Benefits of Remote Work – Digital CxO Podcast EP114

Hello and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani and with me today I am excited to have Curtis Spar. He is the principal of Bo Spar.

How are you doing? I'm great and thanks for having me. Yes, I'm happy to have you on the show.

Can you share a little bit about Bpar? What services do you provide? Bpar is the politely pushy tech and, oh, I don't even know.

We're not just tech. We're FinTech, we're ai, we're pharmaceutical. It's like hard for me to just say, you know, the boilerplate, you know, elevator answer when we're doing so much.

But we've been remote since we started in 2015 and as a result 10 years later, we have some thoughts on what makes an agency or any company really good when they have a remote first workforce. And I was hoping we could talk about it. Absolutely.

Well, I see a, a wall of a awards behind you there. Ta-da. And you know, we won these awards to prove that remote work works better and that's because we invest in people and not buildings.

And at first people were like, Hey, you need a water cooler if you're going to have a creative agency. And what happened is we kept on winning awards so much that we are the most awarded agency in the United States. And I think that goes to show what remote work can truly do.

In fact, our research shows that it's better for many companies, bottom lines. Wow. Well then you are the person to speak with today about remote work and the future of remote work and how it's going.

You recently put together a study, so can you share a little bit about that study and then we can go into the results? Yeah, you know, we did this as a point of view of what not only do employees get from remote remote work, which I think is kind of obvious, but what people who are hiring remote workers get because we think there has not been enough research done there. And what we discovered is that oftentimes people reported better results when they hired remote workers or remote firms such as ours.

And we think that this is a powerful part of the bigger story that other people are telling. For example, the San Francisco Federal Reserve put out research that said fundamentally there was no difference between a remote workforce versus one that was in an office. And so this research shows that not only is there no difference in productivity, there is however a difference in outputs.

And that's, you know, having employees who are more 24 7. Uh, it's for people who are more proud of the work they do and when it comes to results, it's people, uh, reporting better results on work product than if they were in an office. And I think there are several reasons for that, including all the time wasted in an office.

Like when someone wants to talk to you about what happened on White Lotus, which is definitely a crucial conversation, but perhaps one that doesn't really impact the work product as much. Absolutely. Well I know I started working remotely, gosh, about 10 years ago now, and I could never look back.

So I look at some of these, um, uh, call to office initiatives and I completely understand the buck back there because I just don't think there's any way I could find myself going back into a brick and mortar setting. So what are your thoughts on that? So we are seeing a lot of, uh, mandates to come back to the office, but we also are seeing some buck back.

I wanna hear your thoughts on that and then definitely I wanna get into some of the details of the report and, and what that means for business leaders. You know, a lot of different executives are trying to realize the investment that they made in a brick and mortar building, and I think that's a lot of it. I also think, and I hate to say this, it's a little bit of some old fashioned thinking where whenever we have disruption, there are those that challenged the disruption itself and say, no, back in the day it was better.

And they might not have any other reasons other than their memories or know some warm feelings about office, you know, camaraderie. But there's nothing that proves that. And so I think those kind of feelings are really what we're seeing.

This is a sentimental return to the office, if you will, where people's emotions are getting the better of themselves. But just from a fiscal number sense, it absolutely is not a good idea. And then when you think about the environmental cost, it's not a good idea.

And when you think of the time lost, it's not a good idea. The thing is, is that it's a good idea if you could get workers from anywhere as long as they're talented. And by getting a talented workforce that is not shackled by their geography, you get rid of location think you make sure that you are getting the best minds no matter what.

And so there's really just so much to be gained. Now I'm not saying that every place has to be remote. I think there's some places like a hospital that make a lot of sense and there are certain places where engineers have to gather and build things that makes sense.

But for knowledge workers, overwhelmingly it makes sense for those people to be working from home because you're really going to get a lot more out of happier employees. Absolutely. I agree.

So what are some of the key findings from the study? Well, I would say the key findings are, you know, twofold. One is the self-reporting part where people say that they're more productive working from home.

