As the pandemic forced offices around the world to shut down, a grand experiment in remote work began. Employees were sent home, video conferencing tools proliferated, and companies had to adapt quickly to this new way of operating. Some companies embraced it wholeheartedly, while others saw it as a temporary inconvenience until they could get “back to normal.”
Now several years out from those initial lockdowns, the lasting impact of forced remote work has become clear. The cat is out of the bag – knowledge workers have seen that it is indeed possible to be productive from home or other locations outside of a traditional office. And many have come to prefer it, craving the flexibility, work-life balance, and lack of commute that remote work provides.
But there remains a stubbornly persistent “office mindset” among many leadership teams and seasoned professionals. These are often highly-paid executives and senior managers who built their careers in the era of lifetime corporate loyalty and open office plans. Their instincts and mental models are deeply rooted in the notion that employees need to be physically present in an office from 9-to-5, Monday through Friday.
This office mindset stems from dated philosophies of supervisory leadership and faith in being able to “manage by walking around.” Executives convince themselves that they need to see butts in seats and people at their desks to ensure productivity and keep a watchful eye. Never mind that research shows this style of leadership is demoralizing and ineffective compared to more modern approaches based on accountability, trust, and intrinsic motivation.
While understandable for those who came of age in a different era, clinging to this office mindset is ultimately self-defeating for companies. It closes them off from entire pools of potential talent that prioritize flexibility and autonomy over antiquated office expectations. And it creates tensions and resentment among employees that do stick around, who see leadership’s attachment to unnecessary office policies as out-of-touch at best, and blatant distrust at worst.
The most successful organizations are embracing a remote work philosophy centered on empowering teams with maximum flexibility based on their circumstances. Rather than blanket policies, they are taking a pragmatic approach of determining job-by-job what kind of work modalities make the most sense.
Some roles and teams require in-person collaboration or use of specialized equipment that necessitates going into an office or facility. Other roles like software development, data analysis, consulting and many forms of creative work can be performed entirely remotely if the right processes and tools are in place.
And increasingly, companies are finding that a hybrid approach is ideal. Having teams co-locate 1-2 times per week to gather for meetings, whiteboarding sessions, and informal social interactions – while working remotely the remaining days – optimizes for both productivity and team cohesion.
There’s no one-size-fits-all, and forward-thinking organizations are empowering teams and managers to experiment and discover what works best for them while providing training and resources to make hybrid work as seamless as possible.
But shifting towards remote and hybrid work requires a major mindset shift – one that many leaders have been stubbornly resistant to making. In addition to training on the tools and tactics, it requires rethinking long-held assumptions about what effective leadership and productive work looks like.
When teams see leaders embodying these new philosophies around trust, empowerment, and alignment on outcomes rather than face-time, it grease the wheels for more flexible and remote work culture. But it starts with leaders breaking free of the rigid office mindset.
Experiences during the pandemic showed remote work was entirely viable for many more jobs than previously thought. Software companies, media firms, and elements of financial services were the early adopters of remote work over a decade ago. Today we’re seeing law firms, manufacturers, construction companies and enterprises across virtually every industry rethinking their office requirements.
Even roles with in-person elements like teaching are looking to hybrid approaches. With thoughtful design and execution, jobs that were previously tethered to office locations are finding ways to integrate more flexibility.
In an effort to attract and keep talent, major companies are shifting away from strict office mandates that had been standard for years. Recognizing the need to provide flexibility – especially for working parents – they are empowering teams to determine their own ideal cadences of in-person and remote work.
The laggards in this transition will struggle to recruit top talent, plain and simple. Studies have found that employees are willing to take pay cuts in order to have remote work flexibility. In today’s competitive talent market, it’s difficult to overstate how damaging it can be for organizations to continue clinging to the office mindset.
Companies and even entire regions that take a regressive stance towards flexible work will find themselves shut out of entire segments of the talent market as they compete against organizations that have adapted and internalized agile ways of working.
If the pandemic taught us anything, it was the incredible capacity of humans to be productive and innovative when given flexibility, autonomy, and trust. Organizations that stubbornly cling to the office mindset in the face of this may never fully recover. Agility, in every sense of the word, has become necessity. Those that resist change are doomed to become obsolete.
