What is better, working in an office? Or remotely? Or hybrid?
This is a bloody joke. The lazy gits make me sick. Call me old fashioned but all this work from home BS is a total joke. There is no way people work as hard or productive as when they had to turn up at a work location. The pandemic has had long lasting negative effect. pic.twitter.com/MvS2cX9K8C
— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) May 5, 2022
There are lots of people who say that remote work is less productive but I think it depends on the type of work you do and the way you work.
Traditional manufacturing jobs for example, like Alan Sugar’s, are going to be less easy to do remotely than an online technology company or an international services company like PWC.
For me as an online services and technology company, I believe that working remotely can be more efficient, and I prefer it, because:
- You don’t need to commute and therefore save time
- You can hire a larger pool of more talented people around the world
- The constraints on communication forces you to be more efficient with your communication which can be one of the biggest time wasters in a company.
There are negative things about not being together. You can lose the close working and professional relationships. It’s harder to get to know each other on a personal level. But it’s still possible to if you make the effort and can still meet in person.
Freedom is Empowering
Ultimately it is about giving freedom to people who work. And I believe people work better when they are given more freedom to make their own decisions about when / how / where they work.
It allows the working mother to take care of her kids. It allows someone to work on a different timezone.
It gives more autonomy, and people are adults. They should be able to design and build their own lives by themselves.
But in order to let people be free, it also needs an effective management structure.
The most important thing is to hire people who are really good. And really good people don’t need to be managed, they manage themselves. In order to learn how to be a better manager, I wrote some of my learnings here.
I think working from home can make things more efficient. There can be a lot of unnecessary communication in an office, and working is not about communicating between everyone in the company, it is about getting work done.
What are your thoughts?