Um, you know, in fact only 5% said that they had lower productivity when they worked at home. So overwhelmingly working from home is better. Um, and I think the other thing that is important is over 80% report a improved work-life balance.

And I think that is seen in the investment that they can make where they would be commuting, they can instead be working and thus, you know, they don't have to kill themselves when it comes to their families, when it comes to, uh, making sure that, you know, young families get the support they need. I think the other thing is that we're seeing interesting pushback on the mandates. We're seeing 73% of consumers would less likely purchase something from companies requesting full-time office work.

Uh, 63% would be less likely to apply for jobs and 60% believe companies to encourage from at work to in reduce the environmental impact. And so I think that those are, you know, the key sort of stats that are important in thinking about this conversation, especially as the next generation comes along be becomes online because that next generation is going to be viewing these companies with a lens of what have you done for the environment? And we are right now running out of time environmentally in terms of how we can fix our, uh, footprint and remote work.

If you do it five days a week has been shown to reduce that impact by more than 50%. So I think that any argument about no, you need to come back to the office kind of falls apart when you're faced with the real live crisis we're in. And you know, I hear magical thinking about returning to the office and how it's better for, you know, the economy, but you don't have an economy if you don't have a species.

Yeah, absolutely. Some good points there. And it's very interesting that people are fighting back in that manner.

I feel like we weren't focused on these sorts of things back in the day when we were shopping or looking for products. We weren't thinking, okay, let's do some research. Do they have to have all their workers in the office or remote?

You know, how are they with environmental missions and sustainability? We weren't looking at these things, but now, um, these results are showing more and more people are making decisions based on this. So that's interesting.

Yeah, and I think that, you know, every time these events like Earth Day come along, that you know, reminds people about it. And a lot of companies try to lean into Earth Day because their research shows that younger generations really care about the planet and are very alarmed, but it's hard to square that with these, you know, return to work mandates that are pretty draconian. And the other thing that we have to consider is that each time the environment creates another huge problem we all have to deal with, that's when all sorts of people are gonna be thinking how can we, you know, rectify the situation?

How can we improve it? So, you know, returning to working from home is going to become more important year over year. And I expect that to be the case.

I also expect it to be the case that the better the economy performs, when the economy performs really strongly, that puts, you know, the most talented employees in the driver's seat when it comes to making demands. And our research shows overwhelmingly that the most talented employees want to work from home. No one truly talented aspires to grow up and be managed in an office.

They want to be able to have that level of freedom to take an afternoon nap when they want, for example, or to take care of their kids. And that's, you know, part of what we're seeing with working from home is that people see it as a means of freedom. Absolutely.

That work-life balance. And it's interesting that you found, um, the quality of work is much better. Uh, you said there wasn't maybe a lot of difference in productivity, but the output of the work was better, uh, with remote workers.

And I would tend to completely agree. I would even say from my own experience, even my output of work was probably, uh, better because I felt when I had the flexibility and I had the room to work, uh, in my best environment, I was able to flourish in my career. That's when I flourished was when I had that space and the ability to work in my best environment with flexibility to take care of my child if they needed to be picked up from school, um, not be begging, you know, to get off.

You know, so when that, when that stress is removed from your workday, it's so much easier to get more work done, better work done. It just makes sense to me. I I don't understand, I guess quite why some people haven't picked up on that yet.

Well, not only that, the thing that we're seeing from some of our Boomerang employees who said, oh, I want to try an office, and we said go is they'd come back and say, you know, the thing is is a lot of people are taking those work from home behaviors and they're putting them in the office. One person that reported that he would go in, everyone would be in, you know, their own separate rooms doing zoom calls and that no one would really talk to each other. And so all the things that, you know, people thought would happen when you return to office, that you have all this, you know, collaborations, et cetera, has really disappeared from, you know, just the expectation to get stuff done.

