Dee Davis (00:30)
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm Dee Davis, your host, and today we are going to talk about remote working from both the employer's and the employee's point of view. We're going to talk about the pluses, the minuses, and the challenge that are faced by all. The U.S. Career Institute published some data in 2024 that was right about the time that companies started mandating return to office.
people have a real love-hate relationship with turn to office, and we're gonna talk about why. First, let's tackle the employee's perspective. In the United States, remote workers save an average of 55 minutes a day on commuting. Worldwide average is 72 minutes. For anybody that works in construction, I would say it's probably
more on the heavier end of 55 minutes. Many of us travel more than an hour to work every single day. Exactly how much we cut greenhouse gas emissions is a little unclear, but we do know by less commuting, we're helping the environment as well. In a survey from the US Career Institute, no commute was the top benefit of working from home.
cited by almost 60 % of respondents, followed by saving on gas and lunch costs. It's estimated that remote workers can save as much as $12,000 per year by not having to pay for commuting costs, work clothing, and eating out while at work. Is it any wonder that employees are resisting return to work mandates? $12,000 dollar per year, that's like getting a huge pay raise. Remote workers report
lower levels of stress and better eating habits, fully remote workers live where they want to live instead of where they need to live and report moving to be closer to friends and family. In the United States, it's close to a 50-50 split of who works from home between men and women with men slightly leading that statistic,
White people dominating work from home landscape by representing more than 60 % of people who work from home. By generation, some of the stats are a little surprising and some of them aren't. By generation,
Gen Z is the least likely to apply for remote work. Probably not as surprising is the generation that holds the most remote jobs is millennials. The difference here is most likely that Gen Z doesn't yet have the skills and experience to obtain good paying remote work while millennials have enough time in the workplace to grab those desirable spots. I think we'll see that statistic change over time.
In 2024, the state that had the most remote workers was Colorado, yay, with 34 % of people working at least one day a week remotely, followed by Maryland. The state that had the least remote workers was Mississippi at just under 12%. Jobseekers state that the option for remote work is the most important factor in finding a new job. So pay attention, employers.
Job seekers want an option for remote work when they are seeking a job. It's more important to them than money, flexible schedule, or work-life balance. The negatives from an employee's perspective, well, it seems to harm the ability to get promoted. Many report that starting a new job remotely makes them feel disconnected, undervalued,
and under trained compared to starting in person. Now, another negative to working fully remotely, if you're new in your career, this could very much hinder your career because you're gonna learn a lot more by being in the same place and working directly with other people that are more experienced. I can't imagine starting my career working fully
or even mostly remote and being where I am today. I think this is more true in certain industries than others, but it's a consideration for those of you that are early in your career.
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Now from an employer's perspective, to be honest, I haven't met a ton of businesses that are enthusiastically embracing remote work. But part of it is because of the industries I spend most of my time with, which are construction and manufacturing. Neither of them are very conducive to remote work. Many of the roles in these industries require people to be in the same physical place at the same time, working with others together to achieve.
what needs to be done. This doesn't mean that there aren't many employers out there who value it. 79 % of managers surveyed said that their teams are more productive working remotely. This is not surprising to me. I have spent many of my years consulting, working remotely, and I can tell you I am far more productive.
at home than I ever am at a customer's work site. my customers benefit from that directly because I get paid by the hours worked. So if you can have more productive employees, you can have more overall productivity because you can assign them more work. 56 % of hiring managers have conceded, begrudgingly, that remote work has worked out quite a bit better than they expected.
As of 2024, one third of employers offered no remote options, while the other two thirds offered an average of 2.2 days a week remote. This is where I think the data that was gathered and the timeframe that it was gathered in might not be helpful right now. I would wager that this is flipped because of the return to office mandates that we've seen across multiple industries. I would wager that we now have
a third offering remote options and two thirds offering no remote options are somewhere in there.
I definitely know a lot of people that have left their jobs because of return to office mandates and sought other work.
