Will Remote Work Win This Winter?

The monumental battle over remote work is heating up this winter as more traditionalist business leaders are demanding that their employees come to the office much or all of the time.

Google Maps workers, asked to come back to the office full-time recently, fought back with a petition and threats of a strike, and won a reprieve of 90 days. Elon Musk demanded that all Tesla staff come to the office full-time despite insufficient spaces at Tesla offices, resulting in some Tesla leaving for other companies. Apple employees are pushing back publicly against the leadership’s demand for three days in the office, with a recent letter saying “stop treating us like school kids who need to be told when to be where and what homework to do.” GM rolled back its return-to-office requirement after a backlash from employees.

The same struggles are happening at smaller U.S. companies, as well as across the globe. Yet I argue that what these traditionalist executives are failing to realize is that the drama, stress, and tensions caused by their demands may not matter, and that mostly or fully remote work is likely to win this winter.

New COVID Wave May Fuel Remote Work

Why? Because of the new COVID surge. In the past two weeks, reported cases have increased by 53 percent, and hospitalizations have risen by 31 percent.

Perhaps you think COVID vaccines might protect us from this problem? Think again.

A Kaiser Permanente study on the original omicron strain, BA.1, found that after two doses of Pfizer, vaccine effectiveness against hospital admission was at 41 percent after 9 months. A booster shot increased effectiveness against hospitalization to 85 percent for a couple of months, but it wore off quickly to 55 percent after three or more months.

Note that this is vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization, not infection: the vaccine is much weaker against infection. And it’s for the original omicron strain BA.1, not BA.5, which is much more capable of immune escape, more transmissible, and causes more severe disease.

Let’s not forget that less than three-quarters of eligible Americans are vaccinated, and less than half of all vaccinated Americans received a booster shot.

What about the new bivalent booster, which is more effective against BA.5? As of November 24, only 14 percent of those older than 18 received the new booster. And according to a just-released Morning Consult survey, 53 percent of U.S. adults say they will “definitely” or “probably” get a COVID-19 booster in the next year, down from 58 percent who said the same in a September survey. There is a similar drop in respondents’ willingness to get an annual booster: 51 percent said they would “definitely” or “probably” get annual shots in the latest survey, down from 56 percent.

Moreover, a new study shows that after an initial COVID infection, each subsequent infection with COVID results in higher risks of hospitalization and death. In other words, after an initial infection, someone could end up with long-term or permanent damage that is exacerbated by subsequent infections. Thus, it’s important to minimize the number of times we get infected with COVID.

Unfortunately, many feel that the government is not taking the steps needed to address this situation. Despite multiple requests by the White House, Congress has declined to fund COVID vaccines and boosters, treatments such as Paxlovid, and research and production of next-generation vaccines. And with a newly divided Congress, it seems unlikely that there will be any additional funding in the new year.

In my view, the implication is clear: This winter will see a major COVID surge, which is already starting now. Moreover, we may be more vulnerable than before, given the lack of government funding for vaccines and treatments, and the vaccine escape of BA.5.

Will Opposition to Mostly or Fully Remote Work Backfire?

During both the delta surge and the omicron surge, many companies that tried to force their employees back to the office, and experienced extensive drama and stress over this coercive approach, had to roll back their plans, with all that effort wasted. And for some, the yo-yo-ing of going back and forth from home to the office to back home seriously undermined productivity, harmed engagement and morale, and impaired retention and recruitment. I believe that we’ll see the exact same yo-yo-ing at Tesla, Apple, Google, and other companies led by traditionalist executives in the next several months.

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So why do they pursue this arguably doomed effort to push their staff into the office? After all, these executives have the same information I do, and for me, the implication is clear.

The key, I argue, lies in what makes these executives feel successful and feeds their identity as leaders.

In fact, one leader wrote an op-ed piece about this topic, saying “There’s a deeply personal reason why I want to go back to the office. It’s selfish, but I don’t care. I feel like I lost a piece of my identity in the pandemic… I’m worried that I won’t truly find myself again if I have to work from home for the rest of my life.” By honestly saying the quiet part out loud, this op-ed suggests that some leaders use false claims about remote work undermining productivity, innovation, and social capital to try to cover up their true concerns. This personal, selfish orientation may speak to a mental blindspot called the egocentric bias, an orientation toward prioritizing one’s own perspective and worldview over others.

It is important to empathize with and understand where such leaders are coming from, but following their personal predisposition could hurt the bottom lines of their companies.

I argue that what works much better is a hybrid-first, team-led model: a flexible approach where individual team leads consult with their team members to decide what works best for them. Flexible models—while going against the intuitions of many leaders—best fit the desires of most employees, whose biggest non-salary demand is flexibility. They address the risks associated with COVID variants, as well as other emergencies.

And finally, they can maximize profits for companies by boosting retention, recruitment, collaboration, innovation, and productivity. One major obstacle is the personal and sometimes selfish orientation of leaders, who need to recognize the danger they could be posing to the success of their companies if they pursue their coercive efforts to get their staff to return to the office.