Organizational Behaviour - Daniel's Blog Entry #4 - Family Commitments and Remote Work

             This fourth blog entry related to our Organizational Behaviour class is based on the following article, titled "The pros and cons of working remotely", written by Mr. Bill George, and published by Fortune, on April 17, 2021 (https://fortune.com/2021/04/17/remote-work-home-hybrid-model-future/).

As its very title hints, the article at stake does a very well conceived illustrative job at portraying the advantages and disadvantages of a remote work arrangement, clearly detailing with the same level of thoroughness both sides of the same coin.

Among the pros the article describes there is time savings, productivity, schedule flexibility, balancing family needs, cost savings, organization design (very nice example of how, through a Zoom meeting, nobody gets to sit at a more “important” spot around the table, hence making the internal dynamics within the organization more horizontal and less hierarchical).

And, on the other hand, the cons listed by the article include issues dealing with trust, collaboration, lack of access to “informal interactions” and to meeting with customers in person. The last two of the mentioned cons are further explained by the author, stating that certain supervisors tend to lean on spontaneous pop ups in front of their subordinates to informally touch base with them, which certainly makes a difference, due to the human interaction taking place, which is totally forgone when exclusively working remotely. Same reasoning goes to explain about how important it is to at least once, in the first encounter, meet your customer face to face, and then maybe have the privilege to further follow up with them remotely, as that first meeting will have a higher positive impact if handled in person.

Hence, as the author further elaborates, organizations are leaning toward hybrid modes of job attendance, which could potentially resolve the conflicts between pros and cons, yet he (the author) points out that hybrid mode itself may create issues of its own, dealing with how fair certain employees may perceive the distribution of who gets to be where how many days and so on. Thus, seems like organizations will end up having to play it by the ear, in terms of deciding which actual mode or combination of modes to finally settle for.

As far as how this article relates to myself personally, I have been asked, even with my current online freelance arrangements to, eventually, become somewhat flexible and accept to visit the company premises sometimes, for face to face interaction with whole team at the Maryland-based automobile dealership, which is something that could certainly enhance my relationship with the staff and managers, and foster some team building dynamics, so I think I will agree with doing it every so often, as long as the official arrangement stays remote.