It's about maintaining a feeling of control, it's not about collaboration. Thats just the lie they tell to RTO.
Ive worked in:
1) collaborative in office
2) uncollaborative in office
3) collaborative wfh
4) uncollaborative wfh
Personally i found 4 to be the most tortuous (because of ADHD), but 2 isnt much better.
1 and 3 i think are roughly equally good while you're there but wfh has so many ancillary benefits like not commuting that it wins overall.
After experiencing 4 and before I experienced 3 I actually desperately wanted to RTO.
I think a collaborative environment is only quite tangentially related to inhabiting the same space, though. It's more about culture, trust and shared goals.
for me, #3 is the ideal, but communication and collaboration being primarily async is the key. face to face has a place but 90% of the time it “could/should have been an email”, and just exhausts me like nothing else… (“high functioning” AuDHDer)
i don’t see how leadership has anything to do with it, at least any more than any other collaborating members of the team. all parties need “good enough” communication skills, which can be learned (to an extent). poor communication skills regardless of in office or remote will tank a project and if systemic, a company
Because in a fully remote environment it is easy to default to having transactional relationships and only when a job responsibility requires them. Just like I do with a customer service rep.
You don’t see your coworkers in the hall, overhear them talking to their kid, or talk while working. Certainly don’t by default interact with folks who work in parallel.
Not saying that in office means these things will certainly occur. But because by default these interactions don’t occur, the likelihood of them happening organically is quite low.
i have many personal connections to my remote colleagues, but i don’t see how that’s required or relevant for going beyond “transactional” work. i could be off base, but i think you mean working the minimum that is required for getting “the job done”. depending on your intended work life balance, this may or may not be a desirable outcome. obviously employers want more, but that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to it. most things in life are transactional, at least from my experience. ymmv
Ive worked in:
1) collaborative in office
2) uncollaborative in office
3) collaborative wfh
4) uncollaborative wfh
Personally i found 4 to be the most tortuous (because of ADHD), but 2 isnt much better.
1 and 3 i think are roughly equally good while you're there but wfh has so many ancillary benefits like not commuting that it wins overall.
After experiencing 4 and before I experienced 3 I actually desperately wanted to RTO.
I think a collaborative environment is only quite tangentially related to inhabiting the same space, though. It's more about culture, trust and shared goals.