The war on remote work. Generational? Institutional? Righteous?
In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic was still in its early stages and while still working for Marks, part of SGS & Co & PepsiCo, my wife and I decided to take some control of our lives back. We sold our house in Nyack, NY. We packed up our car, along with our then four-year old daughter and one-year old son, and we set out on a cross-country road trip.
Where are the kids???
The situation was unprecedented. All employees were working from home. To my employers’ credit, they were incredibly supportive, and over the course of the next few weeks, our family drove 5 hours a day after work hours, settling down for a few days in Pittsburgh, the Great Lakes, a pit stop in Des Moines, Jackson Hole – trying to find the birth home of my buddy Mark Lenz and Kanye’s ranch, Cheyenne, Salt Lake, Las Vegas, before finally settling down for a few months in Dana Point, CA. (On the way back, we hit Arizona, Fredericksburg, Austin, Waco (shout out to Chip Gaines & Joanna!), Nashville, Virginia, before getting back to New York.)
As a European-born kid who vacationed in Europe and tropical places, it was thrilling and eye-opening to see all these amazing sights right here in the United States. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Perhaps not.
The pandemic was challenging for many reasons, but it did prove out that both small and large-scale companies can efficiently run their business with the majority of their workforce working from home. Pandora’s box was opened. Some companies welcomed the opportunity, shedding expensive real estate commitments, helping their margins. Digital companies were offering unlimited WFH moving forward. Montana real estate boomed. Barbados offered benefits and work visas to those who were willing to work there.
Three years later, utopia is not quite here. Cities are desperate for offices to return to full staff to help support downtown businesses and infrastructure. Many high-profile businesses are instituting mandatory return-to-office policies:
· Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz informed employees within commuting distance of its Seattle headquarters and regional centers that they would be required to work from the office three days per week. The announcement came after badge data showed that employees weren’t adhering to a directive to come in at least once per week.
· The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger has issued a similar order: Corporate employees must work from the office at least four days per week beginning in March.
· JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon says “Remote work ‘doesn’t work’ for bosses, young workers, or ‘spontaneity’.”
All this in the face of a clear preference by employees to work at least partially remote.
· The 2023 State of Remote Work report by Buffer, highlights the experiences of 3,000 remote workers from around the world. 98% of respondents said that they would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their career.
· A recent Gallup poll conducted last August, showed that 34% of respondents said they preferred to work remotely on a full-time basis, while 60% of people preferred a hybrid arrangement. Just 6% of people said they wanted to work in person full-time.
So who is right?
As someone who runs a media + creative agency that was launched at the tail end of the pandemic, we were designed to work remotely. We work with creatives from across the globe. Calligraphers in Australia, designers in Poland and Canada, developers in the Netherlands. All designed to keep costs manageable, while providing best-in-class work. We have an office, but in the 540 days that we’ve had it, I’ve walked through its doors only 39 times.
It works.
For me.
I’m a father of three. Someone who has made some connections in the business, and has a solid grasp of what needs to happen to get projects through their difficult points.
But if I was 25 again? I think about the connections that I would have lost if I wasn’t in the office. The experience I would have lost if I didn’t personally live through fire drills that kept me in the office until 10pm, or overnight. How much perspective I would have on what really is a fire drill versus a situation that is being overblown? How much would I miss seeing talented, smart folks helping solve these issues?
That's not even mentioning the friends that I’ve made through the years with whom I’ve shared pitfalls and successes. Friends that I could share a beer (or in my case, an ice cream) with, while either breathing a sigh of relief about the flowchart fuck up that I made that was caught in time, or commiserating about the overreactions of someone in the company. Friends who would go on to be real cheerleaders of mine as my career progressed, and I for them. Thinking about going through all the layoff woes right now without my network, makes me realize how lucky I am to have lived through a time when we were all sharing four walls and an hour-long commute to the office.
The answer, as with most things in life, is more nuanced. Teams need to get together to bond. To create chemistry. This is important to an organization that wants to avoid turnover that is costly and inefficient. Young folks, as much as they might not realize it or want it in the moment, need to go through the wars and problems in-person, so that they can experience how to deal with things in real-time and come out of the other side stronger and better equipped for the future. And creatives, more than anything, need to sit in a room together, to tell stupid jokes, make fun of each other, and turn that laughter and energy into work that is inspiring on a human level. We also need to edit each other and push each other in a competitive way. Perhaps the most direct answer to creative development is from Jan Wilker, co-founder of the influential design studio Karlssonwilker Inc. When I asked him his thoughts on remote work, he answered:
“Work from home is convenient. Convenience is nice. Nice is easy. Easy is boring.”
Karlssonwilker studio
A hybrid model is the obvious long-term solution. One that would give leadership and employees the opportunity to coordinate which days are going to be in-office days. But any company that is going to try and enforce a mandatory 5-day a week in-office work schedule is going to be at a competitive disadvantage and lose out on top candidates who understand their value, and are responsible & capable enough to successfully navigate a hybrid work schedule. They might get the workers trying to get experience, but will quickly experience attrition rates that will make that strategy untenable.
As Mike Tomlin, head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, once famously said… “We need volunteers. Not hostages.”