16 % of companies are fully remote. It's estimated that 56 % of the workforce could work remotely, meaning that they have jobs that don't require direct customer interface or teamwork. It's independent work that can be done on a computer from anywhere. There's a number of challenges that employers face when it comes to remote work.
And they really boil down to a few key things, trust and communication.
Trust. I can't see you, so I don't know what you're doing. That's really all that is, is trust. When people are in office, even if you aren't standing over their shoulders, there's some peer pressure to get work done and be productive, or is there? It kind of depends on your culture. Let me tell you about an organization that I worked in for a while, and this was before COVID.
In that organization, there were multiple floors of office space. The floor I worked on, the direction that my desk faced, I could see about one third of the office and about two thirds was behind me.
The third that was in front of me had a lot of desks and it had some collaboration areas where people could sit and talk with couches and things like that. The supervisor's offices were all along the perimeter of the office. What I can tell you happened in that place, and this was before COVID, that collaboration space was constantly occupied with a certain group of people.
Now, we'd like to think that those people are over there collaborating about work things. I would walk by them and I'd hear their conversation. And I got to tell you in a year and a half, I don't think I ever once heard them talking about anything work related. They sat in that space all day and just BSed.
and did absolutely no work that I could see. So just because I can see you and that your supervisors nearby doesn't necessarily mean that people are getting work done. So it depends on your culture. In that particular culture, as long as you were physically there, people assumed you were getting your work done. And I saw many, many people in various roles never get anything done. The productivity was extremely low.
in that environment. Most supervisors really have no idea what their people are doing at any given time. The supervisors are hiding in their offices or they're attending meetings. Statistically, supervisors have three times more meetings than their direct reports. So they're in some conference room somewhere or maybe on a remote meeting, they're paying attention to their screen, they're not really watching what their direct reports are doing.
Being in proximity doesn't really matter.
Supervisors have also never been taught how to manage remote employees. This was something that was kind of dropped on all of us during COVID and everybody did the best they could. I'm not really sure that it should be any different. managing a remote employee than one that's in person, but it is. And it boils down to communication. It becomes even more important when you're trying to manage remote employees. You have to set
Very clear expectations. And that means using your words. You have to write it down. You have to talk to the person and you have to tell them what you expect. This happens all the time. Even when you're in the same space that you just expect the person to know what you want without saying the words and sorry, but they don't have a crystal ball. You really need to use your words.
and set those clear expectations. you need to focus on outcomes more than hours worked or whether or not someone's in a given place between eight and five. Because here's the thing, people are not that productive in your space already. So whether they're sitting in a seat or in a building between eight and five,
isn't really relevant. Whether or not they're getting the assigned work done, that's what's relevant. So focus on the outcome.
Leverage technology to keep teams connected I don't mean these stupid programs that monitor if you're using your keyboard or your mouse or having a cameras on rule Those are both terrible, terrible ideas that people implemented during COVID because they just had no idea how to manage remote employees. It sends the wrong message.
It sends the direct message of, don't know how to manage my people, so I'm gonna implement this ridiculous rule. And it also says, I don't trust you. If you can't trust your people, you have the wrong people. Whether they're in office or remote, they are the wrong person for the role if you cannot trust them. So get rid of those ridiculous technologies if you're implementing them. Do not implement them in the first place is the best idea.
It's all about communication. When we're in the office, we somehow assume that being in the same space results in communication, but it doesn't. Humans don't communicate by osmosis. When remote, the problem we already have is amplified because we have to be deliberate about our communication. This can be helped with team meetings or regular one-on-ones that are scheduled, and you know my rules on meetings.
Don't have a meeting just to have a meeting. You must have a purpose and you must have an agenda. If you don't have those two things, you're just wasting everyone's time. So you can't just put something on the calendar and show up and expect your direct reports to have this organized content for you. You are the manager, you are in charge. have a plan.
