Digital Article Remote Work Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work Leaders and employees must collaborate to determine the best approach for their organizations. Here’s how to have a productive conversation. by Mark Mortensen This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work Leaders and employees must collaborate to determine the best approach for their organizations. Here’s how to have a productive conversation. by Mark Mortensen Published on HBR.org / July 18, 2023 / Reprint H07PZA Illustration by Alanah Sarginson You don’t have to look hard to find someone arguing passionately about the benefits or perils of remote work. Some people argue that leaders’ productivity concerns are unfounded, while high-profile executives like Elon Musk suggest that anyone working from home is “phoning it in.” The issue, variably framed in terms of returning to the office (RTO), hybridity, or flexibility, is no doubt polarizing. But the one consistent element of the arguments for and against is how strong and entrenched the stances are. Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 1 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work While conflicting perspectives on remote work are not new, the tension seems to be escalating. Consider, for example, the contingent of Amazon workers who staged a walkout to protest the company’s office policies, or Farmers Insurance employees’ threats to unionize or quit in response to the CEO reversing the company’s remote-work policy. Google recently began tracking employees’ in-office attendance, and stories of employees being terminated for failing to adhere to RTO policies continue to proliferate. Neither side holds all the power, and as the conversation becomes more and more polarized, it becomes more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial resolution. Leaders must actively collaborate with their employees to find a balanced approach to one of the most significant changes to the way we work since the industrial revolution. First, we’ll discuss why it’s so hard for leaders and employees to agree on remote work, then use that knowledge to inform a few steps for leaders to help facilitate a frank and open discussion with employees — one that recognizes and validates the needs and concerns of both sides. The Disconnect between Employer and Employee Having studied and consulted on remote work for over 20 years, I’ve heard a lot of perspectives from both leaders and employees. What’s clear is that a major reason we’re having such difficulty agreeing on a path forward is that we’re assessing cost-benefit trade-offs without agreeing on the classic 5 W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. The 5 W’s are a cognitive tool to help ensure you’re considering all sides of the issue. Armed with a more complete perspective, it’s critical that leaders then take the lead to use it as the basis of a dialogue with employees. That dialogue needs to be balanced (understanding the needs of both sides), respectful (validating those needs), and ongoing (adjusting over time as needs change). More than anything, both sides Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 2 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work need to enter into these conversations with the objective of finding the most mutually optimal solution — not of winning. Here’s how to think about the 5 W’s: Why The starting place for any discussion is alignment about why flex work is (or isn’t) a topic of discussion in the first place. For some it’s about increasing or protecting productivity, for others it’s attracting or retaining talent, and others are more concerned about relationships and social fabric. The first thing to get on the table is the driving motivation for the discussion. What Next, we need clarity on exactly how we define those driving factors. Performance is widely heralded as both the benefit and cost of remote work — how can that be? It’s because we rarely agree on the definition of performance in the first place. For example, is it productivity as in lines of code generated? Is it quality as in amount of rework required? Is it efficiency as in output per effort expended? A great example of this is seen in discussions around commute time. When perceived as wasted time, cutting out the commute is an obvious benefit. But when it’s viewed as a buffer between work and home or a forcing mechanism to reconnect with old friends, its elimination carries a cost. Where No organization is uniform, and there are different paths to achieving different kinds of work. Answering customer service calls can be done anywhere, while packing product into boxes is constrained to where that product is. Considering the types of work being done sets the boundaries for discussions around policies. When Organizational leaders and employees often struggle to think effectively across time. Employees experience certain benefits of time Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 3 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work policies in the short term but feel their costs over the long term. For example, granting employees an additional day of flexibility might have the short-term benefit of eliminating a commute but the longer-term consequence of a loss of mentorship when schedules no longer align. Who I leave this for last because, in my experience, it’s at the root of most of these disagreements. Work policies don’t have the same effects on everyone involved. For example, are we considering the effects at the level of the individual or the collective? A policy that allows employees to work from home at-will will benefit individuals’ work-life schedule coordination, but may come at the cost of the collective sense of culture. Leaders need to think about whose interests or outcomes they’re prioritizing (an issue that was critical in my recent work on psychological safety in risky times). This becomes easier to do once there’s clarity on the 5 W’s. Keep in mind that these 5 W’s are a tool to help ensure you get all the information on the table for a fruitful discussion — they’re not wholly independent elements. Take, for example, decisions around which work is suited for more flexibility. While this is a discussion about where (which is contingent on what you define as key outcomes), it has major impacts on who receives the benefits, with consequences for employees’ sense of fairness and equity. How to Have an Ongoing Dialogue About Remote Work Designing effective work policies and practices requires everyone to have a seat at the table. Leaders who institute policies without involving their employees are often perceived as out of touch, and employees may even suspect their motives (chief among them: “Leadership is afraid of losing its power and control”). Similarly, employees who make demands about how they work are frequently perceived as entitled. Only by Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 4 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work engaging both sides in a dialogue will we be able to move past the shouting match and start making progress This conversation must be ongoing as preferences, needs, technologies, and market demands keep changing. To make matters more complex, people’s perceptions of how best to operate within that changing context continue to change. For example, the novelty and contrast effects in psychology tell us that new things elicit stronger responses while things we experience over and