form. Entry-level employees are most affected. They will often lose all visibility outside of their own functional area and sometimes end up on an island with little or no communication at all.
2. Relationships
Up until very recently, geographical proximity has been the dominant factor in the formation of relationships. It’s why your grandparents and their friends all got married to someone from their hometown. While online dating has successfully removed the geographical barrier to relationships and become the norm for finding a mate, the same cannot be said for professional relationship building. Forming relationships with coworkers is important. Countless studies have shown that humans desire, and even require, human connectedness to thrive. If you care about your employees' mental health, you need to encourage real relationships at work. The level of connectedness necessary for genuine relationships is difficult to create in a remote environment.
3. Accidental Collisions
If communication and relationships are important (see above) then it stands to reason that eliminating unplanned physical encounters is a bad idea. Some of the most productive communication happens by accident when two people happen to share the kitchen sink or find themselves walking across the parking lot together. The same is obviously true for relationships. The best relationships are unplanned. They form and grow organically. And in the workplace, they often begin with a chance encounter. Going remote eliminates accidental collisions and the many benefits they provide.
4. Culture
A strong culture is built on connection. Connection to the mission. Connection to leadership. Connection to each other. The best cultures are not just understood, they are felt. It is much harder to create the culture you want without regularly occupying the same space with your employees.
5. Onboarding
This one should be obvious, so we won’t spend a lot of time on it. While onboarding can certainly be done remotely, it is much more difficult. A new hire’s first day is critically important. Is hopping on a Zoom call from their breakfast table before eating leftovers from the same table equal to walking into a welcoming new office and getting taken to lunch by their energetic peers? No. Not even close. Now apply that to the first 100 days. It just doesn’t compare.
6. Learning by Osmosis
One of the most effective ways to accelerate an employee’s development is to give them a desk beside an all-star who is a few months ahead of them. Let the newer employee watch and listen to the way the all-star does their job. It’s easy. It’s free. It’s effective. It is a whole heck of a lot harder to do with a distributed workforce.
7. Productivity Decline
I know we just quoted a bunch of studies suggesting and even proving remote employees are way more productive, but let’s take a minute to discuss. It is certainly true that SOME remote employees will be more productive, but it’s dangerous to make global statements about something that is so nuanced and complex. Some people have fewer distractions at home. I have five kids. This is not true of me. Some people require long periods of uninterrupted flow to do their best work. Others struggle to stay on task when uninterrupted for long periods. I don’t care what the surveys say, my real-world experience has shown that without effective measurements, workflow tools, and management interventions even the best-intentioned employees will experience a decline in productivity over time.
8. The dreaded “Hybrid”
One major risk of moving to a distributed workforce is creating an unintentional separation and hierarchy between remote employees and in-office employees. It is easy to do. It is the default end state without intentional thought and defined efforts to counteract. When one population is in the office full time and another population is remote full time, remote employees have unequal access. They have less access. Less access to communication. Less access to relationships. Less access to accidental collisions. Less access to culture. You get the point. They will feel “less than” . . . and they will be correct. You absolutely cannot create a “less than” environment and expect to retain top talent. It is not possible.
It’s easy for a well-intentioned business leader to stumble into these traps while trying to “do what’s best” for their employees. Unfortunately, they have near zero awareness of the problem until it’s a really big problem. Poor communication, unequal access to information, knowledge silos, and weak relationships do not build trust. They destroy it. The effects are slow to take hold, but over time the leader will start to notice they feel like there is less trust than there was before. Suddenly, paranoia will start to present itself where it has never been seen before.
Once mistrust and paranoia set in, you can bank on a pretty rough culture rebuild.
This won’t be a quick fireside chat to get the team back on track, it will be hard work and likely require significant turnover. It’s not good. It’s really painful actually. Sorry, just being honest.
Well, that was a downer, wasn’t it? In article one I made the case that you had no choice but to figure out how to accommodate a distributed workforce. In article two I shared the one and only reason you should consider allowing remote work. Now I just spent the last five minutes warning you that moving to a distributed workforce would probably be a disaster and ruin whatever culture you have worked so hard to build. Yep. This is a tough topic.
Keep reading though. Next, I am going to share the five organizational leadership principles necessary to create a thriving culture with a distributed workforce. Then we’ll go through each one in detail, each with a specific plan of action for you to begin implementing.
