Are companies moving a bit too fast on the WFH bandwagon?

When I was back in Corporate America, WFH was the TLA (Three Letter Acronym) people used to write in subject lines of emails, without much explanation in the body of the email. It used to drive few of us crazy. 

All these companies that are now suddenly endorsing remote working - I think they are being extremely shortsighted. They claim productivity hasn’t dropped one bit in the last three months, technology has advanced enough for people to work remotely, we should be managing work and not people, and that we can improve diversity with more remote working. All this sounds great, but I have two arguments against a permanent shift towards WFH. 

First, these are the same companies that promoted the importance of team culture until just few months ago. Teams cannot exchange ideas freely without being at the same physical location. If I have to dial into a frikkin zoom call to share something or ask something, it’s not going to happen. I would argue, innovation or birth of new ideas will take a major hit. 

Second, more importantly, as a society, we become open and learn only by meeting people. If all of us are going to sit at home and not engage with anyone who is different from us, all we have done to ourselves is close our bubbles even further. We will now become even narrower in our views because small talk at the water cooler just went ta-ta.

I do see some good things out of remote working - smaller commute, cleaner air and more family time - good earthly priorities. I can’t and won’t bother to argue against any of these benefits. 

One of the things I read in Sapiens (I admit, I haven’t finished the book yet!) is that the human race make mistakes as a whole when it comes to these global transformations, without recognizing the long term consequences. He cites the move towards agriculture as one such example that had disastrous consequences. I’m afraid, this change towards remote working will have longer term consequences.

I wish companies, for the sake of humanity, would consider a more balanced approach. 

I would love to welcome both thoughtful disagreements and “likes”!

Cheers,

Arun. 

PS: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/working-from-home-failure.html