Remote working: overcoming preconceptions for the best of both worlds

Stunned by the force of the pan­dem­ic and forced to adopt remote work­ing in a hurry, com­pan­ies have respon­ded to the most press­ing needs. Remote work­ing was imposed without any pri­or nego­ti­ation, dis­cus­sion, or eval­u­ation of the rules. Two years after the start of the pan­dem­ic, a large pro­por­tion of employ­ees have acquired a taste for remote work­ing, to the point where some have not set foot in their work­place for two years and have no inten­tion of return­ing to 100% onsite work­ing. Faced with short­ages in many sec­tors of activ­ity and the pos­sib­il­ity of a “great resig­na­tion”, the pos­sib­il­ity of “full remote” work­ing has become one of the most attract­ive selling points for com­pan­ies and recruiters.

Tomor­row will look very dif­fer­ent from yesterday

A study by Qual­trics indic­ates that 35% of employ­ees would change employ­er if their boss forced them to return to the office full-time. In France, accord­ing to a Hub­Spot study, 14% admit that they would rather go to the dent­ist than return to the office five days a week. That said, most employ­ees tend to aspire to a hybrid form of work and believe they are just as suc­cess­ful as if they were in the office full time. They claim to have found a bet­ter bal­ance between work and per­son­al life.

These devel­op­ments pose some real organ­isa­tion­al and man­age­ment chal­lenges. How can team spir­it be rekindled when team mem­bers have nev­er seen each oth­er “in real life?” Are per­form­ance and pro­ductiv­ity levels the same for remote and face-to-face work? Should the com­pany retain as many offices as before? Above all, what is the role of the man­ager and are exist­ing man­agers ready to take on this new role?

Accord­ing to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, nearly one in two French man­agers (48%) feel that their seni­or man­age­ment team is out of step with employ­ees’ expect­a­tions. As for exec­ut­ives, 52% fear that pro­ductiv­ity has been affected by the switch to remote or hybrid work­ing, where­as 81% of their employ­ees con­sider them­selves to be just as pro­duct­ive or even more so.

The fact remains that social ties suf­fer from remote work­ing. For half of French man­agers (48%), this is the main chal­lenge they will have to face, wheth­er the work is hybrid or remote. Suzy Canivenc, a doc­tor in inform­a­tion and com­mu­nic­a­tion sci­ences and a research­er at the “Future of Industry and Work” (FIT) chair at Mines Par­isTech, attempts to answer some of these questions.

In your research, you say that phys­ic­al prox­im­ity does not guar­an­tee social ties and that cooper­a­tion at a dis­tance is def­in­itely pos­sible. So, can we ima­gine per­man­ent remote working?

Suzy Canivenc. We must dis­tin­guish between phys­ic­al prox­im­ity and rela­tion­al prox­im­ity: it is not because we are phys­ic­ally close that we will be emo­tion­ally close. A neigh­bour on the next floor or in the office who is con­sidered to be a ter­rible per­son is often a good example of this! The social bond doesn’t just arise from being in the same place; it is primar­ily nour­ished by a com­mon iden­tity and shared ref­er­ences at the social and cog­nit­ive level, sim­il­ar work habits, com­mon interests and goals, for example.

How­ever, this does not mean that per­man­ent remote work­ing, also called “full remote”, is neces­sar­ily the way for­ward. Some com­pan­ies prac­tice it, some­times since they were estab­lished, but most com­pan­ies are mov­ing towards a hybrid model.

Could hybrid work be the solution?

Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, we were able to exper­i­ment with remote work­ing in an unpre­ced­en­ted way, even if it was under less-than-ideal con­di­tions, since it was imposed 100% at home in an anxi­ety-indu­cing con­text marked by mul­tiple restric­tions. In addi­tion to the sav­ings on trans­port time and a bet­ter work-life bal­ance, employ­ees who had long been refused this option par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ated the peace and quiet they enjoyed when their home and accom­mod­a­tion allowed it. Remote work­ing thus proved con­du­cive to indi­vidu­al tasks of deep con­cen­tra­tion. How­ever, they also dis­covered its dis­ad­vant­ages, not­ably the work over­load and the poros­ity between pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al life.

Remote work­ing is bet­ter suited to man­age­ment based on trust and con­trol of res­ults rather than on mis­trust and micro­man­age­ment of tasks. 