And that's what working from home really does, is you really have to be accountable for the work that you are offering. And so I think we're gonna see that more and more. Absolutely.

Yeah, when you're at home, you're just really cracking out the work and focused. And while the comradery side of it, I do understand there is a lot less, uh, wasted time or standing around at the water cooler, as you said, uh, in the office because you're really focused and you can get so much more done and more quickly and efficiently. So I've had so many good ideas destroyed because some coworker would come up and say, Hey, did you see what was on TV last day?

Oh my god. Or they would gossip or no one would come up to me and say, Hey bro, let's collaborate on a really good idea. Usually those collaborations were scheduled, they were timed.

And so a lot of the kind of chaotic kismet that people are talking about that happens only in a physical office really didn't happen all that much. But what did happen is someone would come in and get everyone sick. What did happen is someone would come in and gossip or create a toxic work environment, you know, those problems with a physical office are rife from, you know, fighting over who has the bigger office with the better window to the condition of the bathrooms.

And you know, don't get me started on the condition of American bathrooms and offices. I mean, they're just gross. So there's really nothing to be said about working, forcing people to work in an office, except that it somehow suggests you don't trust your staff.

Absolutely. I agree. And I wanna say I do understand some people actually missed working in the office and I understand that for some people they really, um, felt they lacked that, that social aspect that they needed.

Uh, but I do feel that a lot of strides have been made, uh, from remote, from the remote aspect with um, being able to bring that social aspect in and the comradery. There's a lot of tools and technology and, um, communication channels like Slack and um, various other methods, zoom, et cetera, that have been able to help in that area. But I do understand that there are some people who do still prefer in-person work.

Well, you know, of course I think there are people who, who appreciate that. And usually we find the people who like it the most are at the very start of their careers where they need some sort of handholding. And so oftentimes when someone needs that level of handholding, we will fly that person out to a mentor who can help train them so that they can get that feeling of, you know, one-to-one, uh, bonding and team building.

But I think the other thing when it comes to that sort of needing to be with people is that's what coworking spaces are for. Some people just pathologically need to be with someone else in the room to get work done. That's, you know, what they're for.

You know, one of my friends said she just likes going to a library just to feel other people there. And I could appreciate that. For me, I have pretty stuck days, so I don't have that sense of loneliness.

In fact, I don't think anyone at our company does. But there are ways of working around that. I just think the point about forcing people to go to work and or go to an office is not really well thought out and there's just no scholarship that supports that, you know, it's better in any way, shape or form, but there's plenty of research to show how bad it's, Yeah, I agree.

And we even have a, a remote working space here in my city and um, at our all hands meeting a few weeks ago, we all met at a remote working facility for our, for our meeting. So that's really great and that does provide that. Well, if there were any other things you wanted to share from the study, I know you had a companion study by reputation leaders, um, found, let's see, 73% of consumers would be less likely to purchase from companies.

You mentioned that. Um, so what do you think, let's talk about that for a second. Um, as more people are looking at this and determining who they're gonna go to, what do you think business leaders need to take from this survey moving forward?

I think that this is a serious, uh, reputational issue for a lot of companies because companies are not looking at the big picture about how the next generation and the generation to come are going to view these decisions. And that's why I think it's super important for us to have these conversations about what the impact is for companies that insist on returning to the office or how those demands are couched. And so that's why we've been raising the alarm on this because we know working from home for knowledge workers works and we know that a lot of people are, you know, evaluating companies that are not buying into this future.

I think that, yeah, of course we're having some push and pull, but I suspect in the next few years, working from home is going to be the norm for a majority of Americans and a majority of knowledge workers. All right. Well if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be?

I would say that you should trust your staff. If you don't trust your staff, you're not gonna be able to really have a work from anywhere environment. And you know, trusting your staff is the bedrock of working from home.

Absolutely. Alright, well thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your insights with us today. Oh, thanks so much Amanda.

I'm glad you put up with me. It was a great conversation and thanks to our audience. Stay tuned.

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