Recruiters will share their thoughts on why they insist on working in an office — and you will get some advice on how to convince them otherwise.

Esther Schindler is the author of the free edition of the Survival Guide for employees working remotely.


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People who appreciate the benefits of remote work often do not understand why some organization would want to ban such practices. In the view of successful remote workers, anyone who resists this form of work lacks a fundamental understanding of how knowledge workers can work most effectively.
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However, the opposite position also deserves consideration. Many enterprises employ only such personnel who are able to work at the location of the enterprise and this cannot be explained only by the fact that “they are mistaken”. I have asked dozens of recruiters to explain (mostly anonymously) why their companies have such a policy and what can be done to change it.

You may object to some of these opinions, especially if your experience is different - but it is more important to pay attention to them, because if you want to work remotely, you need to understand the perception of another participant. You cannot stand up to the “By no means!” Relationship without considering the potentially sincere - but often unspeakable - problems of enterprise management.

Communicate better personally

Of course, the most common opinion is that mutual understanding and companionship is best formed through personal contact. Staff recruiters are convinced that working relationships between employees are strengthened if employees have lunch together, informally speak on various topics or participate in some kind of activities aimed at forming a team. “I don’t think that specialists working remotely are somewhat different from my colleagues here,” explains one geek. “But a good relationship is simply not available if I communicate with these colleagues only through video conferencing or messaging several times a week.”

And here is not only the general pastime. “In the eyes of many HR managers, co-location promotes spontaneous and informal interaction, getting answers to questions and solving problems,” says David Silver, owner of the employment agency The Sterling Group. “To a client,” Silver says, “this gives a natural exchange of views in real time.”

And this is not just a statement from the transcendental heights of control. Many experts feel that work in the office reduces to the limit the barriers to communication. “While tools like Slack and e-mail allow you to do work, if your team works remotely, nothing compares to the ability to turn around in a chair and quickly engage a couple of other developers (or the whole team, if needed) into the discussion,” says one programmer sticking to pair programming. Responsiveness: “I can take 30 steps or less and talk about problems with any employee from the product development or promotion teams,” he adds.

“And even if everything suits with text chat rooms and Google Hangouts, it’s still quite difficult to interact at any desired time,” says the developer by the name, say, Phil. “I can’t just go to the board, draw something quickly and make the remote controllers easily see it.”

New ideas are born in the kitchen

The problem of establishing interaction not only in the formation of a team during the on-site paintball game. There is a strong feeling that the lack of social interaction reduces creativity and innovative thinking.

Marissa Meyer, best known as Yahoo's CEO in 2013, banned video chats in the company, commenting on it like this : “Some of the best decisions and ideas come from discussions in the corridors and cafeterias, from meeting new people and from random discussions in small or large groups. Best Buy also closed its flexible work schedule at about the same time.

Ms. Meyer is not the only manager who has such an opinion, just as the computer technician quoted above is not the only such technical specialist. Almost everyone can share a story about the conversation “right in the corridor”, which led to some more appropriate solution to the problem: a chance meeting with an old teammate, after which he helped your project; an unexpected conversation in which a friend mentioned his technological problem, and you, it turns out, knew a person who was able to solve it; discussion in the smoking room, which led to 10 new feature improvements.

A culture that depends on direct unplanned discussions does not take into account the remotes, which affects their role in the work. “When I worked in the office for ten years, then 90% of the understanding and production returns came from informal conversations in the corridors, during lunch, and from what I heard along the way,” says Steve, who is now a remote employee. Now, he says, most contacts are planned (email, texts, agreed meetings), without giving the possibility of spontaneous communication. “As a result, opportunities for my personal career become very limited and small,” he says. "I became the guy who does something one definite, and not a member of the team who is aware of everything and can make a career leap on the situation."

