2 Reasons Why Going Back to the Office Full-time will Kill your Company
???♀? 9 in 10 workers never want to work in an office full-time again
?? 5 in 10 workers want to work remotely full-time going forward
?? 8 in 10 companies plan to hire more remotely going forward
?? $1 Trillion cut in office spend if WFH 50%/week US alone
The office will kill any company that goes back full-time
Companies who adopted eCommerce 10 years ago replaced every company who didn't
Companies who adopt remote working will replace every company that doesn’t tomorrow.
The reason is incredibly simple: cost & talent.
Cost
Office-first companies won’t be able to compete with remote-first companies in terms of efficiency, both economic and operationally. Not only will remote-first companies increase their average level of talent with each hire, they will be far more cost-efficient. City living is subsidized by companies, leading to a lower disposable and quality of life.
??Real Estate Cost
Office-first companies spend $18,400 on average, per workplace, per person
The best remote setup on the planet costs $2,000 per year, coffee included.
Remote is $16,400 less a year, per team member, or a $16.4m saving per 1,000 workers.
??Asynchronous Fist
Offices are instantaneous gratification adult kids clubs where it’s impossible to focus and do deep work without distraction.
Remote gives you the optimum workspace you need to do your best work.
?Output over Time
The only metric bad middle managers use to measure performance is time spent in the office.
Remote work is about how much work you get done focussing on productivity.
Talent
Unless you are Google, Amazon, Facebook or Microsoft remote teams will be far more talented than any office-based team you can build. Talent wars will be won by companies that have great remote work capability, who will wield it to dominate the next decade:
??Fixed Location
A physical office means you can hire the best person you can afford in a 30-mile radius, disqualifying you from 99.9% of the world’s talent.
Remote teams can hire the best person they can afford on the planet.
?Great Talent
The most talented people are stipulating remote work as a condition of employment. Companies who don’t provide this won’t be able to attract the best people.
Companies who don’t give this to their existing workers will lose their most talented people to their biggest competitors.
??Changing Preferences
The smartest people I know personally ALL plan to work remotely in the next decade.
The most interesting companies I know personally *ALL* plan to hire remote workers in the next decade.
Remote will be the dominant workplace of the best companies and people.
Why Now?
Remote work is the biggest workplace revolution in history and nothing will deliver a higher quality of life increase in the next decade than this. Workers having more flexibility to decide their work schedule, able to operate when they are most productive rather than a fixed day, enables a far better future of work than the one we currently experience. Organizing work around your life is a huge transition with major implications. Gone is the requirement to beg your bosses permission to go to an appointment, it is the ability to drop and pick your child up from work every day with time in the afternoon to go for your recharging run.
Being handcuffed to an office and expected to live in a high cost of living city with a low quality of life is a remnant of the industrial revolution. The devolution of offices into almost factory-like conditions as distraction factory adult kids clubs is complete. The office has become the worst place on the planet to get the isolation and focus you need to do deep work.
Make no mistake, remote work is exploding to prominence right now. We are living through the inflection point today. Shortly, workers will realize their power and influence to demand remote work.
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Vice President Business Development @Windshire Group LLC | Biologics and Pharmaceutical Development, CMC and Quality Consulting | @Labshire, LLC | Laboratory Consulting
4 年Excellent post @Chris Herd. Remote work is here to stay.
Making Men Over 50 Harder To Kill
4 年Chris Herd excellent article. We were reduced our monthly office expense 90% and are building towards a big 2021. And you are right...we are no longer limited to looking for talent within a 30 mile radius.
** 24+ years’ leading Corporate Communications, Content Strategy, Marketing, Cultural Development, Creative Direction, Employee Engagement, and Community & Client Relations.
4 年#remotework #remoteteams #leadershipchallenge
Chief Commercial Officer @ citizenM hotels | Strategic Operations, Asset Management, Development
4 年Thanks Chris Herd. I think most office-first companies can easily understand the cost savings and, to a lesser extent, the talent advantages (unless you hired a lot of engineers pre Covid). That said, most of the “let’s go back to the old days” executives I speak to have a myopic attitude towards the benefits of async and output over time. I explain it’s sorta like dating - others, not me ??. If you never try going outside your league, then you’ll always be stuck in that league. This will just take time ... until they notice their competitors are poaching their best employees.