Generally, only in terms of personal output. I find that the organization benefits overall. Of course, this is problematic when performance/compensation is tied strictly to personal output, but that is a separate discussion
> - worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO that moment.
Which is why working at the office is important.
> - worse for the organization because knowledge shared this way is ephemeral & siloed by definition
Somewhat true, but this is completely unavoidable. I know of zero cases where all institutional knowledge is recorded and not siloed in humans. Of course there are degrees.
> - ineffective in large organizations, where teams often span offices
This is why teams exist, why hierarchical organizations exist throughout history, and proper separation of work is crucial.
I'm so glad you opened up this avenue for follow-up. Even when working at the office, people are not at their desks 100% of the time. People are still human beings and are out of the office for any number of legit reasons that have nothing to do with remote working: dental appointments, work travel, interviewing candidates, vacation, sick leave, etc. Regardless of how you organize your workplace or what mandates you set, people are going to be out all the time. So your knowledge sharing is among the best who are available right now, not necessarily the best sources.
> Somewhat true, but this is completely unavoidable. I know of zero cases where all institutional knowledge is recorded and not siloed in humans. Of course there are degrees.
The key again is the degrees. An organization can choose to bias toward using modern tools or not. "Modern tools" here also broadly includes "writing" because it provides so many advantages over synchronous conversations for knowledge sharing.
> This is why teams exist, why hierarchical organizations exist throughout history, and proper separation of work is crucial.
Here I call your attention to geography. There are any number of reasons for staff to be located where they are, and staff don't typically work on a single project over their careers. This means they will change teams from time to time. Combine these facts and you're going to end up with teams composed of people who live in different places, where it might not make sense to relocate staff (e.g. project only lasts a year).
An example might be: implementation consultants for a software company based in Chicago working onsite at a client in Germany. I suppose you could move the whole software company to Germany, but that only scales to one client. Which also highlights that people are often on multiple teams at the same time.
These concerns are most salient in the most hierarchical organizations, which tend to be the largest and have the largest geographic footprints.
Can you speak to how that is measured? I find these kinds of claims very difficult to support with any kind of actual data.
> Which is why working at the office is important.
What about the guy who just walked over to someone else, now both parties were absent in eachothers conversation.
This is actually a good example of: Falls flat if everyone starts doing it. So many times I walk up to someone in the office to ask him something, but he is doing the same so I can't find him.
The main thing is there are real trade-offs for the staff and organization, and those tend to get overlooked in favor of lifestyle or sunk RE cost arguments.
Btw., depending on country and situation, nuclear missile submarines can actually have wide latitude on decisions.
Employees are given some power and time back for the first time in decades after the opposite relationship ended up with being overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated as they are dropped at a moment's notice. So yea, I'm not surprised people aren't sympathizing for the companies who boasted about making record profits over the pandemic and suddenly they need to "downsize". burning decades of trust and goodwill has consequences.
Also, extremes rarely help. I'm not a manager, so even in office there are only people on my immediate team or a specific person or 2 I am working directly with on another team that I would do that with. When it is expected and we have the same tasks in mind. Even then it's better to get stuff in writing where possible so I'd rather send a message, even if it's just so I can give them 10-15 minutes to think over before I walk to them.
You're inventing solutions to a problem that actually worsen the issue.
edit: also, automated alerting solves literally all your problems here - and that should be an investment even if you're at a company with 100% RTO. Your first line of alert will still be digital in that case. If you're waiting to hear panicked seatmates to solve issues you're sure not worried about immediacy.
This is an example of a local maximum. This form of communication is better for the person doing the walking, but worse when looked at through most other frames:
- worse for the person being asked, who was interrupted
- worse for the people who weren't privy to that conversation but perhaps could have learned or contributed except that they were OOO that moment.
- worse for the organization because knowledge shared this way is ephemeral & siloed by definition
- ineffective in large organizations, where teams often span offices
And all that's before considering the "worse" that comes from having your staff spend 5 hours a week (average in the US) commuting to the office.
In effect, the person walking over is burdening the other party and the organization rather than spend a little more time to craft a question in writing. Weak written communication skills are at the root of why so many organizations are bad at remote work. If oral communications is all that works at your org, then remote is going to be really tough for you (and your inter-office communication is also probably terrible and you should put the whole company in a single building).