LI Reference: https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/companies-start-taking-attendance-5844546/
NY Times Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/business/hybrid-work-attendance.html
Companies are starting to take attendance but the data doesn’t support taking this action.
The amount of money, resources, time, and effort wasted in proving to people that you don’t trust them is mind-boggling. Many companies are taking action today to monitor their employees to an unreasonable extent. Despite the fact that productivity has increased overall in most organizations with remote work and hybrid options.
Pointing out a few statistics (just for a baseline)
- The number of people who work from home has increased by 140% since 2005.
- 4.3 million people in the USA work from home at least half the time.
- 68% of job seekers who are millennials said the option to work remotely would greatly increase their interest in an employer.
- 85% of companies in the USA are hybrid employers, allowing or requiring remote work.
- Companies that allow remote work have 25% lower employee turnover than those that don’t. Ref- with more stats <–click there.
Working remotely or from home with a hybrid option simply makes sense. It is good for the planet, the people, and the business. Companies have been forced into this model due to Covid but some senior leaders still are blind to the benefit. When transformational innovation occurs there are laggers. We can be sure that horse and buggy operators weren’t big fans of powered vehicles. Transformational innovation through the use of technologies has become very common for us all. It wasn’t historically long ago for people to get maps from AAA for travel. It wasn’t long ago that phones weren’t portable. As technologies change, people change behavior. We are part of a hyperconnected world. Most people today even in poor countries have access to a mobile device.
The idea of working remotely isn’t new. Remote work was accelerated by necessity. The issue for senior leaders who believe they need to monitor and tag employees is they are looking at time and presence relative to productivity vs outcomes and products. I could show up at 100 races and be present but not finish or win any of them. This makes no sense. There are situations and cases in that people must be physically present and we should understand and account for these. In my own experience, when I led teams who were forced by corporate policy to be in the office, I always created a situation where they had options to work from somewhere else. Why? Because I trust my teams. If my team believed they needed to be together for a reason physically, they made it happen. If I asked them to come together, they made it happen. Tracking employees and trying to understand where they are at any given moment will backfire. Companies will lose their people as other organizations use hybrid and remote options as a perk.
It doesn’t matter what the CEO of the company thinks. If they are out of touch, the people will show them with their feet. It will continue to become more expensive to entice people to come to the office. A great example of this is https://therealdeal.com/2022/04/04/jamie-dimon-to-work-from-homers-you-win/
Here is the message:
- Trust your people.
- Look at productivity through the lens of organizational value. (Determine what that is through performance measurements/outcomes)
- Study the value for the organization relative to overall operational and capital expenses by moving to a different working model. (Savings opportunities)
- Study the value by looking at overall organizational productivity which looks at business outcomes relative to operations with net results. Invest time and energy in workforce reflection and enhancements (listen to the workforce).
How do I know?
I started a company in 2020 that was 100% remote. We rented an office that we never used and eventually got rid of it. We built a model that is 100% cloud and 100% flexible. We created solutions and options with our people that offered them compensation for performance. This approach creates an environment for the organization and the people to be more successful than a traditional model. We simply took the approach of treating people with respect and trust. The people did the rest…
Throw AWAY the TAGS and let them be free!
What do you think?
The Cohenization Project 