surprisingly strong productivity. “A shift toward remote hiring liberates us to get a
whole new level of talent, and for sure will lead to a greater diversity in hiring,” says
David McCormick, Bridgewater’s chief executive. KPMG, a consultancy, says nearly
three-quarters of chief executives agree.
Even so, remote working can be a double-edged sword. Gary Hamel of the London
Business School says it can magnify management problems such as tyrannical bosses,
excessive bureaucracy and resistance to new ideas. Christian Ulbrich, CEO of JLL, a
property-management giant, thinks employees who have a decent home-office
arrangement, or who have care-giving responsibilities, will not want to come back to
headquarters.
That could be problematic. Many bosses are less effective at communicating
electronically than in person, and prolonged separation is reinforcing departmental
silos and entrenching elite power. Younger employees already miss socialising at work.
Older ones will tire of staring at screens in cramped apartments—especially if Zoom
calls invade their evenings and weekends. Even a senior executive at a tech giant that
makes remote-collaboration software longs for the in-person “ideation” sessions and
water-cooler gossip of yesteryear.
So bosses should prepare themselves, and their companies, for a hybrid future with a
mix of remote working, smaller headquarters and co-working hubs in satellite locations.
They will have to adapt their management styles and pay closer attention to morale and
well-being. In KPMG’s survey of bosses, “talent risk” has shot up from number 12 on its
list of risks to long-term growth before the pandemic struck to number one now. That
means bosses who want their firms to emerge stronger from the crisis must be ready to
compete harder for talent in a world turned upside down.
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