Please, I’m just genuinely curious.
But I’ll like to help anyone wanting to answer by categorizing the reasons into like 4: You can choose any, or come up with your own reasons.
- You believe remote work is just a trend, and will die soon
- You think it’s just a bubble waiting to burst
- You think remote work will never be successful
- You believe remote work is still in its infancy/ (it’s early) and you don’t want to jump on the train just yet
- You’re just uncertain about the whole remote work thing
I’m thinking of using your reasons to work on a bigger content (ebook) for my long piece here.
I own a business that has a heavy online presence but also a brick and morter. I do allow all of our online sales reps as well as our HR/PR/dispatch to work fully remote if they want. They also have access to a private office at our brick and morter.
On a positive note for me, as the employer, the remote workers typically work more oddball hours, aka, answering emails or phone calls after hours or weekends.
On a positive note for the employees, they are flexible to run errands, doctors appointments, and other activities during normal business hours and that’s totally fine. They are still averaging around that 40hr/week mark, but more sporadic hours. They are much happier with this arrangement.
On a negative note for me, as the employer, the remote workers are significantly less focused on the job at hand, and drop the ball much more often than when they worked in the office.
On a negative note for the employees, they are now expected to answer calls/texts/emails “after-hours” because their flexible hours are not defined, and therefore they are expected to take care of limited “after business hours” support for the trade off. The side effect to this is the work-life balance is much more vague and thus it’s very difficult for them to find the “line in the sand” between at work and not at work. Sound confusing? I’ll explain:
When your going into an office say… 8am-4pm you can lay all your work life troubles there at the table at 4pm and let it go and enjoy your home life. When you work from home, your bringing the work stress to the house and your not able to separate the two so easily. This is a trade off for the work from home atmosphere.
Just a note about leaving work at the office. The concept of “bringing work home with you” existed long before remote work was a trend. Just because you work in an office doesnt mean the work stops for everyone.
You’re doing two experiments at once.
To abstractify one level out, other than company culture and your specific wishes, what is to stop the remote employees from having to work exactly the hours that in-house employees do, and not having to answer before/after-hour calls, thereby potentially decreasing their “significant lack of focus” via psuedo-circadian/worklife rhythm normalizations?
Because I think that this is what OP is getting at, and I’m pretty sure your main response to such a thing is the general perceived lack of motivation of workers; which may or may not be wholly incorrect, I don’t know, you’re the managing party.
Still a potential psychological blind spot to look for though; take for instance:
If we imagine a hypothetical linear regression model that outlies before+after work hours on whatever litmus test you use to mentally fortify your endeavours against remote workers, what might the results be?
Again: you can’t test for two things at once.