The drawbacks of remote working

Remote working looks like it is here to stay, and managers have to face the challenge head on and question how to create a genuine team atmosphere among remote team members.

Back in 2017, IBM made a controversial decision. Remote working was out. Office-based co-location was in. The company’s Chief Marketing Officer announced that its 2,600-strong US marketing workforce would be required to commute to work every day, rather than work remotely as many had become use to.

While remote working is great for individuals’ productivity, it may not be so great for teams

Many believed it was simply IBM’s management team flexing its muscles. But was there something more important at play here? Research tells us that remote working is great for productivity. But while remote working is great for individuals’ productivity, it may not be so great for teams — and teams are where the magic happens.

Team vs. individual productivity

Over the last few years, we’ve seen managers in large organisations turn their attention towards team productivity. How can it be improved? How can we support teams increase the quality of their work? The first step for many managers has been to recognise that team and individual productivity are two very different things. And having one may not necessarily mean that you have the other.

Yes, there’s clear evidence that remote working increases individual’s productivity. It allows them to focus better and get on with more stuff. It gives them more flexibility to work at their own pace unhindered by distractions. For example, recent research conducted by Professor Nicholas Bloom, Co-Director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that customer service representatives completed 13.5 per cent more calls when they worked from home.

A group of A-star colleagues, that doesn’t mean you have a top-performing team

That’s why — even before the current COVID-19 outbreak — , many companies, including IBM, accepted remote working with open arms. They believed it would inevitably lead to happier, more productive workers.

But, every manager knows that even if you have a group of A-star colleagues, that doesn’t mean you have a top-performing team. The team may not get along, there may be a personality clash, or it just may not work; the ‘magic’ is missing. The opposite is also true. Some of the best and most innovative work can come from the least likely of places — from teams that you wouldn’t expect to be at the top of their game from their composition.

So, while remote working may boost productivity for individuals, that doesn’t automatically mean that it will boost productivity for teams as well.

Remote working can harm team productivity

In fact, remote working may actually harm team productivity, and there are a number of reasons we should take this possibility seriously.

First, great ideas are rarely eureka moments — one person alone having an astonishing revelation. Most groundbreaking ideas come from working in a team; shooting the breeze about new ideas, sparking off the people sitting next to you. That’s much easier to do when teams are co-located; when there are more opportunities for the free exchange of ideas, and so-called ‘water cooler’ moments. Video chats on Zoom don’t have quite the same impact.

Team members could end up feeling less empathy for each other

Second, it’s also possible that remote workers have lower levels of team empathy. Since the advent of email and texting, we’ve been slowly but surely cutting ourselves off from face-to-face communication. And now we’ve all embraced text-only work communication, mainly through email and apps like Slack.

But text-only communication channels can be dangerous. They make you forget that there’s a person on the other end of that string of text; a real human being with thoughts, opinions and feelings. They’re not just a 2D persona. This can make it easy to say things that you would never say to people face to face; dismiss their ideas in an offhand way; not engage with people and their ideas properly.

The end result is that team members could end up feeling less empathy for each other, and also feeling less comfortable sharing ideas for fear of ridicule and dismissal. This may have important ramifications for team productivity because team performance is often said to be tied to so-called ‘psychological safety’, or the level of comfort you have in sharing new ideas with team members.

Remote working is here to stay

As every modern-day employer knows, many outstanding individuals just don’t work best in the office — they do need their freedom and if we don’t give it to them they take their ideas and knowledge elsewhere. But we can try to compensate for some stresses that remote working puts on team productivity; and try to create the environment that breeds great ideas.

Alongside actively encouraging ad-hoc phone and Skype discussions, we can also add features to our team tools that foster close team working and remind team members that they’re talking to other real people.

As well as team-to-team feedback tools, ViewsHub has a feature that allows teams to place individuals on a ‘360 Traits’ map, showing their different personality traits, strengths, and potential weaknesses. This enables team members to better understand their colleagues, build a deeper and richer picture of each other, and help people understand how different members of the team can fit together effectively.

Managers are now turning their sights to team productivity. Remote working looks like it is here to stay, and managers have to face the challenge head on and question how to create a genuine team atmosphere among remote team members.

ViewsHub is a workplace feedback platform used by teams to measure and improve cooperation with clients and coworkers — the key driver of profit growth and employee engagement.