BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Are Your Employees Remote Natives Or Office Natives?

Forbes Human Resources Council

CEO and Co-Founder of YouTeam (YC W18). Tech entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience in HR Tech, social media, online marketplaces.

My co-founder, Nikita, and I were born in the same year. We both have beards, two kids and agree that "The Boys" is the best thing that happened to the superhero domain since Watchmen. Yet after we moved from Europe to the Bay Area and rented apartments next to each other in West San Jose, it turned out our workplace preferences differ drastically. I was paying homage to the Northern California weather for the opportunity to work from my patio nine months out of the year. Nikita, in turn, started looking for a co-working space almost immediately. When everything shut down in March, I barely noticed the difference, yet Nikita was struggling — until he found a way to work from a picnic table in Santa Clara Central Park. As soon as co-working spaces re-opened in August, he immediately checked back in.

Did you notice a difference in how your colleagues or employees responded to working from home? Some thrived, their productivity soared and now they are asking if they can continue working remotely after the office reopens. At the same time, many others are complaining about the many distractions at home, making it impossible to concentrate, as well as feeling lonely and isolated. I have observed this phenomenon long before the global lockdown — over the course of a decade in my own four remote-first companies and have been always curious about it.

I feel that in terms of workplace environment preferences, there are two groups of people: those who are happier and more productive while working from their own space and those who enjoy the vivid office atmosphere. Let us call the first group "remote natives" and the second one "office natives."

There is more to this distinction than just the usual introvert/extrovert play, such as the size of one's home or the presence of kids. I believe what splits us into groups is the difference in values. Remote natives seem to cherish a higher degree of autonomy, which for them often means the freedom to control their time. Office natives love the energizing interaction with peers and prefer to have strict boundaries between work and personal life, in both time and space.

Occupation is an important factor here, too. There are more software developers and copywriters among remote natives and more salespeople among office natives. This can be the reason why many remote-first companies like WordPress, Gitlab or InVision are software companies. 

Finally, both attitudes have strong feedback loops that strengthen one's identity as remote or office natives over time. The more you get used to working from home, the more colleagues in the office are a distraction and vice versa.

Why is it important to recognize whether someone is a remote native or an office native? Because times, they are a-changin'. It is becoming more and more obvious that even after the Covid-19 vaccine is universally accessible and the last anti-pandemic measure is levied, the workplace is not going to be the same as it was before 2020.

The Economist reported that "seven out of 10 affected Americans say the situation has gone better or much better than they expected." A survey of 1,000 white-collar workers by Fluxon showed that 41.9% would like to continue working from home after the pandemic is over, 28.6% plan to return to the office full-time and the remaining 29.4% would split their time between home and office. In every organization, managers strive to maximize the productivity of every team member, yet for most of the companies caught off-guard by the lockdown, the reaction was simply trying to recreate the office environment in the new remote setting. No wonder it worked poorly.

In a recent interview, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO and founder of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, broke down the five levels of remote work. Level two is recreating the office, while level four means embracing the internet tools and processes tailored for remote work — like getting rid of all scheduled meetings for the sake of written, asynchronous decision-making. According to Mullenweg, most of the companies forced to shut their offices down in the pandemic are at level two, while his company, with its 1,100+ employees and no office, is currently at level four.

The reality may be that neither a 100% co-located nor a 100% remote model is optimal for your organization. This pandemic may reveal a surprising new way to further increase the productivity of employees — by recognizing those who are remote natives and providing them with the opportunity to work the way they enjoy while keeping the office open for the office native folks once it's safe to do so. In other words, in order to make our teammates more productive, we need to surrender to them the choice of their work environment.

Many companies are doing this already — like the fintech phenomenon Brex, whose founder, Pedro Franceschi, recently published an open memo to the company's 400+ employees saying that everyone can now work from home as much as they want, but the company is keeping its "office hubs" in main locations, such as San Francisco, Vancouver and Draper, New York.

Mark Dixon, the CEO of IWG, one of the world's largest providers of serviced office spaces, in a recent interview with The Economist forecasted that the traditional office will gradually give up toward the hybrid model when flexible office spaces in cities are used as office hubs — mostly for meetings of a company's otherwise distributed workforce. Known primarily for its flagship Regus brand, in 2015, Mr. Dixon's company acquired Spaces — the chain of trendy co-workings, one of which my co-founder, Nikita, is now using as the office hub for our company.


Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?


Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website