Onboarding new hires. I remember one job that I started where I had the option of remote work and they had me be fully remote my very first week.
I can't remember what the circumstance was, but my supervisor wasn't available. So it was a truly strange experience. Not meeting with my boss, not having any idea what they wanted me to do first. This happens to me all the time now that I'm a consultant. So I've become much better at taking the lead and finding ways to be productive with little or no guidance. But it can be very intimidating as a new hire in an organization to be on your own. Remember when we said that the new hires,
feel disconnected, undervalued, and under trained, it's our job as supervisors to make sure that doesn't happen.
Make sure you have a plan for the new hire. Have a team introduction call so they can meet the other team members and understand how they fit in. Have several one-on-one scheduled for the first couple of weeks that they're there. Have a to-do list with some deadlines to give them something to work on and some resources for support. Define your expectations clearly, make them feel welcome,
and free to reach out for help. If you're not available, give them someone who can help them that is available. And don't micromanage. Trust and communication are the most important things in managing remote teams. I think what most employers, whether they say it out loud or it's just a deep-seated fear, have is that they're afraid that if people are at home, they're doing things that are not working.
such as scrolling social media, watching TV, taking care of their kids, household chores, shopping. I have a friend that said he tried remote working and he couldn't do it because all he would end up doing is mowing the lawn and hunting in the refrigerator for something to snack on. It's not for everybody. That is a fact. There are people that can handle it and there's people that can't handle it. You got to find the people that can handle it.
Do these crazy things happen? Sure they do. It's unproductive behavior that you might feel like they have no right to do when they are on the clock. Here's the reality. Unproductive behavior happens all day in the office. Many studies have revealed that productive work time in the office is two to three hours per day maximum. That's right, out of an eight hour day, you're getting maybe 20.
25 % maximum They're spending their time arriving late, leaving early, socializing, having long lunches, doing personal tasks, making personal calls. They're doing those things already. I'm not one to listen to music or do things like that while I'm working, but I'm in the minority. In addition to all the other unproductive things people are doing in the office, millions of workers have admitted they stream television.
They listen to podcasts just like this one. They scroll on social media, listen to audiobooks and watch YouTube during the workday.
all of that behavior you're worried about, it's already happening. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did a study on the productivity of remote versus office work across 61 industries. They found a positive and statistically significant correlation in the growth of remote work and the growth of productivity. What that means is people that are doing all those things at work,
they're probably gonna do it at home too, but you're actually gonna get more work out of them if they're at home. Companies can save about $10,000 per employee annually by reducing their office footprints. This was a published statistic that I found. I would say that it can be significantly more than that, depending on your office environment and how you work your...
remote work or hybrid schedule. I got to talk about this thing that I read about called coffee badging. Have you heard of it? This is where a hybrid worker comes into the office for a few hours to show their face and then goes back home. It's apparently a trend practiced more by men than women. Personally,
If I did all the work of getting up and getting ready and driving to the office, I'm just going to stay there and work. But apparently this is a trend that is happening. Is it helpful? Is it not helpful? Is it any different? Is it impacting productivity? It's something to consider.
With all this talk of remote work, it's worthy to say that not everybody wants to be a fully remote worker. I know a number of people that don't want to work remotely at all, and they want to be in an office environment. They miss the relationships, the collaboration, the water cooler experiences, and the physical workplace. From my personal observations, it seems that people that live alone are most likely to want to have an office to go to at least some of the time. In summary,
Both employers and employees can benefit from a hybrid or remote work situation. Job seekers are highly valuing remote work options to the point that employers really have to wake up and smell the future. Employers are likely to find that being inflexible limits the talent pool available when you're going to fill those open roles. All parties can save money by utilizing this flexibility.
which makes salary negotiations easier for everyone concerned. Supervisors, it's time to level up your skills and learn how to manage remote workers because they're coming to a job near you, whether you like it or not. Thanks for joining us. Please like and share this episode with a friend and leave us a comment or question. We'll see you next time.
