Posted by Nathalia Lopes on 21 Junho, 2021
Has the office become obsolete? Has the home office made people more productive? The quarantine has made many companies and professionals discover the advantages of remote work, a practice that should become increasingly common.
It is always good, however, to see different perspectives. And that’s what Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri from INSEAD does in an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review. In addition to talking about the importance of physical office to our identity, the article warns about the risks in how we are working remotely. Some interesting points:
Offices are spaces of professional identity where, through practices, rituals and relationships, we learn what it means and what it takes to be someone professionally. They are spaces that define us and bring us closer to people who look like us. It is unclear whether (and how) online environments can replace all of this.
Offices create a well-defined boundary between home and work and allow us to be someone different or even better than we are at home. And it ends up enriching our own personal life
The offices impose routines on us and they help us to develop habits, so important for our personal and professional growth.
In home office times, many companies have reported productivity gains with remote work. But Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri warns that this may be the result not only of this work model, but of the higher level of anxiety among people. Afraid of losing their jobs, of not being noticed on the team, or of appearing uncompromising in a time of crisis, people are producing more. And we still don’t know what the impact of that is in the medium and long term.
Another risk in remote work is the use of inappropriate parameters to measure people’s productivity. The technological tools, which measure the time that each employee remains online, do not reflect all the complexity of the work and cannot replace the close work of the manager.
Without such care, remote work can stimulate two harmful behaviors for employees and businesses: 21st century presentism, in which the person remains connected (but not truly present) until later to be seen by the manager - or, at least, by the software that monitors online presence. And neotaylorism, in which even the most creative and intellectual works are reduced to an online production line, with fewer human interactions and results measured by a flow of virtual deliveries.
Along with the physical distance, all this ends up contributing to the mechanization and dehumanization of work, in the analysis of professor Gianpiero Petriglieri.
It is clear that remote work, supported by good management practices, can also bring several gains for companies and professionals. And its impacts on the quality of relationships and deliveries depend on numerous factors, such as the profile of people and the type of business.
The most important thing, however, in this analysis is, before launching a new model, to evaluate new perspectives and perhaps seek solutions that balance different forms of work - without neglecting ever the role of leadership in building healthy organizational environments, humanized and productive.