Redefining Work: The Remote Revolution and The Backlash

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote working and arguably was a saviour for many businesses. Many organisations, at the height of the pandemic, pronounced that there was no going back. They saw large swathes of the company being remote-first, not just during the pandemic but for the long term.

But gradually, the backlash began, spurred on by a hardcore of anti-remote work brigade, who protested that businesses would justify keeping remote workers versus much lower-cost offshore employees. Of course, businesses could have done this previously (and have been doing so for decades). The government and politicians also got involved, appealing to the plight of city centre cafes and sandwich bars! They failed to mention how it actually revived independent businesses in suburban areas. Many in the government and certain parts of the media alluded to remote work as essentially ‘skiving’. This probably stuck in the craw for many who worked longer hours and were part of the collective effort to keep the wheels of the UK economy moving during the pandemic.

Over the past 12-18 months, many organisations have mandated that employees spend a specific number of days in the office. This has caused tension with many employees who have redesigned their lives (mostly for the better) around the ability to work mostly from home. Management uses the apparent loss of ‘culture,’ sense of togetherness, collaboration, innovation, and productivity as some of the reasons for trying to force people back to the office. However, based on my own experience and after scouring the internet, the evidence that the office is a blissful nirvana of collaboration and innovation is scant. On the contrary, research suggests there is little evidence! Moreover, being empowered to work remotely has been a positive factor for inclusion in the workplace, whether for employees with care responsibilities, physical or mental disabilities, neuro-diversity, and housing affordability limitations. The promotion of remote work results in being able to hire from a more diverse talent pool and shields black and ethnic workers from the micro-aggressions, they have had to face in the workplace.

Good managerial decision-making is often driven or at least backed up by quantitative and qualitative data, which is what makes the current move back to the office a strange one. So what is driving managers to the conclusion that in-person working is their solution to all business ills? There is no doubt that rather than economies stabilising post-Covid, they have continued to experience setbacks. This continued instability has likely created a sense of anxiety, fear, and stress across management at all levels. It’s conceivable that managers have used mandating employees back into the office and the sense of control it gives them as a coping mechanism. The familiarity of seeing employees' rears planted on office seats probably also works as a coping mechanism; it also harks back to the mindset that presence in the office was an indication of performance.

There will be many who argue that expecting employees in the office for a few specified days a week is not expecting much and should not matter. However, it matters. For many employees, their eyes have been opened, and they have realised their lives do not need to be organised around work. Businesses know they have the ability to give (most of) their employees the freedom of where they carry out their work, with little disruption, and their employees know this too. Since the industrial revolution, there has been a struggle between employers and workers, but the travel of direction has been one way, in favour of workers, whether it was 5-day working weeks, child labor laws, equal pay, minimum wage, etc. None of these changes are considered controversial or matters for debate any longer.?

Many employees see the move by businesses to mandating a number of days in the office as regressive, certainly relative to the direction of travel 3 years ago. As a result, despite an economic climate which means employers should be able to dictate terms of employment, on this issue, employees seem to be holding sway. Many companies that mandated a minimum number of days in the office, like Apple, in the face of criticism from their staff, have backed down. While some companies have predictably responded by issuing ultimatums, which may ‘work’ in the short term, in the longer term, once the economy improves, given the strength of opinion among employees, this is likely to lead to significant churn.?

Rather than investing time and effort in trying to get employees back to the office (probably with little success), businesses are better placed to explore and identify ways of evolving remote work. Like it or not, remote work is most likely to be the de facto method of work (both for remote-first and hybrid approaches), and progressive companies that look to the future, rather than the past, are more likely to foster collaboration, innovation, and ultimately succeed as a business.