Remote Works If You Want It To

As concerns about COVID start to subside we are begining to see the shine of remote work start to fade a little.

The very work modality that was hailed as the savior of businesses everywhere during COVID is now being called into question by people who:

don’t trust employees to do their job when they aren’t in the office
claim that remote work is destroying corporate culture
say collaboration is not possible when people work remote.

There are most certainly other excuses. However, with regard to these common examples:

If employees don’t do their job when they aren’t within eye sight maybe you have the wrong employees.
If you think remote work is destroying corporate culture maybe you aren’t doing your part to preserve the culture you believe to be so important. Or, perhaps your culture may not be what you think it is.
If remote collaboration isn’t working maybe you have to explore other collaboration methods than white boards and a BOPSAT (Bunch Of People Sitting Around a Table).

Some examples of remote work successes:

The internet is based on a collection of open source software applications that were developed by people, many of whom never even met each other.
Literally every college and university in the world offers remote learning options.

If remote work isn’t effective how do we explain things like this?

As with most anything, if you want something to fail it will. Just throw dirt on it and wait for it to die. In the case of remote work just make excuses and perpetuate them to make your point. Once the wheels have been forced off you can claim victory — I told you so. Everyone back to the office now!

Instead, maybe put the same effort into making remote work for you as it offers too many benefits to ignore. As previously indicated, it may require some changes in how you operate (e.g., collaboration) and perhaps some soul searching with regard to things like employees and culture. Do you have trustworthy employees or not? Do you have a strong corporate culture or not? Where people work does not change the answers to these questions. Remote work isn’t the problem here.

Don’t let old school thinking and personal opinion about work location prevent you from reaping the benefits of remote work.