Working Remote
-
"There are 3 key reasons why remote work is actually bringing you down, according to top management experts"
1. Culture clash
A recurring theme for Cappelli and Nehmeh was the erosion of organizational culture and community. The authors described how, in a hybrid world, newer employees in particular struggle to learn by observation or build relationships—key aspects of professional growth that depended on physical proximity.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, or the top of the waterfall. They described a cascading effect downward onto mid-level and senior-level employees, who become increasingly detached from their jobs as work gets defined down to something that happens on a screen, not in real life.
Nehmeh said new hires suffer in this hybrid environment, because they cannot really learn by example and they don’t get the guidance or support that facilitates professional growth. They both described the horror of the “ping” familiar to any remote worker.
Consider the entry-level worker who needs help, Nehmeh adds: “You have to schedule a call, you have to ping somebody, they may not respond back if they don’t know you … there’s so many issues there.”2. Everything is a transaction
A less obvious outcome of the cultural erosion, Cappelli added, is that remote work leads people to think about their job more narrowly. Work has been boiled down to key performance indicators, or KPIs, blurring the line between the letter of the law and spirit of the law, so to speak. He said this started during the pandemic, when supervisors were told to hold people accountable, and with everyone working remotely, the easiest solution was to emphasize KPIs.
Cappelli conjured a world of strict KPIs and constant pings, but the problem is the people you’re pinging have their own KPIs, too. “If you want help from somebody, you have to ping them, and you ping, and, you know, they get the message, but it goes to the bottom of their stack.”
He said they conducted 38 separate focus groups, 760 people in all, and many responded that they would get to their “pings” after they finished their own work.
Cappelli said this might seem small, but he thinks it’s a huge change that really affects performance management. The office involved social relationships, while the world of pings and KPIs is reducing everything to a transaction.3. The productivity-sapping meetings problem
None of this should diminish the breakthrough of remote work in 2020, they argue, but that was a solution to an emergency, and cracks in the system are now more visible after several years.
The authors argued that Zoom meetings, which seem more efficient, actually make workers less productive while adding to the length of their average workday, meaning that productivity per hour is actually down. Cappelli said he thinks there are too many of these meetings, they go on for too long, and too many people tune out, turning off their cameras when they are likely doing other things.
Cappelli urged managers to rethink meetings that take up too much of people’s time, full of awkwardness that seems normal now but would have seemed bizarre five years ago. He said that more recently, he has heard of people skipping meetings and sending their AI agent to take notes in their stead. “They’re not even pretending to listen!”
Cappelli said that as meetings get bigger and less gets done, some people are even turning to post-meeting meetings to make sure they’re still on track. “It’s a mess. Those things could be fixed, right? But they’re not being fixed.”https://fortune.com/2025/10/01/remote-work-bad-culture-gen-z-entry-level-productivity/
-
I don't know. That article had a predetermined result. Remote work works great for me. But then I've worked remote off and on for 40 years. State of SC is trying to make everyone come back but it will fail.
"The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell." Simone Weil
-
I don't know. That article had a predetermined result. Remote work works great for me. But then I've worked remote off and on for 40 years. State of SC is trying to make everyone come back but it will fail.
@Mik said in Working Remote:
I've worked remote off and on for 40 years.
I think this is the key. I think remote working REALLY hurts people starting out or still quite early in their careers.
