The danger of hybrid-remote work

I’m in Croatia with my family, and this is **not **how my office looks like:

It’s what my evenings look like.

I’m writing this email from a table in our apartment with dodgy wifi after the kids are asleep.

Here’s the thing about working remotely (in a team).

It’s easier to do when everyone’s remote.

You’ll approach collaboration differently when you can’t meet anyone in the office.

You’ll set up systems and processes.

You’ll document more.

You won’t spend time in useless sync meetings because you’ll have to find a way to keep up with what everyone else is doing.

When you go fully remote, you can’t even count on people being in the same timezone.

Or continent.

The mistake I see is companies adopting a hybrid approach, with some people going to the office (some of the time) while others are always remote.

That can easily create communication islands where the remote workers feel isolated and uninformed.

It’s not just that you miss out on the water cooler conversations.

It’s that most of what’s going on and is important goes below your radar if you’re amongst the people outside the office.

My advice if you’re in this situation:

Force a 6-month fully remote regime. Find what breaks. Fix it.

Then, reintroduce hybrid mode while keeping the practices that kept your company going forward doing fully remote.

P.S. Keep watering the office plants; it’s nice to have a work base. ;)

Best regards,

Taj