The age-old debate (not really, just since the pandemic) of whether remote work culture is fortuitous or not, straddles the fences between the pro-WFH and the anti-remote coterie. Amongst the anti-remote CEOs slamming remote work excuses, is billionaire and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. In his interview with Mo Rocca for CBS News, on his views on remote workers, Mike Bloomberg believes that they squander away their working hours essentially on vacation playing golf. Is that ridiculously-sounding? Not so much because a few solid statistics are backing the statement.
In 2020, when most jobs were confined to a pandemic lockdown, the tech industry had found an improvisation: work-from-home. But ever since the WHO declared that COVID was no longer a global health emergency, many prolific anti-remote CEOs such as Mike Bloomberg, X’s Elon Musk, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, have laid down mandates beckoning employees back to the grind.
Mike Bloomberg On Remote Workers: His Anti-Remote Take Resonates?
It may sound like a reach to say that every stressed work-from-home employee heads off to the golf course during their working hours, without the notice of their disciplining superiors, as Mike Bloomberg says for remote workers. But in terms of data, he may not be too far-fetched.
“If you think work can be done at home, I don’t know. But every golf course that I’ve heard of in the past three years has had record summers. Funny it is, but tragic.”
Earlier this year, economists Alex Finan and Nick Bloom published a Stanford University research paper that established a link between the burgeoning remote work culture and a golfing boom. Most post-pandemic golf course visits had skyrocketed in the mid-afternoons of weekdays.
Mike Bloomberg, who’s worth over $96 billion, had plenty more to define what remote work culture was doing to the economy as a whole, if not just the organization. Penning an op-ed in the Washington Post in early August, Bloomberg expressed his disdain for government workers logging in remotely, going as far as to say that taxpayers would have to foot the bill for the empty offices.
“This has gone too long. Remote work excuses for allowing offices to sit empty should end too.”
Bloomberg has also called upon the employees at his eponymous company to show up at least 3 or 4 days a week. Also, with the emergence of Labor Day return-to-work mandates, the widely available remote roles have vanished into a thing of the past.
Remote Work Culture Or Return To Office Mandates: Which Is More Productive?
From Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk, most top tech CEOs have ordered their workers back into the offices, suspecting foul play. They have strong evidence to believe that remote workers are less productive. According to a study from Microsoft, 49 percent of leaders of hybrid workers have been struggling to trust their employees. Mike Bloomberg also quipped that remote work is detrimental to an organization’s future outlook.
Moreover, it is definitive to believe that back-to-office workers have several benefits over their coworkers who aren’t physically present on the premises. Most people are able to learn more about their workplace culture and get more tasks done, owing to faster communication as opposed to a remote worker who would have to schedule a meeting for the same. The office goers are also privy to opportunities for mentoring and upskilling.
It is also an indubitable probability to think that remote workers may suffer from the impacts of proximity bias (where bosses unintentionally prioritize the workers they see more often). Training, supervising, and building an organizational culture is much harder with remote workers than with office workers. In-person work fosters swift communication as well, which is at the crux of time-sensitive activities.
In the debate about WFH versus RTO (return-to-office) strategies, the back-to-work klaxon rings the bell of employee productivity as a focal point. Yet, it is imperial to widen the spectrum from just employee productivity.
Productivity is based on employee satisfaction, motivation, and the flexibility to decide the kind of environment they are comfortable with. In all trajectories of career productivity, the average worker is productive for less than 60 percent of the day. However, a study by VoucherCloud delineated that an average office worker was productive for only two hours and 23 minutes every day. The loss of productivity could be attributed to reading news, discussing out-of-work activities with colleagues, making hot drinks, and catching up with social media.
According to Forbes, remote workers who were graced with full schedule flexibility reported 29 percent higher productivity. Yet, another study reported that fully remote work was associated with 10-20 percent lesser productivity than an office worker.
An Ergotron study found that 40 percent of employees were working longer hours at home than in the office. Backing this data was the National Bureau of Economic Research which found that extended workdays could add up to more than 193 hours in a year. Remote workers benefit from the saved commute time and twice as much improved work-life balance as full-time office counterparts.
However, Mike Bloomberg’s stance on remote workers is shared by the CEO of Jefferies, Rich Handler. He believes that permanently remote roles do not build a career, and are just adept at short-term goals and a paycheck.
“The pragmatic reality is that if you are in the office, you get pulled into many interesting ‘real-time’ situations that require a physical presence.”
This is a sentiment that even most pro-remote experts agree with. There is a cost that the workers have to pay in terms of diminishing personal interactions and slower-on-the-job learning for gaining flexibility and autonomy when working from home.
In many of the studies we cite, remote workers often get more done simply because they save time from the daily commute and other office distractions. This makes them look more productive on a ‘per day’ basis, even if it means they’re actually less productive on a ‘per hour’ basis.
Drawing from several studies from around the globe, the obstacles in the remote work culture would be challenges in communication and the lack of motivation.
Most researchers are steadfast champions of a sensible middle ground – hybrid work.
Hybrid Work: A Multiscious Dynamic That Wins
While most may agree with the anti-remote CEO stance like Mike Bloomberg’s on remote workers, others may tip the scales in favor of a pure remote work culture. Both balance enough merits and minuses. Amidst their middle ground, stands the ever-flexible hybrid work.
An October 2022 survey on Slack’s Future Forum discovered that workers with full schedule flexibility bumped 29 percent higher on productivity scores than their non-flexible counterparts. Hybrid workers were supposed to harness 4 percent higher productivity than full-time office workers.
Most remote workers such as parents lauded the hybrid culture, which helped them work more efficiently. Organized hybrid plans do not have any detrimental impact on productivity and instead improve recruitment, morale, and retention.
So while Mike Bloomberg and other anti-remote CEOs may slam remote work, and rightfully so, many findings suggest that working from the office or working from home is not uni-dimensional, but rather a multifaceted kaleidoscope.
