There are 3 key reasons why the work remotely drops you, according to the best management experts

Cappelli insists that he and Nehmeh, college teachers and management specialists with human resources expertise, were clear about what they would find when they started looking for their new book. Cappelli is a long -standing professor of management at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, and Nehmeh is auxiliary professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna for management and communication. “We are both working away,” said Cappelli, but he also stressed that he had accumulated four decades of experience.

“I don’t need to be in the office … but I can also see how worse the place is, because people like me are not in the office, and because we are not, the junior are not there either, and so nobody is there, right?”

Cappelli said he was obvious to him how worse he is for his own organization. “Very good for me!” He said, “But bad for everyone.”

Fears for the future

What he and Nehmeh found, they said Fortuneis that remote work has only become “increasingly problematic over time”. It is understandable that it was sticky, because he managed remarkably during the pandemic. “We didn’t expect anything (out of there), and it was extremely better than that,” he added. Their book can be read as a tacit approval behind the daring actions of certain CEOs such as Andy Jassy of Amazon, who forced five days to the office for all employees, but these are really management principles and, added Cappelli, his fears about the future of the workplace: that the workers will conclude that they will no longer need to learn from each other.

Nehmeh said that you can see the dangers of hybrid work poorly managed in the behavior of the Z generation, which she called “very transactional … I introduce myself, I do my work, I go out. I don’t want to be part of anything else ”. Not even the social aspect, the working environment, the organization or the culture, she added.

Cappelli accepted, saying that what he saw as many students accustomed to being hybrid and distant was magnificent, especially shortly after the pandemic. “They just came to class,” he said, “and they were surprised that they were supposed to do it.”

When they presented themselves, they were not prepared and did not think they were supposed to contribute beyond the transformation of the assignments. His solution: he failed a lot of people, and that made the message across.

Nehmeh is suitable that something has disappeared in the era of remote work, noting that some companies offer label courses at generation Z on how to act in meetings, dress for work and talk to customers. These are all things you used when you have joined an organization, she added.

However, Cappelli and Nehmeh did not blame Gen Z for their lack of preparation, or the world of work in which they emerged. Both agreed that their research has indicated a higher failure in the chain. Nehmeh said he had seen surveys on staff showing that previous problems with poor communication, lack of recognition, unclear priorities and professional exhaustion “were only amplified”. When organizations ignore the comments of the investigation in a distant environment, she added: “The gap between what leaders think they happen and what employees really experience becomes even wider. The result is the disengagement, the frustration and the feeling that the organization does not listen to. ”

Cappelli was more blunt. At least in the United States, he argued, the problems come down to a simple thing: “Management is simply stuffed.” They highlighted three main reasons why it is time to call it one night for the remote working day.

1) Culture clach

A recurring theme for Cappelli and Nehmeh was the erosion of organizational culture and community. The authors have described how, in a hybrid world, more recent employees in particular have difficulty learning by observation or establishing relationships – key aspects of professional growth which depended on physical proximity.

But it’s just the tip of the iceberg, or the top of the waterfall. They have described a cascade effect downwards on intermediate and elderly level employees, who are standing out more and more their work as work is defined to something that occurs on a screen, not in real life.

Nehmeh said that new hires suffered in this hybrid environment, because they cannot really learn by example and that they do not get the advice or support that facilitate professional growth. They both described the horror of the “ping” familiar to any distant worker.

Consider the entry-level worker who needs help, Nehmeh adds: “You have to plan a call, you must make someone, they may not answer if you don’t know you … There are so many problems there.”

2) Everything is a transaction

A less obvious result of cultural erosion, added Cappelli, is that the work at a distance leads people to think more closely at their work. The work has been resolved to key performance indicators, or KPI, blurring the line between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, so to speak. He said it had started during the pandemic, when the supervisors were invited to hold responsible people, and with all those who work remotely, the simplest solution was to underline the KPIs.

Cappelli has spoke of a world of strict KPIs and constant pings, but the problem is that the people you pinch also have their own kpi. “If you want someone’s help, you have to make it scathing and making a ping, and you know, they receive the message, but it goes to the bottom of their battery.”

He said he organized 38 separate discussion groups, 760 people in all, and that many replied that they arrive at their “pings” after finishing their own work.

Cappelli said it may seem small, but he thinks it is a huge change that really affects performance management. The office involved social relations, while the world of pings and KPIs reduced everything to a transaction.

3) The problem of productivity meetings

None of this should decrease the breakthrough of remote work in 2020, they support, but it was a solution to an emergency, and the cracks in the system are now more visible after several years.

The authors argued that zoom meetings, which seem more effective, make workers less productive while adding to the duration of their average working day, which means that productivity per hour is really down. Cappelli said he thought there were too many of these meetings, they last too long and that too many people are coming back, turning off their cameras when they probably do other things.

Cappelli urged managers to rethink the meetings that take people too much time, full of clumsiness that seems normal now but would have seemed weird five years ago. He said that more recently, he heard of people jumping meetings and sending their AI agent to take notes in their place. “They don’t even pretend to listen!”

Cappelli said that when meetings become larger and less ended, some people even turn to meetings after the meeting to ensure that they are still on the right track. “It’s a mess. These things could be fixed, right? But they are not repaired. ”