After a while, they also missed see­ing their col­leagues and chat­ting with them at the cof­fee machine, a ritu­al that breaks up the mono­tony of work, strengthens social ties, but also nur­tures a sense of serendip­ity through spon­tan­eous exchanges of inform­a­tion and know­ledge, so neces­sary for the smooth run­ning of companies.

Hybrid work there­fore aims to recon­cile these two aspects. The mod­el is not new when one thinks of all those who were already work­ing at cli­ents’ premises, on the road or tak­ing work home before the health crisis. How­ever, when deployed on a large scale, it brings with it new organ­isa­tion­al and mana­geri­al challenges.

What changes does this total or hybrid remote work­ing entail in terms of work organ­isa­tion and management?

Remote work­ing is bet­ter suited to man­age­ment based on trust and con­trol of res­ults rather than on mis­trust and micro­man­age­ment of tasks. As far as the social con­nec­tion is con­cerned, it is neces­sary to invent new rituals which allow emo­tion­al close­ness to be nur­tured through reg­u­lar con­tact, wheth­er this be phys­ic­al or vir­tu­al. It is import­ant that these exchanges do not focus solely on pro­fes­sion­al activ­it­ies and short-term object­ives in order to foster the sense of shared iden­tity and ref­er­ences I men­tioned earlier.

How­ever, it must be stressed that remote work­ing in itself does not neces­sar­ily lead to these changes. It is per­fectly pos­sible to “micro-man­age” from a dis­tance, espe­cially as digit­al tools can be used to mon­it­or employ­ees remotely, check con­nec­tion times or mouse move­ments, and force them into a form of digit­al present­ee­ism (incess­ant mes­sages, video tun­nels, etc.). Dur­ing the crisis, some even went so far as to mon­it­or their employ­ees via webcam.

You talk about “remote digit­al soci­ab­il­ity”. What does this mean?

It is pre­cisely the abil­ity to nur­ture social con­nec­tions through digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tion tools, as the young­er gen­er­a­tions, born with these tools in their hands, do. In my opin­ion, com­pan­ies have not yet fully grasped this poten­tial. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, they often simply trans­ferred on-site work­ing prac­tices to the vir­tu­al world, repla­cing phys­ic­al meet­ings with video con­fer­en­cing. How­ever, this tech­nic­al sys­tem has the dis­ad­vant­age of caus­ing a high level of fatigue, which we are only begin­ning to under­stand. It also has the effect of hyper-form­al­ising exchanges. Video, which is the tool that has developed the most dur­ing the crisis, is there­fore not the most suit­able for nur­tur­ing social links. Oth­er devices, such as cor­por­ate social net­works, instant mes­saging, or VoIP – which are very much used by young people – could be more effective.

You sug­gest “mov­ing from a syn­chron­ous oral cul­ture to an asyn­chron­ous writ­ten cul­ture”, what do you mean by this?

Like hybrid work­ing, the asyn­chron­ous writ­ing mod­el is far from new; in fact, it has been pro­gress­ively rein­forced with the devel­op­ment of digit­al tools such as doc­u­ment stor­age spaces, cor­por­ate social net­works, integ­rated digit­al plat­forms, etc. At the moment, how­ever, we tend to over­value the role of syn­chron­ous oral com­mu­nic­a­tion and there­fore present­ee­ism – which is still pre­val­ent in France – and this is an obstacle to the devel­op­ment of remote and hybrid working.

The aim is to take advant­age of the bene­fits of both forms of com­mu­nic­a­tion at work. Asyn­chron­ous writ­ing is par­tic­u­larly suited to deep con­cen­tra­tion and per­son­al reflec­tion and is there­fore ideal for the “diver­gence” phases where each per­son can express his or her opin­ion, free from group pres­sure and shy­ness. On the oth­er hand, syn­chron­ous speak­ing could be more suit­able for phases of con­ver­gence where it is no longer a ques­tion of jux­ta­pos­ing ideas but of “work­ing together”.

Thus, hybrid work is not lim­ited to a jux­ta­pos­i­tion of the meth­ods used to carry it out – on site or remote – it is a ques­tion of invent­ing a third way of work­ing by play­ing on the com­ple­ment­ar­ity between syn­chron­ous (oral) and asyn­chron­ous (writ­ten) work.

Interview by Sophy Caulier