Articles and studies abound on the viability of remote work, particularly following the mass transformation of the white-collar workplace after 2020. While millennials and Gen-Z workers, fresh out of college, fled metro areas and moved online, whole office spaces found themselves empty. Office real estate workers continue to struggle leasing out their spaces to businesses, since so many employers now have a remote or hybrid work schedule.

It is difficult to reach a conclusive stance on the pros and cons of remote work by reading the dozens of articles on the topic. Opinions vary so widely. Some praise the new shift towards remote work as a revolutionary step in the workforce. Others note that remote work is actually a step back to a pre-industrial domestic situation, when both parents tended to work around the home. The Industrial Revolution outsourced a lot of men’s jobs to more centralized locations, helping to produce the phrase “work/life balance.” Home life and work life were not set apart. That was an agrarian world though. Our remote lives are constructed digitally, and these days, many people are working remotely but living radically isolated lives. They lack general community but also meaningful connections with their colleagues. Remote work has also helped pave the way for “quiet quitting,” which means that remote workers are doing the minimal amount of work needed to complete their work and then checking out for the rest of the time. There may be a number of factors that contribute to quiet quitting, and it doesn’t necessarily fall on the laziness of the employee. A 2022 report from Harvard Business Review found that managers and bosses often contribute to quiet quitting. If a manager cares too much about results without investing in relationships, an employee is more likely to quiet quit. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman write,

We found that the least effective managers have three to four times as many people who fall in the “quiet quitting” category compared to the most effective leaders. These managers had 14% of their direct reports quietly quitting, and only 20% were willing to give extra effort. But those who were rated the highest at balancing results with relationships saw 62% of their direct reports willing to give extra effort, while only 3% were quietly quitting.

Quiet Quitting Is About Bad Bosses, Not Bad Employees (hbr.org)

The study indicates that of course there are lazy employees out there, but that relationship and trust are the ingredients that make people want to go the extra mile.

Maybe the question isn’t so much whether remote work is good or bad but whether it allows for those kinds of relationships to flourish, or if one feels like a valued part of the organization.