over have much less effect. In other words, the appeal of remote work wanes a bit when it’s not as shiny and new. It’s important to recognize that these factors bias our judgment with respect to flexible work. A given benefit or cost will appear significantly less strong the more prevalent and the less unique it is. So how can leaders facilitate these ongoing conversations? You’ve already considered the 5 W’s to ensure you’re getting a broad perspective. Now the critical step is to maintain that clarity by ensuring you and your employees evaluate them via a structured, objective process. Step 1: Own the issue. Leaders and employees alike have a vested interest in getting work policies right, and thanks to the pandemic, everyone has experiences and opinions that provide valuable data. In order to have a useful dialogue, it’s critical that all that data is brought forward and all perspectives included. However, the current exchange in which both sides are trying to “win” makes that type of collaborative dialogue extremely unlikely to occur. Dialogue won’t be successful unless both sides accept joint ownership of the issue, and a key first step is taking ownership of any missteps that Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 5 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work have happened along the way. The purpose of the dialogue is to learn and reach a better outcome, and that may require clearing the air. It also requires that leaders recognize that the playing field is not exactly even. The power of collective action (strikes, walkouts, etc.) notwithstanding, leaders have greater agency and control over the policies in question. In my work with companies, I stress to leaders that this is not the time to be proud. As is the case with establishing psychological safety, showing your own vulnerability by acknowledging that we’re all doing our best to chart a course through unfamiliar waters is a powerful first step. Step 2: Set expectations and ground rules. Psychology provides two powerful tools that can dramatically improve the results of your discussions: psychological safety and a growth mindset. To have a fruitful discussion that accounts for the needs of all involved, it’s critical that everyone feels a strong sense of psychological safety. Employees need to feel like they won’t be met with reprisal for sharing their needs and constraints (e.g., cost-of-living challenges or family demands), just as leaders must be able to speak honestly about the pressures they face (e.g., competition pressures or changing market demands). Putting these ideas on the table allows everyone to work together to find a more optimal solution, and both sides will hold back if they don’t feel safe doing so. It’s also critical to recognize that the environment companies are operating in is constantly evolving. As employees and organizations’ requirements change, policies must be reevaluated to ensure they remain relevant. Importantly, policies that are changed should not be viewed as failures, but as steps in a learning process — the fundamental Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 6 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work core of a growth mindset. If all parties go into the process expecting an ongoing, adaptive learning process, the end result will be far better. Make sure everyone involved agrees to this collaborative process as ongoing, adaptive, and governed by these key principles — and get that commitment at the outset. Step 3: Eradicate black-and-white language One of the factors I see getting in the way of productive conversations about work arrangements is overly simplistic, black-andwhite language. The 5 W’s show that this is an incredibly complex, multidimensional issue. But oversimplified blanket statements like “Remote productivity is just as good as in person” or “Face-to-face is better for culture” abound. In many conversations I hear an explicit or implicit refrain of “…but we know what they’re thinking” — a belief that they can effectively take another’s perspective. Unfortunately, the science doesn’t support this. Recent research finds that people trying to take the perspective of others were in fact less accurate in their judgments, and the only way you gain better understanding is when you acquire new information from the other party. As the authors put it, you need “perspective-getting,” and the best way to do that is through dialogue. I encourage leaders to be explicit and call out the risk of blanket statements like “WFH is unavoidable” or “remote work kills creativity.” Of course there’s truth in both, but they further entrench positions and don’t advance our dialogue. For example, in one executive committee I worked with, members were empowered to throw yellow and red cards when they saw blanket statements being made. By leveling the playing field and introducing a bit of levity, it allowed the group to have more healthy and nuanced discussions. While you certainly don’t need to introduce a card system, give some thought to how Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 7 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work to ensure that everyone (leadership included) is held accountable for counterproductive language. Step 4: Talk. You need to create space and time to have actually meaningful discussions, which requires designating time for them. Simple as it is (and silly as it seems to have to mention it), we all know this may be the hardest step in the process. Formalize these discussions to give them legitimacy and, in line with step 2, make time in people’s schedules for them on an ongoing basis. You don’t need to allocate hours every week to this, but make the time you do allocate is regular, as predictability builds trust. Remember, these dialogues are an important part of both addressing the flex work issue specifically and leading effectively in general. ••• The active punditry on both sides of the work-from-home/RTO debate shows that opinions are fiercely divided. Making matters worse, those positions align with the divide between leaders and employees — both groups with strong vested interests in the outcome. While data on the subject is plentiful and increasing, the only thing that’s conclusive is that there’s no simple solution. All decisions in this space have tradeoffs, and different groups experience and weigh them differently. The only productive way forward is for leaders to engage employees and work together to develop the most mutually beneficial model possible for their organization. This article was originally published online on July 18, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 8 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies. HBR / Digital Article / Tension Is Rising Around Remote Work Mark Mortensen is a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and for over 20 years has studied and consulted on collaboration and organization design, with a focus on hybrid, virtual, and globally distributed work. Mark publishes regularly in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and INSEAD Knowledge, and is a regular fixture in popular press outlets like the BBC, the Economist, the Financial Times, and Fortune. Copyright © 2023 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 9 This document is authorized for use only by Binus University (librarystaffjwc@binus.edu). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. 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