The ability to communicate like “Listen, can you look at this ...?” Is in itself extremely valuable. However, those who prefer remote work point to the other side of this story: “interactions” are, in fact, interruptions in work that reduce creative output and productivity. For example, one telecommunications software specialist tells about the office: “Distraction was unbearable. Phones ring; people passing by are always required to interrupt me with a question about something (work-related or not); a lot of phone calls about projects that have no relation to me; as a result, the roof just goes. ”

But most companies focus on what is on the surface and clearly visible - how many unplanned favorable events are the result of informal communication - and not on productivity, determined by the ability to focus fully on the subject of work at home. And that brings us to the next point.

It’s harder to manage remote controllers

In any context, management is a matter of trust to other people - the manager knows that the employees really work and do the work. The personnel officers never told me directly: "I do not trust my people" or "We monitor whether employees are at their workplaces." Instead, they talked about accountability, training and accessibility.

In addition - the fact that, like a drop of tar, spoils a barrel of honey, one bad remotes can destroy all the work. “Our management wants to see their employees in the office in order to better manage them,” says my friend, a technician I call John. “We didn’t work well with some remote controllers, after which all remote employment became bad.” The company is now working with a new remote quality assurance team, and also has two remote developers - they are doing well with all of them. However, says John, our leadership is gradually crowding out. “Some managers often tear employees away from their day-to-day activities to 'put out the fire', and this is easier for them when someone is just a few meters away."

Managers emphasize the need to supervise the work of new team members - this process is more difficult to implement, if the beginner does not know when it is time to ask for help. A typical, inexperienced technician doesn’t have much to do with his elders, so that, without having direct contact, they can determine when and how this employee is in a difficult position. Susan, an information security specialist, says: “This means that mentoring and support can act with a long delay, making it difficult to train and learn new ideas, and that the interaction and accumulation of experience of such new employees is slower, negatively affecting their moral state and performance ".

“For interns and new employees, it’s much preferable that someone be with them in the process,” adds Phil. “Of course, you can share the screen, but it's not at all the same.”

Additional logistical efforts do not pay off

The change in business policy associated with the introduction of remote work means that the company will have to rethink some of its production processes, and the gains from this are not obvious. The company does not know how to cope with such changes, and if risk can be avoided, then the actions will be appropriate.

Organizations built on office staff know how to support such employees. The presence of remote personnel increases overhead costs, since now it is necessary to interact both with employees in the office and with remote workers in many areas: from fixing printing problems to ensuring the correct operation of the VPN and setting new security procedures.

Cloud and SaaS applications have facilitated the interaction in some of these areas, there are more opportunities for online communication. However, some experts say, newsgroups do not provide an adequate level of communication. For example, it is difficult to hear a person at the other end of the line, even with high-quality audio and video communications, not to mention numerous technical failures.

Everyone makes this way.

Conservatism often wins. When it comes to remote work, the benefits are unclear, while the risks and costs are obvious. Office work is considered a “default” job. While the company can hire those people whom it wants, at a price that it can afford, why change something?

Or, as one of the startup team members says: “I don’t have much confidence in my hiring experience, and the owners of the company are even more conservative. Therefore, I make a more reliable choice by hiring candidates who want to work in the office. I can see when they come, I can give them a task and quickly replace them with another one, and I feel much better when they get into a difficult situation. ”

The remote work of employees can be successfully implemented when the company initially has “mostly remotely working personnel” and it is difficult to organize such work if the company is already working with a regular hiring system. “Hiring remotely working employees without an organizational study of their support leads to a catastrophe,” says the founder of one startup. "Most companies have other priorities than to deal with such issues, and they, frankly, do not need to search outside the 30-mile radius to find qualified candidates."

And while many experts who want to work remotely, complain about organizations that do not pay attention to great candidates because of their “without remote” policies, this rarely worries the personnel of these organizations themselves. They still have a lot of people to use. If the company does not find the required specialists within six months, recruiter Silver says, he can raise the topic of the possibility of accepting a remote employee once again. “It sometimes limited the number of good candidates, and sometimes not,” explains Silver.

