As more and more companies have in recent months switched to allow remote work — because Covid-19 lockdowns around the world forced them to it — an evil from the corporate world has “ported” to the new method, and often increased.
There is no doubt about that most corporations are not merely dinosaurian companies but also excel in their dinosaurian habits. While it is true that many of those habits have grown over years, decades even and have been optimized to their bottom line specific situations, many of these practices are not only outdated but often also unhealthy on their workers.
In last two decades we have seen a switch towards a more flexible starting/finishing hour culture, but at the same time, thanks to the propagation of the internet and its ubiquity, the number of hours many people work have vastly increased. If not because of a continued desire to avoid rush hour then due to constant, and unlimited, connectivity which allows many employers to message their teams at almost any time thinkable.
While it is true that in few countries, a limited number of companies have started looking at remedying this problem, efforts are small and absolutely not yet widespread.
More common is a corporate culture based on a lack of trust — implemented by HR departments across the world. To this belong compulsory activities such as checking in every day, logging breaks, stringent break duration, and very restricted internet connectivity often limited to only the internal “internet” and few outgoing options like email.
The switch to Work from Home (WFH) has amplified this lack of trust and many companies have started to not only port their lack of trust to the new reality — people not physically present — but their creativity will soon exceed what most have known until now.
Already now it is common to hear of workers needing to check in to a daily morning “Zoom session”, which isn’t a quick Hi to the crew but rather a headcount. Pings in work chat — and measuring response times — are another common technique and will undoubtedly soon be automated. While it may be more difficult right now to enforce stringent break times — what with the smart office worker chatting all day long, all around the house on their mobile device — as companies start to issue everyone their own laptop, with pre-installed software readied for WFH, it will not be surprising to discover software which screenshots the on-screen activity every x seconds. Like freelancers who work via platforms like oDesk are used to already.
Spyware pixels in emails to sending a notification when an email was opened are a reality already in many a commercial email, but will now be integrated even deeper in the corporate “remote” culture.
All this because most corporations have built their bottom line around a lack of trust in which authoritarian methods are required. A society which is the opposite of what is required to cultivate a healthy remote culture.
The blessing in disguise of a too stringent future approach to remote working will be that employers will just open their device during the compulsory, and constantly monitored, working hours. Escaping the 24/7 #SurveillanceCapitalism at least from their corporate overlord during the off hours.
But, at the same time, forced labor is both counter productive and damaging to a healthy remote culture. A culture of “optionality”, a culture of small and nimble teams with only few needed meetings instead focusing on getting things done in a reasonable time frame. A culture in which communication is “asynchronous” and happens when the worker has an available moment and time to focus on communication, not when the person with the question expects an answer. Working remote is a culture, a platform.
Many employees will not be offered the opportunity to select their tools and opt for a privacy respecting working environment while WFH. Many software developers will rush to implement additional tracking utilities to satisfy their sales team and land more corporate monitors clients. While we are every day subjected to constant monitoring when using social media and several other internet apps, Work from Home is the next frontier in #SurveillanceCapitalism.
All of which is the exact wrong solutions to tackle the new reality and new platform. Because that is what working remotely is: a platform, just like the physical office is. A platform which starts with and revolves around trust.
Having worked remotely for more than a decade and a half already, I never have tracked any team, never have reported with daily check-ins, and never reported my location, the latter which would often have resulted in some beach on some coast in some country. Because that is one of the freedoms of working remotely. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t worked at least as hard as most office rats, often even more hours weekly even when at some point a company owner told someone asking for a reference that “sometimes he just disappears for days”. Interestingly enough those “days of disappearance” were usually followed by extensive Basecamp updates — the only project management tool which truly respects your privacy — if not also new projects, and any old fashioned spy pixel would have told the story of my perfect Inbox Zero habits.
But tracking was never a thing in my professional world, and teams, and it shouldn’t be in your new professional setup either.
Bonus mention for Basecamp, whose co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson — AKA @dhh — recently told the Guardian that building employee tracking tools on Basecamp’s API is now prohibited. After significant demand since the pandemic.
“There is a depressing amount of demand and it’s mostly coming from dinosaur companies who have been forced through Covid to go remote. They think that they have to replicate – or even increase – what they do in the office.”
“We went so far as to say that our API cannot be used for any form of employee surveillance.”
— David Heinemeier Hansson, Basecamp co-founder
If you’re a team manager, manager, or more than a drone in your HR department, and didn’t grow with the remote culture, I highly suggest you read the book Remote, also by the people of Basecamp.
Remote working is different and porting the office culture to everyone away from office does not work. The team behind Basecamp have built such excellent remote project management tools — and a new privacy respecting email client and protocol — because they grew with them new culture and embraced it. Then developed tools for it. You don’t need to use Basecamp to learn from Remote (or any of their previous books). What you learn may actually “blow your mind” and rock the future world of your colleagues.
Another reason why they excelled is because they were never funded by venture capital and could thus focus on following their mantra and ethos, rather than needing to fulfill the hunt for the “hockey stick” and a future IPO.
Your work from home privacy is another battle front in the fight for privacy, a universal right to you, to me, and to anyone.
PS: Meetings suck. Video conference meetings do suck even more.