When does remote work work?

For over two years, I worked remotely as a consultant in Minnesota while living in Montreal. I visited Rochester, Minnesota for a few days each month, but spent more typical workdays in Montreal. Over time, I got to know the regular flight attendants on DL flight 5479 from YUL to MSP, joined a food co-op in a place I didn’t even live in (shout-out to the A+ People’s Food Co-op), and realized that I could not, under any circumstances, work from home full-time. It drove me bonkers.

My husband, Ross, first noticed that after a day of working from home, I had what he referred to as “flat eyebrows” — eyebrows that had not been sufficiently exercised by having to interact with other humans in real life. Hours of video calls didn’t make a difference. Because I understood that the environment can have a huge effect on people’s experience (no duh) and that I needed a work environment where I could interact with other people throughout the day, I joined a coworking space (the then-unlimited-coffee-and-fruit-water-and-beer WeWork Place Ville Marie). The days of flat eyebrows were over. I would go into the office, chat with my “dedicated desk" neighbours, and get to work. The remote work experience became normalized, and I could remain productive without feeling lonely.

Another decision that made the remote work arrangement efficient is that I also matched the kind of work I did to my setting: I’d do solo, focused work in Montreal (planning experiments, data analysis, writing) and spend my time in Rochester meeting with coworkers and having as much face-to-face interaction as possible. 

I’m happy I figured out ways to make remote work positive and productive. But under other job or life circumstances, working remotely can be impossible or turn into a nightmare. So, what’s the deal with remote work, and what can make or break the experience for a given individual?

Image source. I’ll admit it, this is a handsome home office. A few tweaks — an ergonomic chair, an adjustable-height work surface, a screen + mouse + keyboard, a door, and some real-life coworkers — could make it even better.

Words, words, words

I’ll use the term “remote work” throughout to mean work 1) done by someone who is employed full-time, part-time, or on contract by a company/organization, 2) done away from the company's or organization’s workplace, and 3) which relies on technology to allow the worker to interact with coworkers and coordinate tasks.

If you dig into research on this topic, you will see a loooot of other terms used, too: telecommuting, telework, virtual work, distributed work, flexible work arrangements, distance work, etc. Each has a slightly different definition. When a variety of fields and perspectives descend on a topic, the terms and distinctions multiply.

How often do people work remotely? And who are they?

The growth of the information economy in countries like the USA, and the increasing affordability of personal computers have made it possible for information workers to work away from the office over the past few decades. 

The American Time Use Survey, collected annually since 2003, is a great source for seeing recent trends develop. In 2003, 19% of employed American workers did some or all of their work at home on days when they worked. By 2009, that number rose to 24%, and it remained there in 2018, the latest year that data are available.

There are differences between those who do and don’t work remotely. Unsurprisingly, most of those working remotely are knowledge workers. In 2018, around a third of workers in management, business, finance, and professional fields worked at home at least part of the time, while the numbers were low (and frankly hard to interpret) for those in construction, transportation, and production fields. Along similar lines, people with an advanced degree are much more likely to work remotely. For workers 25 or older, 42% of those with an advanced degree worked at home at least some time on days worked, while less than 13% of those with a high school diploma did the same.

Based on these stats, we can see that working remotely is far from universal: those who work remotely tend to have high education attainment and work in well-paying, professional jobs that offer some degree of flexibility.

Motivations for working remotely

For those who have the ability to do so, there are two main motives for choosing to work remotely: increased productivity and personal life needs.

People choose to work remotely to avoid the distractions, interaction with coworkers, and office politics that are part of office life and to get stuff done. Working remotely is associated with increased job performance, as measured by objective metrics and manager ratings. But, as we’ll see later, there can be unintended consequences of working remotely if your work requires coordination with others or if you do it too often. In general, choosing to work remotely is a great option for days when you have to do solo, focused work that could be sabotaged by interruptions from coworkers or other office distractions.

Life outside of work—family, health issues, and personal interests—all require time and attention. Another reason people choose to work remotely is to better manage their personal life. For one, working remotely is associated with lower stress at work and less work exhaustion, factors that can obviously impact personal life and energy. 

There is also evidence that working remotely more frequently can decrease the amount of conflict from work to family, especially for those who work remotely a lot (more than half of the work week). 

At the same time, conflict going the other way—from family to work—might stay stable or even increase with increased time working remotely. Why is that? Well, one reason is that those working remotely can get shouldered with more home and family responsibilities. If there’s a delivery coming, something needs to be fixed, a neighbor has an emergency, who you gonna call? Work-from-homers.

