Introduction
Determining whether your company should switch to in-office, hybrid, or remote work is an important decision that requires careful consideration of a variety of factors. This includes the potential impact on your employees, the nature of your company’s work, and your competitors’ approach to remote work. Making the wrong choice can lead to lost opportunities, reduced productivity, and unnecessary chaos.
After we cover the key benefits and disadvantages of in-office, hybrid, and remote work, you’ll be in a better position to make an informed decision about which approach would be the right choice for your company. Also, we’ll go over some tips on making the transition to your chosen work style as smooth as possible if the best option is not the one you’re using today.
Benefits of In-Office Work
There are multiple benefits to requiring all employees at your company to work together in the same location. These benefits largely accrue to relatively new employees who recently joined the company, employees who don’t like their home office environment, and extroverts who prefer to be around others.
Employees who recently joined your company may not be very familiar with the “real world” way things get done at your company, and they may not yet have an established network of people at the company to leverage to help get things done. They might benefit from a fully in-office environment.
Employees who have a low-quality home office environment, such as one where they allow themselves to be distracted by their family and their pets, might benefit from working in an in-office environment.
Also, extroverted employees who live alone may prefer to work in an in-office environment, so they don’t feel so isolated working by themselves at home alone five days a week.
Another benefit of fully in-office work is a potential reduction in cybersecurity threats. When team members use company laptops remotely, it’s likely they will be used on a wide variety of networks with differing levels of security. This can increase your company’s attack surface and make it easier for cybercriminals to access your company’s proprietary information.
Disadvantages of In-Office Work
While working in an office has many benefits, it also has plenty of disadvantages, including significant in-office distractions, commuting time, and reduced flexibility.
Although increased collaboration is a frequently cited reason for requiring employees to work in an in-office environment, this “collaboration” contributes to employee burnout. Based on a study conducted at the University of California at Irvine, “people in the interrupted conditions experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort.” Therefore, in-office environments where there are no “cultural curbs” on distracting coworkers, and especially “open office” environments, can encourage employees to distract each other frequently throughout the workday. Another distraction is how noisy most offices are throughout the day, especially after the relatively recent shift by many companies to an “open office environment.” Therefore, employees interrupting each other throughout the day, as well a noisy office environment, can reduce overall employee productivity.
Commuting can be stressful, and battling traffic to get to work in the morning does not typically put employees in the best state of mind to do their best work for their employers. In most places around the world, the average time to commute to work is between 25 and 30 minutes each way. This means that requiring employees to commute to and from an office five times each week will require them to spend, on average, approximately 10 hours each week in transit. These are hours these people will not be able to spend with their loved ones, doing things they love, or catching up on much-needed sleep. Therefore, if one of your competitors allows their employees to work fully remotely and your company requires its employees to work in the office five days each week, it could be just the incentive some of your best and brightest employees might need to jump ship to reduce their total “work” hours by 20% [i.e., (10 hours commuting each week) / (40 hours working + 10 hours commuting each week)].
As compared to a fully remote setup, if your company requires its employees to work from the office five days each week, your company’s employees will have significantly less flexibility to get things done in their personal lives. For example, they will not be able to take time during their lunch break to do their laundry or to let a contractor into their home to get some work done. Therefore, if employees are required to go to an office five times each week, they will need to coordinate to get these things done during their personal time. Therefore, the flexibility inherent in remote work arrangements further adds to the allure when your employees receive overtures from your competitors to leave your company and join them.
Benefits of Hybrid Work
Especially since March 2020, hybrid work has grown exponentially in popularity because it offers many of the benefits of both in-office work and remote work. It provides a balance between the typical preference of relatively new employees and extroverts to be around their coworkers and the preference of longer-term employees and introverts to have additional flexibility during the rest of the week.
Disadvantages of Hybrid Work
Some companies choose hybrid work when they want to get some of the benefits of both worlds, but it does come with drawbacks. A hybrid work approach can make it more difficult to attract top talent, as it will be less appealing to candidates who want more freedom and flexibility with 100% remote work.
With a hybrid approach, employees will still face elevated distractions and interruptions during their in-office days, but they will also feel pressure to be always available and responsive to “prove” that they’re actually doing work during their remote work days.
Also, a hybrid work approach requires employees to make three significant mental shifts each week between working in the office, working remotely, and their time off for the weekend. This makes the hybrid approach more frustrating for employees who value a consistent daily routine.
Benefits of Remote Work
It’s not surprising why remote work has grown in popularity in recent years given that it offers many benefits to both employees and companies.
Remote work allows employees to avoid commuting costs, including saving money, saving time, and avoiding unnecessary stress. It also provides employees more flexibility in their personal lives, including the ability to spend more time with their families. This can help them be more rejuvenated and energized when it’s time for them to get to work for their employers.
Remote work can also benefit companies by making it easier to hire top talent at a reasonable cost by expanding the geographic locations from which they can recruit. Also, when a company shifts to a fully remote work environment, it can typically save a significant amount of money on office-related costs it otherwise would have had to incur (e.g., mortgage or lease payments, utilities, etc.).
Disadvantages of Remote Work
While remote work has many benefits, it also has a few disadvantages. Remote work can create challenges related to employee productivity for those people who do not have a reasonable level of self-discipline and professionalism to get their work done well and on time when no one is looking over their shoulder.
Consider the Potential Impact on Your Company’s Employees
If most of your company’s employees are relatively new to the company, it could make more sense to choose a hybrid or in-office work setup. This would provide more recent hires with more opportunities to benefit from the experience of more tenured employees.
However, if most of your company’s employees have significant tenure with the company, it could make more sense to go with a hybrid or fully remote approach. This would give your employees significant flexibility they would likely appreciate.
Also, if most of your employees have significant personal responsibilities outside of work, such as taking care of children or elderly parents, there could be more support for a fully remote approach.
Consider the Nature of Your Company’s Work
While remote work can make sense for many job roles, for others it would not be feasible. For example, it’s unlikely plumbers, firefighters, or coal miners will begin working remotely for the foreseeable future.
Consider Your Competitors’ Approach to Remote Work
There is typically significant competition for the best and the brightest employees. Therefore, if one of your competitors allows its employees to work fully remotely and your company doesn’t, the best talent could find its way to your competitors. This could include not only “new” talent moving from other companies to your competitors, but also some of your company’s own best employees finding their way over to a competitor to obtain an office environment closer to what they would want.
In contrast, if you are open to a remote work setup and your competitors are not, it could give you a significant competitive advantage. You could expand the pool of candidates you would be targeting from your local geographic area to the entire country, if not the world. Also, if your company is located in a high-cost area, you could benefit even further. Rather than your company having to pay top dollar for average talent, you may be able to scoop top talent that lives in a low-cost area that would be very excited to join your company at the low end of your company’s pay range for the role.
How does your company operate, and how will each work style impact your employees?
The next thing you should do is take a look at how your company operates. Look at how you plan projects, assign tasks, and manage employees. Do you tend to follow strict schedules, or do you operate more informally? Do you prefer to hire employees who are autonomous, or do you prefer to hire employees who need more direction? These factors can give you some insight into how you operate and what work style is best for you. For example, if you operate largely informally with most employees working autonomously, you could do better with remote work. However, if your company tends to follow strict schedules and it operates in a more traditional way, in-office work may be a better fit.
Conclusion
Deciding whether your business should adopt an in-office, hybrid, or remote approach is no easy task. However, by considering all aspects carefully, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about what works best for both your business needs and those of your employees. It’s important that whatever decision you make, you clearly explain your rationale for doing so to your employees so they know that you considered what would be best for them as part of your decision.