Seeing Beyond The Most Common Misconceptions About Remote Work

There’s been a raging debate ever since the Coronavirus pandemic started about whether companies should fully embrace remote working or not. At first glance, it might seem that remote working is here to stay and become a new norm. 

Huge companies like Twitter and Facebook voiced their support for it. Surveys show that an increasing number of employees want to work from home. Studies have found that work productivity doesn’t diminish when working remotely - in fact, it increases. Businesses can save a lot of money in infrastructure costs and access a larger talent pool. Remote teams are good for diversity. The reduced commuting is beneficial for the environment. 

Yet, even in the light of all that, many companies reject remote work. They cite a varied set of reasons to oppose so tenaciously to it. There are genuine concerns about the well-being of employees. There are understandable worries about the impact on the workflow. And then there’s a somewhat absurd clinging to the longstanding business cultures and traditions that have the office as the main protagonist. 

Look, I understand all of these concerns. Moving on from a way of doing things you’ve been using your entire life is naturally challenging, uncomfortable, and scary. But the world is calling for that change, and the pandemic has only accelerated some of the underlying processes.

Sure, no one wants to be forced to accept a change. That’s why I thought to share some of the things I learned in BairesDev, the company I co-founded more than a decade ago, and that has remote work as a part of its DNA. Because I think that some of the fears and concerns surrounding remote work can be dispelled with insider information, let’s address those concerns!

The 6 Most Common Misconceptions About Remote Work, Clarified

I’ve read numerous articles about why some companies are reluctant to embrace remote working. Here are the top 5 reasons those companies cited to oppose the working from home model.

1 - Reduced Interaction

For some people, the office has a social component to it that remote work can’t replicate. When you go to the office, you meet with other people, chat about work, your day, your life, the TV show you watched last night and so on. For them, those seemingly inconsequential watercooler chats foster connections between employees and create a more engaged workforce.

I won’t say that those spontaneous conversations aren’t great (they are or, well, at the very least, they can be!), but believing that you can’t have them when working remotely is simply not true. I’m not just talking about the spontaneity that pops up every time you make a video call with a coworker - the company can allocate some time for its collaborators to bond online and offline.

That’s precisely what we do at BairesDev. We have after office meetings that anyone in the team can attend, we reserve some space in our online meetings for watercooler conversations - we even arrange hands-on meetings with our remote clients to bond over some fun activities! While it’s true that none of that can replace the spontaneity of everyday chatter, I think it can go a long way on behalf of the team’s well-being. 

2 - Complex Change of Procedures

This reason truly surprised me. Some companies say that they don’t want to embrace remote working because it’s challenging to go from “traditional company” to “remote-first company.” That’s because doing so is more than a policy change - it’s a way of designing the workflow, devising the communications, planning strategies, prioritizing work, and recruiting new talent, to name a few things.

Yet, I don’t see hardships as a valid reason not to do something. I mean, a lot of the best things in life are hard to achieve. Naturally, you can feel overwhelmed by all the work you have to do to shift from in-house to remote business - especially if you compare yourself to digitally native companies that have those practices ingrained in its DNA.

However, as the Coronavirus has shown us, companies are more flexible than they think. When forced by the dire effects of the stay-at-home orders, many companies discovered they could adapt their processes to the new reality. Even when it takes time to embrace a remote-first mentality fully, it’s better to be moving towards that direction because the entire world is heading there. 

When I first started with BairesDev, remote working from Latin America felt foreign. 12 years later, we are one of the fastest-growing companies in the region, and we did this by embracing the remote mentality and adjusting as we went. It wasn’t easy, but the commitment to working smarter took as there and provided us with excellent results. 

3 - Siloed Knowledge

One of the biggest threats to modern companies is the emergence of knowledge silos (aka the division of a team where some members know a lot about ongoing projects while the other members know very little). People resisting remote working say that having team members working from home favor the creation of these silos, as the “out of sight, out of mind” that prevails might leave some people out of the loop. 

