Why Isn’t Remote Work More Popular?

After years of treating remote work as an utopian and radical idea, organisations are now much more open to talk about remote work.

Some businesses not only talk, but also discuss it and accept that, with its advantages and challenges, there are different ways to hire professionals and manage teams that can boost both productivity and well-being of its members. One could ask, however: “why isn’t remote work more popular?”

Although the idea is now pretty well-known, for a large group of people who never worked or had contact with any remote company or professional, the usual impression is that it has become a trendy concept, but restricted to a niche of small and young tech firms — who mostly employ product developers and designers. A considerable number of professionals, for sure, but definitely not representative of the whole work force.

Remote work, from the perception of these less familiarized with the theme, is far from becoming a mainstream practice.

This is a poor and simplistic way of looking at it, insisting on an all-or-nothing approach, instead of a flexible relationship in which the parties see location as something they have freedom to choose. There certainly are a number of obstacles to its widespread implementation, but there is also a general ignorance of real data and what it points toward.

Here we list some ideas that are worth looking at when we think about the popularity of remote work.

Remote Work Is More Popular Than You Think

It is extremely difficult for us to detect and evaluate trends without enough information and analytical effort: we are all prone to cognitive bias, and we often fill in stereotypes and generalities whenever there are gaps in information, or we are simply drawn to details that confirm our own beliefs.

The broad trends are clear: remote work, defined as working somewhere other than the office one day a week or more, has been on the rise for years and continues to rise. The rate of change is moderate, but changes in workplace dynamics are rarely fast.

The latest IPSOS/Reuters report shows that about one in five workers worldwide work remotely at least once a week, with smaller but more recent publications suggesting a number closer to one in four. A forecast of employment trends by the World Economic Forum called flexible work, including virtual teams, “one of the biggest drivers of transformation” in the workplace.

Most of remote workers said that if they could, they would leave their current job for a full-time remote position at the same pay rate. The vast majority of job seekers who are millennials said an option to work remotely would greatly increase their interest in specific employers.

We can find small flaws or weaknesses in most of the studies and reports, but the stats and data as a whole reflect the general growth trend.

You Already Work Remotely, But Don’t Realize It

How much of your daily work is done using a computer or a phone? Whenever you are working with any of these, you could be anywhere in the world and still perform with the same (or even higher, if you work in a busy and loud office) accuracy and efficiency.

These are no more than remote working tools, so no matter how big the benefits of being in the same physical space are, they are all irrelevant when you are using those technologies.

That reality highlights even more the myopic behavior in some companies, that do not allow remote work but implicitly promote it by the equipment, systems and practices adopted in the workplace.

If employees rarely engage in social activities altogether, and are spending most of the day in front of the computer (frequently using the commuting time to the office to read and answer e-mails), it should be clear to leaders and managers that the fear of “loss of productivity” is clearly fictional.

And that if people are sending messages and reading reports on their cellphones while lying in their bed, maybe that should also count as remote work.

Remote Work Will Never Be For Everyone

Some jobs require our full-time presence on a physical environment, and therefore will never be able to be performed remotely. But even among all of people who could potentially work with no fixed location, remote work will never be suitable for everyone.

We have widely diverse preferences for how we work. You may work better at night, and that means you will need to schedule social activities and communicate with others differently. Others may have children or elderly parents to look after, so they must structure their working hours accordingly instead of sticking to the default 9 to 5.

Some commute one hour each way, every day. That’s ten hours a week in a car or bus. Some people would find these choices unacceptable, others like the tradeoff. Remote work is another variable in the conversation between employers and employees and how they define what work is.

Remote Work Adoption Depends Of Management Practices And Company Culture (And Vice-Versa)

Companies and organisations that allow, adopt and employ remote work are not restricted in any given sector. It is not about what their product or service is. It depends on management and company culture.

Many managers use the relatively low adoption of remote work to imply that it doesn’t work, but at the same time complain about how their working practices are stuck in the past and the need to modernize work relations.

Remote work forces managers to reevaluate what good work is and how to measure it, something that many professionals don’t want to do. Even in large companies, it’s often younger managers, on younger projects, that are willing to experiment and try new ideas.

Company culture is another element that works in a two-way street: it is not only required, but molded by distributed working practices. A company that is truly trusting, collaborative and communicates well, will fare better with remote work than one that is hierarchical, political and territorial.

That is one of the reasons why most of the 100% remote organisations are small tech companies — they focus on execution instead of control, trying to keep management as little intrusive as possible. Organisations that see middle-management as the most important members of the team often struggle to see how remote work can function well at all.

Remote Work Requires Skills Professionals And Organisations Might Not Have

If you can’t talk face-to-face with your colleagues, your ability to communicate via email, videoconference and other digital channels are critical: how well people write and how thoughtful they are about giving their coworkers support and feedback is essential. So is knowing how to socialize — loneliness is the most common struggle to remote workers.

The opportunity of hiring worldwide and working around the clock also does not come without costs. Remote work often means working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and different time zones, which requires a number of different managing skills from team leaders and managers.

In addition to these, you also have to run remote meetings, deal with team conflicts, adopt new evaluation methods and promote engagement between remote colleagues, among many others.

These are not easy tasks, and lead many organisations to abandon any plan of testing remote work. But learning to do it right is proving to be extremely beneficial to both the productivity and well-being of remote professionals and organisations.

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