Many companies prioritize face-to-face work. The data does not always prove them right

More and more companies, especially Big Tech, are prioritizing face-to-face work over remote work that seemed to have arrived to forever transform the work environment. However, there are several reasons why companies could be backing down.

Interns and Junior profiles do not learn the same. One of the arguments for the change in trend towards face-to-face work has more to do with the future than with the present of the templates. A study conducted with software engineers with remote and face-to-face positions with junior profiles under their charge, concludes that teleworking is positive for those senior profiles who do not need supervision, but slows down the learning of the most inexperienced in the absence of an instructor figure to whom to consult any doubt.

The counterpoint is precisely the youngest, represented by Generation Z, who show a greater interest in remote work. 77% of Gen Z youth surveyed a Deloitte study He says that he would quit his job if his company forced him to go to the office full time. 75% of millennials surveyed would do the same.

Close to the next table. One of the “collateral damage” of teleworking is the increase in scheduled meetings. That is another of the arguments used by some companies and employees to position themselves on the side of face-to-face work. Remote work requires more planning since meetings must be established with a certain amount of time, it is not as simple as getting up and going to consult the next table.

However, the hybrid work proposal that many companies are proposing does not seem to be the most efficient, as demonstrated by a study on flexibility at work It is concluded that 100% remote and 100% face-to-face workers face fewer problems doing their jobs. The reason is that if all employees are assigned a freely selectable quota of remote time, those who come into the office one day are more likely to find part of their team remote.

More hours per week worked. The years in which teleworking has spread as a work model have served as a basis for studying the system, and as a result it has been known that with remote work employees save six hours of commuting per week, saving in fuel and CO2 emissions that this implies.

In a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report The data suggests that remote workers were not using the time saved by not having to travel, recording a 3.5-hour drop in hours worked. In our country the conclusions are different and, although the Bank of Spain recognizes a decrease in the number of hours worked per week from 37 to 31.8 hours on average, it attributes it to other structural factors such as partial working hours or demographic ageing.

Drop in remote productivity. Despite the fact that Elon Musk does not see productivity as the big problem with teleworking, the truth is that large companies have begun to take measures limiting remote work. According to a study carried out jointly by several North American universitiesworkers are up to 9% more productive remotely.

These data are supported by the CoSo Cloud studioswhich point to the fact that 77% of remote workers feel that they are more productive at home and 75% of employees say they prefer to work remotely because there are fewer distractions in their environment, being able to concentrate better on their work.

In Xataka | Google has escalated its war against teleworking: if you are remote, you will have a worse evaluation

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