Why employers do not like remote work?

For a long time, I sincerely did not understand why employers as a whole negatively relate to remote work and free schedule. It would seem that they are no less interested in minimizing costs than employees in saving time. By a free schedule, I do not mean coming to work when I want, but meeting with my boss and colleagues at a predetermined time.

So, what are the advantages for employers in remote work?

First, you do not need to pay direct costs for the workplace and indirectly for the way to the office, rent housing and food at unacceptable prices.
Secondly, it is easier to hire a person, and it is easier to leave him. In the simplest case, one letter is enough.
Thirdly, there are less psychological problems with “joining the team”. If you get a brilliant, but a bit haphazard developer, he doesn’t have to allocate a separate office and a team of nurses - you can simply work with him in the virtual office.
Fourth, you can hire people all over the world without inviting them, and not paying for the move to your country. If you can’t do without an invitation, at least for the first time you can work remotely.

When working remotely, the boundaries between work and personal time are somewhat blurred. When I worked remotely, I did not divide time into work and personal ones. As soon as I had an interesting thought, I went to the computer and implemented it immediately. When I had to regularly go to the office, I missed a lot of good ideas simply because they came to my head not during working hours, and I safely forgot about them.
')
Finally, different people have performance peaks, generally speaking, occur at different times. Some are able to work only in the morning, while others only by noon acquire meaningful facial expression.

Of the minuses, except what can be called possible problems of control over the employee. But everything is easily solved with the help of time accounting systems, although I do not consider them a good solution. In the end, paying an engineer for the time spent or the number of lines of code is a bit strange. With this approach, projects will stretch for months. It is much more correct to control not the process, but the result - for example, regularly requesting intermediate versions from workers and negotiating terms in advance. At the same time, how exactly will he manage his time - to stretch work for the whole day or to fit in at three o'clock is his own business. Discussions can also be carried out using video conferencing. If the workflow is well formalized (it’s not good at all that means good), it’s quite enough to hold them every few days or even less often.

Also, the reason for this is cited as a decrease in motivation among workers in the absence of continuous supervision by the authorities. But on the other hand, do you need such an employee, if he works only from a stick?

And remote work is much more profitable for an employee.

First of all, the ability to manage their time in a very wide range. It is not necessary to ask permission every time to go to the doctor, meet the mother at the airport or pick up the children from school.

Also, there is no need to spend time and finances on the road - in St. Petersburg I spent an hour on it, and I lived in three stations from our office. This is especially important, because if financial expenses can be compensated, the time has not yet been recovered. Think in mind how much time you regularly spend on the road in a month. I am sure you could find a better use for it. It is possible, in other matters, to rent an apartment near the office, but this is not always possible for several reasons, especially if you already have an apartment in a good area, or you live in a green suburb in general. Just imagine the whole absurdity - to pay with your money and time only for the right to be in the office!

In fact, very few people value their time. Those few who value him face serious difficulties. My colleague, for example, to spend more time with his family, worked in a company where they paid a third less than he could earn. The main reason for holding it was a free schedule.

Finally, not all offices are comfortable for work, especially if they are located in a hastily built business center or, as is customary in Russia, in a former factory. In the summer they are too hot, in the winter it is cold, outside noises and the eternally angry old guard at the entrance. He remembered you in person a few years ago, but if you forgot your pass, it is useless to beg him. Many large companies are widely distributed huge offices for hundreds of people and without any hints of peregodki. What is your personal space, what are you talking about? At the beginning of the essay, the photograph shows the Facebook office, which resembles a hangar or an assembly hall.

For employees, I do not see any particular disadvantages.

And in fact

Despite the obvious mutual benefits - as our overseas colleagues say: win-win - the real situation turns out to be quite different. Most employers consider remote work and a free schedule as some special favors to a valuable employee or privileges that still need to be earned. In general, according to my observations, the attitude of employers to remote work is somewhat similar to the statements of a conservative public about people with a different sexual orientation or gender identity. The expression: “I am quite normal in remote work - once our employee moved, but we continued to work with him remotely” - remind me the phrase: “I am quite normal with gays, I even have several gay friends.” That is, it seems quite decently, but at the same time it is clearly visible that in other circumstances a person would prefer not to deal with the specified categories.

Apparently, the main reasons for employers in remote work are psychological reasons. And first of all - the desire to control the process of work itself and the time of the employee. Probably, many bosses find it easier to see the person who is writing the code hunched over the computer than to imagine him standing on the Neva embankment surrounded by gulls. And they can be understood - in the first case, the process of work itself is visible, and the superiors create a false impression that they control their employee. But in reality, they only control his time, and not the work process at all.

It is very difficult to program for eight hours, albeit with a lunch break, unless, of course, you are encoding according to a previously written pseudo-code. Moreover, the load is not always evenly distributed: sometimes there is little work, but you still need to come to the office. If the boss does not understand this, then the workers are forced to imitate the hectic activity, while they themselves communicate in social networks, play games or go about their business. If the company management understands everything, it still doesn’t get much better: you will be offered regular tea breaks, your own kitchen or compensation for meals in the dining room, easy chairs with a massage, a relaxation room with a Playstation 3, and other fashionable things designed to defuse the worker. the atmosphere. In general, a lot of things, except the right to dispose of their time. Surprisingly, employers are willing to pay much more for the opportunity to look over your shoulder, what are you doing right now.

Personally, I do not need lunch in the factory canteen, cookies and all sorts of group games. And I think I feel much better in the green park, and not under the sound of the keys of my colleagues. Of course, live communication cannot be replaced by anything, but several meetings a week are more than enough to satisfy all the needs for it.

And in general, when the employer does not see the process itself, its assessment turns out to be more honest. When he looks at the employee in the office, he assesses the process as well as the result. How often the employee goes for a smoke break, how much time he spends on conversations, whether he performs the task ahead of time or stretches for the entire term. In the first case, it can still be loaded with work. If one employee did the work in an hour, and the rest of the time played games, and the other worked diligently all day, doing the same amount of work, the first person would most likely get a reprimand.

A note about freelancing

The reader will certainly say that this type of work already exists, and it is called freelancing. But freelancing is very different from distant work primarily because of its irregularity and the absence of any kind of official registration. It would seem that in freelancing you can work only one hour a day and get a modest payment for it, which you can live in southeast Asia, and spend other time on yourself, but in reality your free twenty-three hours will go to search for new orders. And so every day. In order to freelance and be confident in your tomorrow, you need to have a special mindset, which not everyone has. Freelancing as a lifestyle is good when you have regular passive income, as a supplement to your main job or if you have a customer base with regular large orders for long periods. The latter, in principle, is not much different from the usual remote work.

In conclusion, I would very much like to hear the views of employers and the workers themselves about remote work and a free schedule.