Deconstructing the Anti-WFH Mindset

Everyone loves working from home! If you don't love WFH you're evil! If you don't support WFH you're a mustache-twirling, cackling, dinosaur of a boss! Burn her, she's a witch!

Welcome to LinkedIn, where everything is just that simple.

As leaders, employees, and executives-to-be, we ignore at our own peril the nuances of the WFH debate. And as managers or associates looking to persuade our organizations to start or continue remote/hybrid work options, we owe it to ourselves and our case to be well-informed on both sides of the argument.

Full disclosure, as a leader I love the WFH option for my people. As long as it is my decision to make, our team members will be able to work from wherever they want. I don't give a damn if you get your work done by riding in on a unicorn and sprinkling pixie dust on a BRD. As an employee, my favorite way-to-work is hybrid, 3 days in, 2 days out. My choice.

But even though I am pro-WFH, I understand the legitimate concerns of those who are not. Many of them are highly successful business owners, leaders, philanthropists, and genuinely good people. It is foolhardy to paint them all with one brush.

So if they're good people, why do they resist WFH? Don't they know how awesome it is? Don't they trust us? Burn her, she's a witch!

Lighten up, Francis. In my experience, there are a handful of reasons, some more valid than others, that someone might not embrace WFH.

1 - Fairness. I work in a company that builds cool custom homes. Most of what goes into building a house can't be done from behind a computer screen. Allowing some staff to work remote while others simply can't, well it doesn't exactly scream "we're all in this together". Any organization with an in-person front line faces this same challenge. Note: It's pretty easy to be high & mighty about your remote work options when all your company does is push electrons around. The physical world is complex, and you must be present to win.

2 - Trust. Some managers don't trust that their people are working unless they see them do it. These managers are likely bad leaders, have hired poorly, are insecure, or very possibly all of the above. If you can't trust your people then that's on you, not them.

3 - No Measurability. If it is an associate's job to process 5,000 invoices a month, that's pretty simple to validate. They were doing 5,000 a month in-office, and they're doing 5,000 a month remote - easy peasy. If a job doesn't have clear metrics, the discussion is much more difficult. However, in that case, we should be asking (loudly & repeatedly) "why doesn't this job have metrics?" Which often leads us to "what is this role expected to deliver?" A much more impactful conversation.

4 - Lack of Process. I'd have to say that I've seen this one the most from the anti-WFM crowd, even though they don't say it in the same way. I do not think pandemic response drove the "remote work revolution" as much as it drove the "damn why don't we have this process documented?" revolution. Functions that have well-established processes are much easier to lift-and-shift, regardless of that shift being between departments, companies, or employee locations. "How does this get done?" is a great question to ask when assessing process. Here's a hint: If something gets done because two or three key people talk to each other 27 times a day about it, then that is not a process. And also, not something that seemingly translates well to remote work.

5 - Ignorance. By this I don't mean "you're a dumbass", I mean that you just don't know how to do it. I am deeply ignorant of almost everything, having expertise in only a tiny number of subjects. There's no shame in ignorance (willing ignorance being quite another matter). This is an element where age is a legitimate factor. If I've been eating my grandma's meatloaf recipe for 25 years and it tastes good, then why would I try anything else? It's easy to be against something if you just can't imagine it working. Human nature. Founders are particularly susceptible to this.

6 - The Value of Intangibles. There's more to running a successful organization than sustained work output. Those of us who find self-value in our work are doing more than counting invoices processed. You know who you are, and it's probably most of you. We cannot deny the human propensity to bond more closely in the presence of each other physically, and I say that as an uber-introvert. We can mitigate that shortcoming of digital-only connections, but I don't know that we can eliminate it.

I'm sure that your list would be different than mine, but I'm willing to bet that the big rocks would be the same.

The good news here is that of these 6 issues, 5 are partially or wholly addressable, and several are full of the potential for productive discussion. If you've got #2 going on, then join together with your co-workers and get it fixed, or get out. But don't jump to #2 as a conclusion when it may, in fact, not be the case at all.

So I would ask that next time you run into a RTO leader, before pounding a stake into the ground and searching for kindling, ask the question of questions, "why?" When we seek first to understand, solutions follow.

Opinions expressed in the above text are mine alone, and do not reflect the business practices or policies of my employers or associates, past or present.