Anyone remember the 1970s and 1980s when futurists were predicting a telecommuting takeover? New technology would change work and home life, they said. No more traffic jams or long commutes. Companies would save money on office space. The natural environment would benefit. Employees might even be healthier. But work from home fizzled.
Now here we are, decades later, hopefully coming out of a pandemic that’s been a forced experiment in working from home. And what are the results of that experiment?
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Most employees who’ve been working from home think life’s better without hours-long commutes. Many are eating healthier, are less stressed, and spending less money and more time with family, leisure or volunteering. 90% of those workers aren’t ready to be back in the office. Some are reluctant because of health safety and childcare concerns. About 50% though want to permanently keep the work from home pace and distance, at least part-time. But 83% of CEOs say no, not gonna happen. With so much upside, why not?
What’s Keeping Employers from Saying Yes to Work from Home?
Productivity
Productivity is equal or higher, based on studies I’ve read. That’s what employees think too. Some company executives say that’s not what their data show though. It’s always possible that some types of work or some groups of employees are less productive. Either way, productivity claims are likely to remain disputed.
Some execs believe creativity and innovation will suffer. Well, what happened with the coronavirus? Scientists around the world collaborated and learned about the virus and created vaccines in a matter of months. They didn’t all get in one big room to do this discovery and innovate. Mostly, they did it long-distance. Remotely. One example, no matter how big doesn’t mean creativity wouldn’t suffer anywhere with remote work. It just shows, it doesn’t have to.
Company Culture
Some CEOs talk about maintaining corporate culture. It’s become a common saying among professionals who focus on organizations that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Meaning, regardless of the goals the company wants to achieve and the resources and tactics they plan to use to get there, if its culture doesn’t align, no amount of money or effort will succeed. For example, if the goal is to build an airplane, but the culture is one where each department works independently, you’ll likely never get a plane built that flies.
That airplane goal is an extreme hypothetical example to illustrate culture over strategy. But, is there empirical evidence that a company’s success or productivity is because of its culture, or parts of it? Sometimes, maybe. But mostly it’s belief. If a company succeeds and has a particular culture, managers, in particular, think success is at least in part because of the culture. Company culture=company success. The assumption then is, the existing culture is essential for continued success.
Another belief is, if people aren’t immersed in company slogans, office arrangements and daily norms, the culture will fade. Once imbued with cultural norms, expectations and practices though, they’re inside us. They’re unlikely to fade.
In fact, cultures aren’t interchangeable. You can’t just pick one up and trade it in for a different model. Usually if companies want to make major cultural change, employees who’ve absorbed the existing culture leave—voluntarily or involuntarily. Or at least a substantial enough portion of them do, so that the new ways can squelch the old.
Scheduling Logistics
Some say the scheduling logistics would be a nightmare. If some employees work at home all the time and some only on certain days, how would companies keep track? How would they accommodate company and differential employee needs? For example, younger employees appear to need in-person mentoring and orientation to the company’s ways of life (its culture). That means, when they’re in the office, at least some long-term employees must be there too. But we have software that can handle global supply chain logistics and customer service. Surely, setting up and managing employee scheduling isn’t the holdup, especially given the benefits of flexible, remote working to people and planet.
What’s the Real Reason Working from Home May Stall?
CEOs are the ones saying no to working from home, so we need to focus on them to understand what might be going on. Execs drive the company and often they’re hired for their fit with the organization’s culture. In the case of founders, they’ve established the culture—usually reflecting their own psychology and personality traits. Culture includes both espoused values—those that are overtly known and stated— and tacit values—those that are unconscious, taken-for-granted. Both affect individuals’ behavior.
Espoused Values
One obvious reason for CEOS to oppose working from home is just what some of them are saying. Right or wrong, the espoused belief is that workers need to be at the workplace during certain time periods. The company culture is a regimented one. Even if productivity during our forced remote work experiment counters it, in-person work is still the way they believe it should be done. In these kinds of companies, CEOs are typically the final decision-maker.
Another belief is that people enjoy talking and working with other people, so in-person work meets that need. By-and-large it’s true, humans are a social species. The fallacy comes in with the assertion that it’s in-person work that satisfies that need. For some it does. Others find other ways.
Tacit Values
Often, when a potential change that has so many benefits still doesn’t gain traction, it’s time to look below the surface at the part of culture that’s so deeply engrained it’s rarely even recognized, let alone questioned. Assumptions, beliefs and values that we so take for granted, they’re unconscious. Often, that’s called shared tacit assumptions. Instead of what we “say” we believe and value, sometimes it’s the unconscious beliefs and values that actually drive our behavior and decisions. No surprise, the espoused and tacit values can be in conflict. When they are, tacit wins. Sometimes though, tacit and espoused beliefs reinforce each other.
As an example of one possibility, let’s say a hypothetical CEO thinks employees must be at their desk from 9-5 Monday through Friday because that’s company culture and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. OK, pretty cut and dried. He or she’s the boss. The broader American culture says the boss’s decision prevails. But since presumably productivity’s equal, employee’s want to continue working remotely, there are societal and environmental benefits to doing so, and other CEOs are going with work from home, might there be tacit beliefs reinforcing this CEO’s espoused belief?
Trust
Some scholars have pointed to lack of trust. Really, they say, there’s a deep-down belief that employees can’t be trusted to do the job on their own. A CEO who believes that, and also believes it’s their job to ensure employees work, will hold fast to in-person working arrangements.
Status and Identity
Even more tacit may be beliefs about status and identity. In our culture, CEOs expect certain kinds of treatment, deference for one, and recognition that they’re the boss. If they’re not operating in an environment where that feedback is constantly at hand, validating their status and identity, is it threatened?
Some may see these as psychological explanations. To some extent they are. But they’re also cultural. What the culture we’re raised in or socialized into in other ways (ex., military, higher education, religion) tells us about how life should be and how we’re to behave. Culture gets lodged in us so deeply that we don’t even realize where those norms, expectations and beliefs come from. Yet often, they forestall change.
When telecommuting was first a hot new thing decades ago, futurists thought we’d be there by now. Unless we learn to address the sociological and psychological issues holding back change, a golden opportunity to make work work better for more people may pass us by again.