Another reason that conflict between family and work doesn’t ease up when working remotely is because boundaries between personal life and work can degrade. There’s no spatial separation between your home and your workplace (unless you have the space and smarts to set up a separate home office) and the temporal separation between time at work and time at home blurs. You wouldn’t do a load of laundry in the middle of your day at an office, but you might at home. People who work remotely also tend to work longer hours, perhaps because doing a bit of non-work in the middle of the day encourages people to feel the need to make up for that time by doing extra work after regular hours. Continually mixing home and work activities can cause interference between a person's “home” role and “work” role.

So, what can remote workers do to lessen the amount of personal-life vs. work-life conflict? The most high-performing remote workers set up clear physical and temporal boundaries between home and work. So if you’re a remote worker, you could set up a home office with a door if you have the space. Or, at least designate a work area that you don’t use the rest of the time you are home. Set up time boundaries between when you work and when you’re “at home". And communicate the boundaries with anyone you live with: no interruptions when you’re working.

Another option is to use a workspace outside of your home for remote work. This was a great solution for me, as the spatial and temporal boundaries between home and work were preserved. But I recognize this is not realistic in many cases. The vast majority (80%) of remote workers still choose to work at home. Perhaps because remote workers tend to live further away from their workplaces, they want to cut down their commute to zero on days when they are not going to an employer’s workplace. Or perhaps there’s a yet-unfilled need for shared workspaces outside of city centers.

Can there be too much of a good thing?

There is an interesting relationship between how much someone works remotely and positive work outcomes like job satisfaction and job performance.

When time spent working remotely is low, additional remote work is linked to increased job satisfaction. But there are diminishing returns. At some point, additional time spent working remotely doesn’t result in any additional benefits. 

This is illustrated nicely by findings from one study of an unnamed “high-tech" company, in which 321 professional-level workers (developers, engineers, systems analysts, marketers, accountants, etc.) who worked remotely at least part of the time were asked about traits of their work, how much they worked remotely, and how satisfied they were with their jobs. 

On average, workers spent nearly a quarter (23%) of their workweek working remotely. At low levels of remote work, increased time working remotely was related to increased job satisfaction. Woo! But after a threshold, 15.1 hours for this group, additional time spent working remotely didn’t predict higher job satisfaction.

Image source, annotations added.

Other studies (e.g., here and here) similarly find that job satisfaction is highest for those who work remotely a moderate amount, as compared to those who work remotely only a little bit or a lot.

Why is that? One reason might be because of worsened relationships with coworkers and social isolation. 

More time working remotely is associated with worse quality relationships with coworkers. When you’re not physically in the same space, you miss out on casual, unplanned interactions you might have while getting a coffee or eating lunch. And you can’t fully replicate the kind of work interactions you’d have in person using existing technology, as we’ll talk about below.

Increased time away from the office and worsened coworker relationships can then take a toll on job performance. For example, one  study found that people who spent more time working remotely had worse job performance as a result of professional isolation from their coworkers.

This unfortunate outcome of remote work doesn’t seem to be changing. A recent survey of remote workers found that difficulties with coworker relationships (collaboration and communication) and loneliness continue to be the most frequent problems for remote workers.

But, as with anything, there are trade-offs. Increased time working remotely is associated with better quality relationships with managers (though the work experiences of people with a remote manager tend to be less positive) and lower rates of work-to-family conflict.

You can’t have it all, and individual workers likely strike their own balance between spending more time at the office while building stronger relationships with coworkers, versus having more control of distractions and managing their personal life at home. The same survey of remote workers mentioned earlier found that those who people who spent the majority of their time working remotely were most happy with their choice. So the benefits clearly outweighed the costs for this group.

If you’re a remote worker, recognize that more time away from the office might deteriorate the quality of your relationships with coworkers. If you feel like these relationships are suffering, more time spent on-site might be worth it. 

Loneliness is a huge societal problem that can affect workers of all types. A large survey of full-time employees in the USA found that the most lonely workers tend to be those whose work is solitary by nature: lawyers, engineers, and scientists. Those who interact a lot with their coworkers—social workers, marketers, and salespeople—tend to be the least lonely. But the good news is that personal relationships outside of work can make a big difference. The more relationships people had outside of their work life, the less lonely they tended to be. 

