In-person collaboration has been linked to high performance and job satisfaction, but these benefits don’t increase with more days spent in the office.
An oft-cited reason for in-person work mandates is that they help drive connection among a team. As more employers push for four and five days in the office, rhetoric has focused on the importance of collaboration and a sense of belonging that some leaders believe can only be fostered in a shared physical environment.
Yet some data shows the number of days people attend the office doesn’t directly correlate to that sense of connection. In fact, there’s only a 1% difference in the number of employees who say they feel connected to their organisation working four or five days a week as compared to those working two or three days on site. That slim leading edge went to the latter group, at 60%, according to a global survey of 1,115 employees by London-based workplace insights firm Leesman, seen by the BBC.
“There just doesn’t seem to be huge gains from the number of days people are in the office,” says Allison English, deputy CEO of Leesman. “It’s about the quality, not quantity, of time that matters. In fact, we see that the greater the number of in-person days, the less the worker is generally satisfied with work-life balance, impacting engagement and their connection to the organisation.”
I work in the office 2 days each week and three at home. The two days are spent with the in person stuff and the other three is doing all the solo work based on that interaction with a sprinkling of remote communication on teams or zoom as needed and no other office distractions.
Good to see the obvious backed up by data.
That was my experience early on, but since committing to full remote first, I find even the “in person” tasks like onboarding, and brainstorming, easier to do remotely.
You just need a good remote culture of frequent and open sync/async communication, with protected do-not-disturb/focus time.
For me, the occasional office visit is basically for socialization only. Meeting up with coworkers, have lunch, hang out for a bit in the office, then back home to work.
Yeah, that’s how I treated it when I was doing hybrid instead of fully remote, but now I don’t even have an office to go into even if I wanted.
I will still meet old co-workers cum friends for lunches, though. Can’t do without that!
I work with some non-technical people that just need in person communication because that is how the rest of their job works. They are the knowledge experts about the things we are creating web systems to support.
If I worked only with technical people I would expect remote to work for everything.
I could find half a dozen studies right now that contradict this one. It’s only as obvious as you want it to be.
You’re getting downvoted here, but your anecdotal evidence matches my own. This is how I set my own schedule by choice. I get my “real” work done when I work from home, while the 2 in-office days are mostly spent in meetings, training other staff, and stuff that’s easier to do in person (hardware troubleshooting).
I get that this isn’t the case for everyone though, and many people would be more productive predominantly working from home.
I work from home entirely.
The issue with this topic is that most people can’t see past their own roles and experiences with it to see how office time can sometimes be beneficial (as you outline above) or completely pointless (my case).
It’s good to have a place to meet clients, or have important meetings, so I go when only when I need to do that. For some people that’s all they do. Other people can do their jobs away from the office. Neither side should be slammed for their view; the only people we should slam are our corporate overlords. Now get in the Hilux
Yep. My role works heavily with outside vendors and contractors in multiple states and countries. It’s incredibly rare for any given meeting to consist solely of workers living within 50 miles of each other. So ‘in person’ typically means two guys in a shitty conference room, with shitty audio calling in to an online meeting with the other 4 people. That is not productive and has no value. Actually negative value as I’ve always found mixed in person and on call meetings to be less effective than if everyone just called in.
I get a lot of people can actually see their coworkers, but that’s not my role and never will be. RTO is an extremely poor fit for me.
Yes, they’re getting downvoted because of what you said in your second paragraph. It doesn’t work for everyone.
The only way my current boss can contact me is by going through his secretary. I think that’s dumb, mostly because the secretary is not very good, and is slow to relay information. But whatever, that’s the way they want it.
Leave me alone and I am much more productive, if you watch me like a hawk you can expect quality and quantity to go down, and I’m gonna quit.
I really don’t like being watched, but more than that I will focus on someone watching me rather than the work at hand.
I didn’t say it worked for everyone.
I know you didn’t. I didn’t downvote you, the way you work is as valid as the way I do.
My last job had so much hardware troubleshooting involved that when we had that talk about RTO after COVID, I told that boss flat-out I wouldn’t do hybrid. All Hybrid would mean is that I would have two labs, and inevitably whatever I needed would be in the other place. I told him to either keep me home full time, or I come into the office full time.
For unrelated reasons, I left for a full time remote role. Very little hardware troubleshooting required. I could not have done my last job like this, but for this job it’s perfect.
Everyone’s situation is different. Anyone who says that there’s only one way to do it is ignorant.
Yeah, having to split your gear up between two workplaces gets exhausting. For a long time I was a self-employed contractor primarily working for one company and I’d never have the right tool or part where I needed it. I now work full-time for that company and most of the gear stays in one place and is a lot more manageable. Plus, I set up a co-management agreement with an IT company that is literally our upstairs neighbor so if there’s a hardware problem that needs to be fixed in a hurry on a day I’m working from home I can just escalate the ticket to them instead of driving into the office.
But yeah, there’s absolutely no one size fits all approach to every workplace or specific job. I’ve been pushing for more flexibility there at my office for other roles because of that.