Six years after the Covid pandemic created a revolution in the white collar work office we are still dealing with the controversy. Two years after RTO (Return to the Office) became the fashion, we are still wrestling with the question. Every job posting now includes in-office, flexible, or remote models and perhaps that should be sufficient, but I strongly believe that it is an uncomfortable solution seeking to bring people on-site more than necessary.
In 2024 RTO became corporate America’s new call to arms! It seemed that this noble experiment of working from home would be over. CEOs decreed that working from home was inefficient, that people working in their pajamas at home were taking advantage of corporate good will and that all workers must return to the office. But the reality quickly became more complex than that, many people had moved further away, bought homes hours away, and could not, would not start commuting again. Companies initially fired workers who refused to return, but later softened their policies when faced with losing top talent. Finally, the absolute mandate of the RTO went down from 5 or 4 days to “on-site”, 4 days, or “on-site” 3 days which is hybrid.
So what option is best for a job, a team or a company? If I’m creating or shaping culture at my small, medium or international conglomerate what should I do? The answer is, it depends, and your HR policies should be explicit about that. If you apply a one size fits all solution you will always be wrong. What you should do is develop rules that apply to job descriptions, seniority level, country and state situations, while providing your budget owners with flexibility to adjust.
Let’s start with who can be an efficient worker in a remote or hybrid setup? I would like to start with the simple answers. Any employee who is doing work on computers, who can connect to the company’s resources over the internet, or can take the work home with them on their computers safely. Anyone who can perform their duties via video conferencing with little or no loss in fidelity is also a candidate.
Let’s list a few people who are probably not good candidates for working from home full-remote. Workers experiencing their first few years in a work environment need mentorship, guidance, and time discipline. They are not easily going to receive those at home consistently. I believe that working in a hybrid or onsite fashion should be better for that group. This creates an opportunity. Working from home can be an earned privilege, demonstrated by performance, seniority and experience. So junior people must start onsite, prove themselves then be allowed to move to hybrid, and later in their careers remote. It is a simple formula, but strangely I have not seen it encased in any HR policy book that I have seen yet.
What about leaders who set the culture, direction and tone of your organization? I strongly believe that leaders at the director, VP and CXX level should be expected to be present in the office as much as possible. These leaders are critical for the organization and informal meetings are often a key mechanism for these leaders to be effective. As these leaders move up in their organization, meetings with customers, travel, conferences take a lot of their time and often are not available even if they are close to their offices. These leaders should make an effort to work in a disciplined, hybrid way, with predictable, scheduled, published on-site days that are maintained religiously.
What about jobs or companies that really need that on-site experience? Examine Elon Musk’s argument against hybrid and remote work. Elon’s companies are often hardware/software combinations, and he resents the software guys for wanting to be at home because the hardware team HAS to be in the office. In situations such as these, the interaction between the hardware and software team may require more frequent interactions. I think Elon makes a good case for firmware jobs, and robot controller jobs to be on-site or hybrid. But I strongly believe that doesn’t extend to all the employees of the company. I see no reason for Twitter employees to be on-site, or employees in another part of the company who do not interact with the hardware team in a design fashion. Say a team building a cloud facing sales or support tool. I see no need to have that team be on-site with the hardware team. The leadership of such an organization should have the flexibility to make the call.
Startups building something highly speculative, that needs many design meetings over whiteboards may also require an onsite culture. I recently attended a meetup put together by an AI native company. They said that “re-architecture” is a way of life! In such a world, thinking in the office changes direction every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Such teams will want to have everyone in the office as much as possible. But NOTE ye startups! Your organization will grow, and you will need to change gears at some point. Be ready for that cultural moment where your great on-site culture will need to seamlessly incorporate another team in a different country, a different state, or even just another office 2 hours away.
On-site activists often believe that their strategy has no down-side, or at least not a downside that cannot be fixed by just hiring people near me. Here are some strong reasons why you should create a system that allows for all work models—in-office presence, flexible arrangements, and fully remote options—in the same company:
On-site activists often believe that their strategy has no down-side, or at least not a downside that cannot be fixed by just hiring people near me. Here are some strong reasons why you should create a system that allows for all three approaches, on-site, hybrid and remote in the same company:
- The top engineers may not be near your core office site.
- The most COST EFFECTIVE engineers needed to scale your org, such with skillsets such as SREs, support, or high end mathematics may not be near your core office site. If your company is budget conscious but wants to have bar raisers in a high cost area, don’t expect to be able to hire that person to be on-site. Find that top bar raiser in another city and have them travel once a month!
- Your customers may be global and you may want 24x7x365 support, global SRE, engineering on-call rotations. The best way is to have 2 or 3 sites around the world. This solves two problems: it provides engineering cost arbitrage and naturally creates on-call rotation cycles.
- Employees HATE to commute to work for 1 hour only to spend the entire day on Zoom. Jobs that require constant video meetings should have a hybrid option. If your company already has many sites, requiring employees to be on-site near some arbitrary office just so they can go on Zoom, is nonsensical. Doing so just means you don’t trust your employees. Long commutes are inefficient and unproductive. Better to get 8 hours of an employee who is fresh and ready to go.
One size fits all for a company is a bad compromise, and while it does create stress points for your legal and HR organizations, and for your company culture, having a flexible system that finds appropriate rules to apply across in-office, hybrid, and distributed setups is the best compromise.
There is one more pressure point that leaders of hybrid or remote employees should be clear about. Managing a hybrid or remote employee is different from an onsite one. You will need new skills. It is critical that you maintain good goals for your employees, that you meet frequently and that those goals are measurable, via OKRs, task counts, weekly updates, or any other methodology that fits your job and style. You must be able to comfortably measure your employees’ performance, in such a way that you are both in agreement that the measurement and weight given to that measurement is fair and accurate.
If you have a large group of remote and hybrid employees in your organization be prepared to organize regular get togethers. Onsite is the new offsite!!! Bring your teams into the office and discuss change in direction, architecture, strategy and have group, face to face meetings to discuss challenges. Be mindful and purposeful when you hold these meetings, make sure to take action items after you do them. If you bring everyone in for a holiday gathering, make it a 2 or 3 day trip with some working sessions before the big celebration.
In summary, don’t create a one size fits all strategy and don’t tie yourself so strongly to your strategy that you don’t allow for flexibility to either add remote or on-site to your playbook. Look carefully at your needs and ignore the trends and fashion of the day.