Task interdependence and collaboration

Task interdependence is a fancy name for how much your work relies on other people you work with. If you need to coordinate and interact with other people a lot to do your work, then your work is highly interdependent. 

It’s interesting that the loneliest professions mentioned above — lawyers, engineers, and scientists — are also ones likely to be lowest in interdependence. I haven’t been a lawyer or an engineer, but I can tell you that much of a scientist’s work (reading, thinking, analyzing data, writing) can go on for hours and hours without requiring input from others. Yes, there are times when you need to regroup and make a decision as a project team, but then everyone goes back to completing their individual tasks.

Remember that relationship between the amount of remote work and job satisfaction? The one that levels off at around 15 hours per week?

Well, it turns out task interdependence can change that relationship.

For people with high-interdependence jobs, remote work isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At the same rate of working remotely, people with high-interdependence jobs tend to be less satisfied than people with low-interdependence jobs, and the difference between these groups is especially apparent after the 15 hour per week “turning point”. When your work relies on others, trying to coordinate everything over email, Slack, shared documents, project management tools, and who-knows-what-else can bring challenges.

Image source. Annotations added.

For people with low-interdependence jobs, remote work works just fine. In fact, better than fine. Another study found that workers with low-interdependence jobs tend to have better job performance the more they work remotely. 

Image source. Annotations added.

The same is true of workers who have high-complexity jobs — ones that require long, uninterrupted stretches of cognitively demanding work. These kinds of cognitive tasks are really easily disrupted by noise and office distractions. The more workers with high-complexity jobs work remotely, the better they perform.

Image source. Annotations added.

If your job requires cognitively demanding, focused solo work, get yourself out of the office to do this work. You’ll likely be more satisfied and perform better. BUT. ALSO. Nurture your work and non-work relationships. Come into the office just to hang out with coworkers. Find personal activities that make you get out and socialize when you’re not working. If you’re lucky enough to live in New York, apply to join Not Boring club (no worries, this isn’t sponsored content, I would join if I could!). Loneliness is a real problem. And if you work remotely most or all of the time, you’ll need to substitute work socializing with other forms of socializing. 

Even if your work is not interdependent, you’ll likely need to communicate and coordinate with team members to get larger projects or initiatives done. Face-to-face interactions can improve how remote teams function, especially if the face-to-face interaction happens at the start of a project. This is because face-to-face interactions can build trust, and the degree of trust predicts the likelihood that team members will share knowledge with each other later on. 

In addition, the start of a large project requires a lot of decision making that can be difficult without real-life interaction. It can be annoying to type out long emails instead of standing around a whiteboard laying out alternatives and deciding on what to do. In a sense, the start of a project is a time when every team member becomes “task interdependent”: each person’s work affects every other person. 

The good news is that real-life interaction at the start of a project can make a difference. An older study found that remote teams who met face-to-face at the start of a project were more trusting and performed almost as well as teams who worked together face-to-face the whole time (but remote teams who never met face-to-face performed poorly). 

What happens when some people work remotely all or nearly all of the time and some people work in the office all or nearly all of the time?

This is not ideal. 

Workers at an organization’s main office tend to feel more included than those who work remotely. Bad news for remote workers. Likewise, those remote workers who would not recommend remote work to others are ones who work remotely all or nearly all of the time, and who still have some coworkers in an office (graphs below). 

Remote work can impact what happens in the office, too. Coworkers who work on-site tend to be less satisfied the higher the rate of remote workers in a company. The office can become a wasteland. The more frequently people work remotely, the less of a draw it is. Remote work can become "contagious" - why bother coming in if your coworkers are not around? 

If a company or organization is fully remote, there’s no choice but to develop new ways of communicating and interacting with each other. But as long as some people work in the office, and some are remote, the dynamics will likely be weird.

Do you work in a partially-remote company or organization? You could schedule a weekday or two for everyone to be in the office. That way coworkers could gain from shared time together, while reaping the benefits of remote work on other days. If people live too far away, monthly or quarterly work sessions could help give people face-to-face time to build trust and make larger plans and decisions.

Ok, that’s it for now. But there’s so much more to cover on remote work: why do companies choose to give it a go? Why do some companies stop allowing it? What’s the link between remote work and climate change? What about extreme events (earthquakes, pandemics)? Can remote work change who is able to work? What happens to people’s health behaviors (e.g., eating, exercise) when they start working remotely? 

If you’re interested in any of these topics, let me know! I’d love to return to remote work from a different angle in the future.