What if you still want to work remotely?

Perhaps you are seeking to get a job in a particular company, despite its unwillingness to support remote workers. Or, perhaps, you consider yourself the most suitable specialist for the proposed job, despite the fact that the personnel officer clearly said: “We consider candidates only for office work”.

Under appropriate circumstances, it is possible to change the position of the employer. Below are some recommendations on negotiation behavior.

Provide arguments showing savings for the company. A company in an expensive city for living can afford to hire a remote lead specialist for a salary operating in this city for a novice employee. Susan, an information security specialist, claimed to work in an office and received offers of remote work several times. “My most winning moment was the following: I live in the Midwest and would like to receive X dollars; if I move to San Francisco or New York or something like that, the cost of living will fly like a rocket for me, and I will need $ 2.5X. It's true. My current huge house with a plot of more than 1 hectare on a farm costs less than a condominium apartment with two bathrooms in San Francisco. ”

As an alternative, says Susan, they offer contract work, and not on company staff. “The compensation was adjusted accordingly (for example, this way I was able to buy my own insurance) and their personnel departments were less nervous at that, however, for reasons that I didn’t fully understand.”

Show that you have already successfully worked remotely. Silver's clients are more likely to hire someone who can demonstrate their ability to be responsible and confirm the reputation of successful remote work in the past.

One element of this argument may be a proposal to visit the office regularly - a practice that is followed by the most successful remote workers (for communication reasons), so this does not seem difficult. You can consider, for example, being in the office two days out of five a week. Or, if the place of work is far away, suggest that you spend one week in the office every two months. “Being an integral part of the culture adopted in the company is extremely important,” says Joe Perry, general director of JZP Consulting (a recruitment agency for technology start-ups). “The only way to achieve this is to familiarize yourself with the company's culture and embed it in.”

Be a star in your professional field. “If you are really talented, and the vacancy has existed for a long time, then companies tend to agree,” says Perry. "But not at once".

“Negotiate if you feel prepared enough for possible remote work,” Perry continues. “Initially, perhaps you should agree to work in an office. However, after a while, when your confidence grows, and your efficiency will be confirmed by your activity, try it! Take an interest in this opportunity. Everything can always try to negotiate. "

It worked for Ben, who got a remote job at a startup in Dallas, because he had a strong position in the negotiations. “My friend became technical director and was very keen to involve me in work, so I set 80% of my work remotely as a condition of my employment,” he says.

It was the same with me, the author of this article. “The company would like to hire an employee to work in the office,” said the personnel officer. I replied: “I’m sure that when the hiring manager gets acquainted with my portfolio of developments - for which 20 years of experience working remotely - she will want to talk to me.” What am I actually losing? I also have the right to say what I want. After six weeks, I started working at the company.

Start working in the office and go gradually to remote work. Give managers the opportunity to make sure that they can trust you when you are not in their sight, when you are far from the office.

For example, Josh was hired as a freelancer in a company that did not practice remote work. After 18 months, he decided that he had had enough, and was about to quit: the two-hour trip to work and back did not contribute to enthusiasm. The company was interested in continuing to cooperate with him and agreed to his working condition two days a week remotely. “By that time they already trusted me, they knew that I could give out, so they agreed willingly,” he said. “It would never have passed if I requested a remote job on the very first day.”

But, focusing on the remoteness, ask yourself immediately if you are ready for the increased attention to it from the company. Do you really want to work in a company that does not trust you?

“Companies that do not allow remote employees to occupy management positions usually have some basic communication or trust problems,” says Susan. "I prefer to stay away from them so as not to burn myself."

While these tips may be helpful, do not expect them to work in any situation. For some organizations, the principle “employee must be in the office” is simply embedded in their culture. You can be the creator of the Internet , but no Google will make it easier for you to work remotely.