Work From Home In 2023: Good Habits Are Hard To Develop
Remote work has been booming since 2020, but in 2023 many companies decided to review and reverse “work from home” policies. Some companies introduced soft “back to office” requirements without real enforcement, sometimes they even tried to lure employees back to the office by making charity donations, like Saleforce, and others made it mandatory by tightening office attendance to the performance review.
The reason for the policy change is remaining unclear. It is not possible to identify the root cause for this decision even after completing quick research and data gathering from many companies. As justification for the move, companies just re-using the list of perks from recruitment advertisement materials. The most common benefits of commuting to the office:
- Team collaboration.
- Office location.
- Office events.
- Kitchen snacks and coffee.
- Peers are also doing it.
This global corporate rollback will make it harder to find a remote company as hybrid office attendance is trending now.
Habit Nature
Routine
It is a well known fact that changes are hard.
Most of us would like to live in a predictable world, where we know what to expect next, tomorrow or in five years time. From time to time we are okay to inject some sort of adrenaline boost, like to change company or travel to a new place, but to do it in controlled and safe for us way. Comfort zone, routine and habits are daily drivers for people, so we try to stick to them as hard as we can. We try to optimize commute time by following public transport patterns, we attending the same coffee shop on the way to work, where barista already knows what coffee we are going to order, and our Friday evening’s routine has already established.
Companies follow the same patterns as we do. They prefer to have a comfort zone, predicted revenue reporting routine and to have a work process habit.
9 to 5 is a well established and well integrated pattern across the globe and most of companies use to it. From the top level executives to individual contributors, it is a predictable state or let’s name it set of rules; commute to the offices is just a habit after all.
Any changes to this routine are hard because companies have to explore uncharted territories, adjust processes or the way of well established thinking.
Resistance
We always resist changes, that is why it is so hard to start a gym membership, or start eating healthy, or change the lifestyle. It is easy to buy a subscription (hard to cancel, but this is the different story) but here I’m talking about the actual gym attendance and not the next Monday commitment. Any new commitments to build a new habit will be a challenge because we have to develop a new routine around it, fight fear of unknown, go through adaptation lag, and stay strong against a desire to fall back into the comfort zone.
Again, the same applicable to companies. It was quite easy to announce in 2020 that work from home will stay with us forever. It is comparable to first gym visit when we publish a motivational post on how we’ve committed and why we have not tried it earlier and, of course, let’s tag all our lazybones friends.
Companies underestimated the complexity of work that will be required to support a remote environment in a long run and how hard it will be to change a mindset from 9 to 5 to a completely new way of working, thinking, managing and assessing. Instead of make it work, the easy option for many companies is to have a simple step back.
Breakthrough
Breakthrough is the state when we finally achieved the goal that we were aiming or created new positive habit. Maybe, it was a long journey to study a new technology and we’re finally got a desire job offer or we stopped smoking a year ago and it is feeling healthy and motivated. It was a hard work, but now we proud of our achievements and it is not as hard to support this habits compare to initial development and we can benefit from it for years to come.
And for the last time - the same is applicable to companies. Remote work advantages can varnish if companies stop innovating around how we work. Remote work or 4 days working week are not just buzz words, but today’s reality that applying pressure on work spaces to implement changes on how we work.
Every company has a long term plan on how to grow, evolve, conquer new markets and bring new technologies. Every company has a clear underspending that progress is constant and the only way to be on top is to keep up with pase of changes, or, if possible, to be ahead and innovate. The same should be applicable to a way we work.
Technologies that we have today is a breakthrough already compare to what we have had 10 or 15 years ago and getting better. We can be connected remotely from literally every place around the globe, we can work flexible hours and produce high quality results by utilizing time when we feel the most productive.
Spending time while commuting or sitting in the office with managers that watching monitors from behind are not reasons of great results or over performance. It is just a wrong summary made by companies based on some vague data.
Hybrid Today
Hybrid is the option that most companies going with today, most popular is 3 days in the office and 2 days remote. On the surface it sounds like a good compromise and win-win for everyone because company can micromanage you onsite and you will have some time free from commuting.
In reality it causes issues for both parties, not only employees. Employees need to cancel any routine before and after work because now some time will be taken by commuting to the office, usually combined with stress and anxiety - exactly the same issues as we faced before pandemic. Companies introduced money burning processes to develop monitoring systems integrations and seems that companies are focused on creating performance review degradation plans (where employee can be assigned to performance improvement plans if average 3 days in the office target has not been achieved) rather than on improving “work from home” routine.
In general, hybrid is just a combination of stress, anxiety, complete lost of trust and autonomy, creativity elimination and talent pool limitations to close to the office employees only.
Way Forward
The good news that not all companies in reverse gear and many are still committed to the remote work mission by continuing good innovations and investing into new habits.
Some case studies / guides are listed below so check them.
Companies listed above understand well the shift in work relationship and instead of monitoring employees just treat them as highly skilled professionals that are committed to company goals but value personal time and heath.
Author Note:
Companies listed here can cancel policies any time and also bring everyone back to office - always choose your future wisely.
This is not a full list of companies and you can still find companies that allows you to work remotely. It is also possible to negotiate with companies that declared back to office just make sure to have it written in you contract, otherwise it can be way easier reverted - do not trust verbal agreements, that the reality we have today.
Micromanagement - in context of this post mostly refer to overlooked environment with a luck of trust and creativity.