When you really sit down and talk to managers of people, nothing is as divisive as the concept of working from home/remotely as a primary arrangement. I break down anyone's reaction to working from home to one of three camps:
1. Hell no, you won't go - I like my people here - with me. Maybe I don't trust people, or maybe I think there are natural benefits to being together face to face or some combination thereof. Report to the office, sucker.
2. Do I get to Pick? I'll let the people I trust work from home or remotely, but until I have that trust, please report to the office.
3. See you at the quarterly meeting or ROWE meetup - I'm totally bought in to letting anyone work remotely that works for me. I'm a new age hippie, and let's face it, I really don't like hanging out with people, so it's perfect for me, and for you.
If I attempt to break down those camps into percentages, I think only about 5% of all managers are willing to let anyone who works for them do it in a remote fashion. That means 95% of the managers of people have some degree of hangup with letting people work remotely.
Also of note - just because your last manager/leader let people work remotely doens't mean the new boss is going to. Here is the internal memo at Yahoo sent to company employees about a new rule rolled out last week by CEO Marissa Mayer, which requires that Yahoo employees who work remotely relocate to company facilities. From All Things D:
It underscores a couple of things. First, there are some obvious advantages to being together as a team in physical space. Second, just because someone said you can work remotely doesn't mean it has to last forever.
Meet the new boss - different from the old boss.
Add value beyond what is expected, ye remote worker. Or face the winds of change. Don't fret - there's free coffee where you're going.
There may be obvious advantages of being in the office, but their are advantages of not being in the office that are less obvious. To take just one of many: some studies show that on average (of course everyone is different) remote employees work more than non-remote employees. That's something managers may not know, and different from what they may assume.
Posted by: Todd Raphael | February 25, 2013 at 02:11 PM
Bad news for those who work from home. If we wish to continue to work from home, better to look for other work at home opportunities.
Posted by: Gokhan | March 08, 2013 at 07:37 AM