There is one reason (and one reason only) to embrace remote work.

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The advantages to the individual are obvious. From wearing a tee shirt to walking the dog, dumping the commute, and eating out of your own fridge it’s pretty easy to create a list of very legitimate reasons remote work is awesome for the remote worker.

It’s a little harder to come up with a list of reasons that remote work is great for the team or the company. That hasn’t stopped people from trying though. Survey companies have spent a lot of time and money trying to reverse-engineer a bunch of data to support moving to a distributed model. Lo and behold they found some!

There are a lot of reasons to move to a distributed work model!

Just kidding. There is only one. Let us discuss, shall we?

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced all nonessential knowledge industry companies to immediately shift to a remote work environment. It was incredible to watch. Many business leaders feared a disaster, but very few actually experienced one. It didn’t take long before media-friendly CEOs and consultants everywhere were celebrating the successful shift to remote work and championing a distributed work model:

“Remote work is here to stay!” — Wall Street Journal

“We’re never going back!” — Forbes

They hired survey companies to test their hypothesis. Surprise! The survey results supported the sentiment. Shocking! Sigh . . . From the beginning of the pandemic until recently we have been inundated with data certifying all of the wonderful benefits of allowing employees to work remotely. The “data” seemed to prove that remote work is not only more fun, it is more effective, better for the environment, and cheaper. Win! Win! Win! Win!

There are a million studies on remote work, all of them a waste of time.

Here are just a few:

• Workers say they are more productive: 66% of Flexjob survey respondents said their productivity improved when not in an office, and 76% said there are fewer distractions outside of offices. There are countless stats suggesting remote workers are more productive.
• Data suggests workers weren’t lying: Stats showed JD Edwards teleworkers were shown to be 20–25 percent more productive than their office colleagues. Additionally, American Express employees who worked from home were 43 percent more productive.
• Remote work is good for the environment: If U.S. workers worked remotely half the time, the greenhouse reduction would have the same effect as taking the New York State workforce permanently off the road.
• Remote work is cheaper: Businesses can save as much as $11,000 per person, per year by allowing them to work from home, according to Global Workplace Analytics.
• Workers like working remotely: According to a study by Softchoice, 74% of North American office workers reported they would change jobs based on a work-from-home policy.
• Remote work contributes to job satisfaction: 53.3% of developers said working remotely was a priority when looking for a new job, and the highest job satisfaction was reported by developers who were entirely or almost entirely remote.

Given all of these inarguable proven benefits, why wouldn’t you allow your people to work remotely?

Well, lots of reasons actually, but let’s not go there just yet. Instead, I want to propose a different frame.

Consider the following:

As these surveys suggest, there are many compelling reasons to consider accommodating remote workers going forward. Some of these are debatable and invite obvious counterarguments. In my experience, most of these are extremely hard to actually achieve outside of survey results.

Controversial belief: As a leader, you should assume the default outcome when moving to a distributed workforce is an unmotivated, unproductive, yet very happy workforce.

This is where many leaders find themselves stuck today. It’s just that hard to execute. So, why risk it?

There is one reason and one reason only:

The advantage of supporting a distributed workforce is access to talent.

In knowledge work, the company with the most talent is at a considerable advantage. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix calls it “talent density” and he is fanatical about maximizing it. There is truth to the saying “The best talent wins.” (a half-truth anyway, more on this later). If you are leading a company where talent matters, you need to consider the risk/reward of a distributed workforce.

Consider the obvious advantages of allowing people to work from the location of their choosing:

1. Highly talented people on the other side of the world can now choose to work at your company. You are no longer filtered out in their search for the dream job.
2. Similarly, you can now pursue highly talented people regardless of location. The pool of qualified candidates just expanded exponentially.

There are some legitimate adjacent benefits too:

• Cost — Companies no longer have to compete in dense urban markets with limited talent resources. They can pay less and get more by expanding their geographical search.
• New markets — Companies now have access to an untapped talent pool of moms and dads more willing to pursue a career alongside parenting. It opens up access to an entirely new market of talent.
• Retention — Employees can future-proof their job selection by selecting companies that allow lateral and upward moves regardless of geographic location. Instead of looking for a job closer to home, moms and dads trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance can reallocate commute time to their families.

All of these advantages lead to the same conclusion. Companies that figure out how to thrive with a distributed workforce are at a considerable advantage in talent acquisition. They will end up with the best people who go on to build the best products, win the best customers, and train the next generation of winners. Full stop.

This is why you can’t just ignore remote work. There is too much upside in getting it right. In technology (and knowledge work in general) it very well could be the difference between surviving and thriving. You need to figure out what it means for you. Just don’t jump in too quickly.

Before you fire off that memo announcing your big shift to remote, you need to know there are some significant disadvantages to remote work. In fact, there is lots of downside that you need to be aware of. We’ll talk about it in our next article. If you have stumbled into a distributed work environment, it’s not going to be a super fun read.