Is work from home the wave of the future; a work pattern that will be radically more common and permanent for most knowledge workers? Not everybody thinks so.
“The current increase in productivity may be an illusion,” say Jason Gold, managing director and Alec Stapp, director of technology policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.
Right now, “employees are leveraging the relationships, routines, and habits they developed from interacting with coworkers in person on a daily basis, says PPI. “Over time, however, as workers begin drawing down on this social and organizational capital — culture, structure, and processes — we may find that they become less productive as collegial networks and opportunities to acquire new skills erode.”
“As employees switch jobs, problems linked to the withering of collegial relationships may start to seem more obvious,” says PPI.
The other issue is whether remote work affects the development of professional networks that aid advancement in a company or industry. Some surveys suggest employees have that concern. So actual productivity or ability to collaborate might not be the whole issue.
Some employees might rightly believe that being “out of sight means being out of mind,” even if most workers who can do so believe work from home is a productivity booster.
“The future will likely feature a robust and variable mix of telework and office work,” the authors say. “Companies that leap prematurely to the conclusion that their ability to prosper during the shutdown proves that the “office” is obsolete risk burning through their organizational capital, just as their rivals start to build it back up.”
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