In the wake of the waning COVID-19 pandemic, a notable shift has taken place as numerous companies are permanently abandoning their fully remote-work policies. Even Zoom, the company that helped to usher in the age of remote work, has now ordered its employees back to HQ for at least two days a week.
Despite workers proving that they can work effectively from home, leaders have been adamant that sitting at a makeshift desk in your kitchen doesn’t quite cut it like working among your peers. Sallie Krawcheck, a prominent CEO in favor of WFH, agrees.
Although Ellevest, the investment and financial literacy platform for women she founded, is one of the few remaining companies to stick to the pandemic-era working habit, it’s not without tradeoffs.
“We’re hitting deadlines like never before,” Krawcheck said at CNBC’s Workforce Executive Council Summit in New York City, but it’s coming at the cost of creativity.
“Let’s have a Zoom to brainstorm? Not many people do it, and you can’t run into each other at the coffee machine when you’re on Zoom,” said Krawcheck, who held top jobs at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch before founding Ellevest.
“We are more productive, and we are less creative.”
WFH: Creative losses
In Krawcheck’s eyes, remote work’s significant benefits—lower fixed costs, a larger talent pool, and added flexibility for women and underrepresented groups—outweigh its drawbacks.
However, for most leaders, creativity isn’t a loss worthy of keeping a fully remote model.
Just last month, Roblox, the $19 billion gaming giant, demanded staff work at the company’s physical office in California at least three days a week (which means relocation for some) or find another job, for that very reason.
Although its CEO and founder, David Baszucki, said that he was initially “impressed” with how staff took to working from home, it wasn’t long before he said he was dissuaded by the absence of learning, innovation, and company culture through a screen.
“A three-hour group review in person is much less exhausting than over video, and brainstorming sessions are more fluid and creative,” he said in a companywide memo.
OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, echoed earlier this year that “one of the tech industry’s worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn’t need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity.”
Even Zoom’s own CEO has admitted that working solely through video calls is bad for creativity, as the company summoned its employees back to the office.
But that doesn’t mean managers should press the accelerator too hard on RTO mandates either: Fully in-office working stifles creativity too.
“The most creative mode seems to be for individuals spending time both in groups and working alone,” remote-work guru Nick Bloom previously told Fortune.
In one study, by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), three groups were tasked with coming up with new ideas.
One group had to sit in a room together for hours; the second group brainstormed alone; and the third went back and forth alternating with time together and time alone. The third group came out on top.
“Having some time in groups and some time on your own seems to be the most constructive,” Bloom agreed. “That’s really why hybrid seems to dominate.”
