I came in this morning planning to write about the downside of remote work. It isn’t for everyone. In fact, it creates new long-term problems for businesses and will continue to do so. (For a related topic, see my previous column on returning to work.)
Coincidentally, this morning the Wall Street Journal posted an interview with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan. He said about remote work in part, “It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation. It doesn’t work for culture.”
He is right, and remote work is a lot more threatening for Main Street businesses than it is for large corporations like the one he leads.
I have preached for decades that culture is the secret weapon of smaller companies. They can’t fight on the same financial terms as big corporations. There is a reason so many regulations regarding issues like family leave are limited to employers of a minimum size. Small businesses can’t afford to just “do without” an employee for weeks or months when that person is the only one who handles a particular area of responsibility.
The Main Street owner’s secret weapon
In a Main Street company talent is quickly identified and (usually) rewarded. Those who, in Dimon’s terms “want to hustle” can move up more quickly. Real ability and ambition are too scarce a resource to ignore.
Smart business owners extend the culture of the business by their individual efforts. Knowing about their employees, their families, and their pastimes goes a long way to making them feel that they belong in the company. It’s hard to have those casual “discovery” conversations on Zoom, and almost impossible if there are multiple participants in a video call.
Our own business is built on collaboration. Almost everything gets passed around for comment, and we frequently meet via video to discuss things. It is often a difficult process, and clearly takes more time than if we could sit around a table.
We have employed remote workers for over a decade, but each one worked in our offices at some point. Our newest hire is in 2 days each week, and I am certain that she would not have melded so well with the rest of the team if she was entirely remote.
The biggest downside of remote work
When you erase the cultural advantage of a small business, what do you have left? In the harshest terms, money. That’s a battle we are guaranteed to lose. If the only differentiator to the remote employee is the amount on his or her automatic payroll deposit, we are well and truly screwed.
When we interview new clients, one of our questions is “Why do customers buy from you?” If the answer is “strictly on price,” it had better be a commercial bid contractor or an Internet-based retailer. In any other type of business, it indicates a problem.
Think of a remote workforce as an Internet-based human resource pool. If you can’t get noticed for your effort, if no one will know you as an individual, then the only differentiation between employers is price.
It is happening already. I have a client in Texas who is losing his tech remote workers to Silicon Valley. The employee of another client in the Midwest was recently poached by a New York firm. The pitch is simple. “You are already working from home. Why not do it for twice the money?” (That is not an exaggeration- both cases involved a doubling of salary.)
Employers as commodities
If someone approached your remote workers with a similar offer, how would you counter? I’m guessing that you can’t. I know that many of those who leave for a remote job with a giant employer won’t be happy in the long term. It’s the epitome of being a cog in the wheel. How many, however, will be willing to halve their income to feel more appreciated?
My message is simple. The downside of remote work is that it turns employers into a commodity. A remote employee’s home office looks exactly the same today as it did yesterday. It will look the same tomorrow. If you want to maintain any hope of competing with the giants, the faster you restore in-person contact with your employees, the better chance you will have.
If you don’t take advantage of your cultural superiority, the ability to run your business may be decided by someone else’s department manager a thousand miles away.
Perhaps the most important rule for staying out of trouble is to avoid making any decisions about what constitutes a “valid” employee issue or excuse. One employee’s child care challenges may seem more difficult than another’s. Some children have returned to school, others are being taught remotely. A number of daycare centers have reopened but many haven’t.
stamp the legend in our psyche. After seven silent and four “Talkie” versions, the first big sound production was the 1938 Reginald Owen version (originally released as “Scrooge”) and then the 1951 Alistair Sim classic. The character of Ebenezer has been tackled by actors ranging from George C. Scott to Michael Caine (with the Muppets.) Ralph Richardson, Frederick March, Basil Rathbone, Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammar and Rich Little (in various celebrity impersonations) have taken a shot, as have Mickey Mouse, Mr. Magoo, the Smurfs, Barbie, Oscar the Grouch, Yosemite Sam, Dora the Explorer, and The Flintstones.
I don’t completely disagree with you on this. Remote work is disconnected and collaboration and communication is hard. But we do it. I have been able to expand my reach for finding quality team members as well (I live in Oklahoma and talent can be limited here). But I do offer something that not many others can offer. I offer part-time flex work mainly for moms who are raising kids and want to work, but don’t want to go back to the workforce full time. There is a huge network of highly qualified women out there that fit this mold. As I’ve grown my team, I’ve learned there are more and more people out there piecing together remote part-time jobs so they can have flexible hours and flexibility of schedule. That’s the one thing the traditional companies cannot offer.
Your point is well taken, Tracey, but I can only partially agree. I recently read the new flex-work policy for one of the largest accounting firms in the country. They have options including part-time (scheduled by employee choice by days or hours), seasonal, surge, total-remote, partially remote, hot-desking as needed, sabbaticals, extended PTO, split-shift, and several others I never saw detailed before. The big-salary jobs I described are admittedly full-time, but that doesn’t mean large companies can’t match your flexibility.
I think that you missed a significant benefit for remote workers employed by Main Street companies… diversity, growth and burnout. The best thing about my job is that there are constant challenges and as a result, you get to wear a lot of hats. You get to try and solve wide-ranging problems outside of your expertise and that’s just plain fun (at least for weirdos like me). I know what it’s like to work for a large corporation. I have worked for several Fortune 500 companies and I shudder to think about going back to that world… even remotely. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE coding but I also love all of the side projects, the unpredictability and opportunities to do something I’ve never done before. I get to move back and forth between projects at my pace so, I don’t burn out. Every day is a new adventure. Don’t forget about that when you are talking about the advantages of working for a Main Street company. For me, it’s a pretty big deal.
Though I kind of see your point about culture, John, I completely disagree with JP Morgan’s, “It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation. It doesn’t work for culture.”
When employees show up to work after sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic only to find another spewing off his/her own complaints upon arriving, how does that help with company culture or the bottom line? That spawns a full morning packed w/ negativity and unproductivity.
I have worked remotely for almost 10 years. The flexibility allows individuals who are hustlers, get ‘r done-type workers, to decompress and come up w/ spontaneous, out-of-the-box ideas that they may not have in a cubicle. I have found that the largest obstacle to overcome working remotely is building trust, but that happens in-house as well..it takes time.
Remote workers often don’t have the benefit of clocking out; the tasks and means to get it done are only a hand’s throw away. Us, not so hustlers, are typically the first to get the job done, regardless of personal schedule.
I think JP Morgan needs to hire a new PR firm , possibly some new strategists.
During and now post COVID I have started to remote work two days a week, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is getting me an additional 4 hours of my weekly time back to make me more productive and a better quality of life. I do agree that remote work does degrade if not eliminate culture and spontaneity of idea/collaboration. It is also not for those that aren’t goal oriented or those that need others for motivation. Thus a part time model I think is best if it can be worked out.