Those of you who have been around for a while know that Irreal strongly supports remote work. It’s obviously good for those employees who want it and Irreal has always claimed it’s good for employers too. Sadly, a combination of following the herd and a tendency toward being control freaks has prevented many companies from embracing remote first policies.
The management of these companies always use the same argument: having employees on-site increases synergy and improves productivity. These claims have always been based on “feelings” and claims of obviousness without any actual research to validate them.
Now The Hill is reporting on some comprehensive research that shows these beliefs to be baseless. Businesses that offer their employees flexibility and have a strong remote first policy actually do better on all the metrics that matter to an enterprise. They’re more productive, have better productivity growth, better retention, and—perhaps most fatally for the control freaks—have improved revenue growth over companies with an on-site mandate.
Indeed, one study found that fully flexible companies grew revenues 1.7 times faster than “mandate driven” companies in the years 2019–2024. That’s a hard statistic for the control freaks to shrug away with synergy arguments.
The best summary of the article is its last paragraph, which is worth quoting in full:
Executives face a choice. They can pursue badge-driven control that fails to raise performance and risks losing their best people, or they can treat flexibility as a strategy, design for trust and clarity, and measure what matters. The organizations that choose the latter are building stronger teams and better businesses. The smart move now is not to roll back flexibility — it is to raise the standard for how you lead.
Realistically, we shouldn’t expect much change. The control freaks will continue to talk about water fountains and insist that workers will slack off if they’re not being monitored—preferably in person—constantly. Perhaps evolutionary forces will solve these problems for us. On the other hand, the control freaks are always with us.