This is another misconception that it’s easily rebuttable. Knowledge silos can appear even within in-house teams, as they don’t depend on the teams’ location but rather on their practices. Thus, it’s not a matter of working from home or not, it’s a matter of poor processes, especially those regarding communication.

There are not many excuses to defend this kind of thinking. There are plenty of communication tools, collaboration platforms, and cloud-based applications that can help keep everyone informed about what they need to know. So, this one depends more on the strategic approach to communication. I know from experience that it’s not simple, but keeping the knowledge silos problem on the table will make you acknowledge it and tackle it full on.  

4 - Disengaged Employees

In all the years I have been advocating remote work, one of the things I kept hearing the most is how “dangerous” the work-from-home model can be. Letting people work from their homes can lead to an impossibility of adequately assessing the team’s level of engagement. Many people say that it takes more time and effort to manage the team, something that’s more easily done in the office.

Again, I believe that this comes from a traditional approach that some companies refuse to get rid of. Management has always been hard, so doing it remotely won’t be the exception. However, believing that it will be even harder can only come from the old-fashioned mentality that teams need a manager breathing down their team members’ necks to be productive and efficient.

When working with remote teams, you’ll have to develop a new management style that will include new tools and approaches. You’ll have to define new metrics and goals, set flexible working hours, arrange frequent status meetings, and analyze the whole workflow in real-time. That’s precisely what we do at BairesDev, and it works like a charm. 

Without those tools and practices, we’d be lost entirely. Thus, you need to define that strategic framework because, once you do, managing a remote team is as simple as managing an in-house team. 

5 - Threat to Company’s Culture

Finally, most of the people that uphold one or several of the misconceptions cited above will end up saying that remote work is a threat to a company’s culture. That’s especially true for execs coming from traditional industries or who are part of incumbent businesses. They still adhere to the idea that employees need to be embedded in company branding through and through to genuinely grasp a company’s culture. And they think that such a thing can only be achieved in an office.

That’s naturally not true. I mean, we have to get rid of the idea that the company culture is what we write down on a mission statement or what it says in an About us page. The company culture is defined by our everyday practices and the values we pursue when we work. In other words, the company culture is a living and breathing thing that comes from everyone in the company - it’s not something you can impose. 

Take BairesDev, for instance. Being remote is part of our culture - it’s who we are, it’s the model we proudly adopted, and it’s a way of doing things that redefines itself every day thanks to the collaboration of the entire team. As a multicultural company that groups people from different countries, I’m proud to say that BairesDev’s culture is very open and welcoming, something that wouldn’t be possible without remote work.

What I’m trying to say here is that remote working is a way of doing things that brings new value to your table. It can enrich your company’s culture with the addition of members from different backgrounds and show you different paths to tread. Seeing it like that, remote working is more like a great way to redefine yourself and adapt to the new scenarios rather than being a threat.

It’s Not Black or White

One last thing about remote working. I’ve read several articles about the subject that are on point about how they see remote work. Rather than presenting remote work as the only future for companies, they discuss that the future will have a hybrid work model that will combine in-office team members with remote employees. I wholeheartedly agree with that perspective. 

That’s how BairesDev has been working lately. We have a core team in our offices to coordinate different efforts while the vast majority of our collaborators are scattered across Latam, USA, and Europe. All of us have worked remotely at some point, and many of us have come to the office for a specific purpose. And you know what? It has worked perfectly for us - and I’m sure that the same model can be applied to most companies, too.

I think we’re on the brink of a massive change for how we work. The pandemic has accelerated that change, so it’s natural for some to be uncomfortable about it. However, there’s nothing to fear. Your company won’t have to be remote if you don’t want to, as it’s safe to assume that everyone will be able to return to the office if they want to once this is all over. Yet, even in light of that, I think that the Coronavirus has made it possible for a lot of people to see the benefits of remote work. In fact, a lot of them won’t be coming back to the office at all.

At the very least, the pandemic has put the topic on the table, as the raging debate around remote working proves. That’s something to celebrate because a lot of people will start entertaining the idea and will be able to see past the misconceptions. Hopefully, what you’ve just read will help them on that path.