October 21, 2024 • 20 mins
In this episode of Long-Distance Worklife, Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel tackle the hot-button issue of Amazon’s recent return-to-office mandate and what it means for the future of remote work. Amazon’s decision to require employees to come back to the office—and its ultimatum of “come back or find a new job”—has sparked conversations about whether this marks the end of the remote work era.
Marisa and Wayne dive into the reasons behind Amazon’s push for office attendance, from massive real estate investments to a company culture driven by performance. They also explore the broader implications for other companies, the financial and cultural challenges that come with hybrid work, and how employees worldwide, like those at Ubisoft in France, are pushing back against such mandates.
Key Takeaways:
- Amazon's RTO Mandate: Why Amazon is forcing employees back into the office and the real estate and management philosophies driving the decision.
- Is Remote Work Fading?: Why some companies are clinging to old work models, despite the success of remote work during the pandemic.
- Worker Pushback Globally: How employees, including Ubisoft workers in France, are fighting against return-to-office policies—and what this means for global trends.
- A Seismic Shift in Work: Why we’re in the midst of a massive change in how companies view work, leadership, and productivity.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:00 Amazon’s Return-to-Office Policy Explained
3:20 Why Some Companies Are Going Back to the Office
5:30 Real Estate and CEO Ego: What’s Really Driving the Mandates
10:00 Global Pushback: Ubisoft and Strikes Over Office Returns
13:00 Is Remote Work Really Going Away?
16:00 What Does This Mean for Employers and Employees?
18:30 Remote Work Isn’t Dead Yet: Final Thoughts
Related Episodes
Additional Resources
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome back to long distance worklife,
where we help you lead work and thrivein remote hybrid teams.
I'm. Marisa Eikenberry.
And joining me because my co-hostand remote work expert Wayne Turmel.
Hi, Wayne.
Hi. Hello. That would be me. Hi.
How are you? I'm great. How are you?
I am swell.
And the great scheme of things.
Well, I'msure you're going to be even more swell.
(00:29):
If not, your brain will explode hereshortly as we're tackling
the big question of.
Is this the end of remote work orjust the beginning of a new conversation?
So one of the things that I knowyou've been talking a lot about lately
is that Amazon just decidedthat everyone is returning to office.
And if you didn't want to do that, well,have fun finding a new job.
(00:52):
So why do you think that some companies,like Amazon, are pushing for this
full return to office
mandates, despite remote workbeing successful during the pandemic?
Okay, so there's about five thingsto unpack in that sentence.
Things.
That's fair.
I kindof gave you a loaded question right?
And there was a lot going on.
(01:13):
First of all, you know,were we successful during the pandemic?
Generally speaking, yes.
Work got done.
Productivity.
Depending on the type of job
rose or fell a little bit.
People generally got their work done. Why?
Because people generally get their workdone.
(01:34):
There are people who don't,and there are people who will overachieve.
And it all kind of averages outin the great scheme of things.
But how does this apply to companies
wanting to go back to the blessedbefore times?
And I think there are.
And I didn't write this down.
So you have to count for me.
(01:56):
I think there are threemajor things going on.
Okay.
Number one is companies have
tons of money invested
in real estate, space, equipment,all of this stuff.
And when a CFOor a CEO walks into a building
(02:20):
that is 50% empty, they have an immediate,visceral reaction, right?
They're not getting water.On their business.
Yeah.
It's not unreasonable because the question
is, well, this doesn't make any sense.
And here's the problem.
If I have kind of negotiated that,you're going to spend three days
(02:41):
in the office in two days out,and you can't shrink your footprint
because you need spacefor the people who come in
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,if everybody's there those days,
you still need as much spaceas you had before.
Right.
So there is a sunkcost factor to all of this.
(03:04):
That is not unreasonable.
I mean, if we're going to change the waywe work, if we're going to change the size
of our footprint, we need to reexaminewhat it means to have an office.
And what does it meanto have physical space,
and what should thatphysical space look like?
(03:25):
Which is a really big conversation
that is harder to havethan, let's get people back,
right?
Right.
It's just it's a big problemthat requires heavy
thoughtand radically changing what you do.
And business is not primedfor that for the most part.
(03:47):
The second thing I think, is that
it depends on the kind of businessthat you're in.
And it's funny because Kevin and Iare constantly on this list,
on these lists of best remote thinkersand all that stuff.
And I say that not to say, look at me,I'm on cool lists, but to say that
(04:09):
we get lumped in with the four day workweek,
death to the office.
Do your job on the beach
kind of people.
And we're really not right.
We've talked about this before.
Every business has to examine what it doesand how does it serve its clients,
(04:33):
and what kind of company doesit want to be when it grows up?
And you look at a company like Amazon
and for all of their cool computers,
computer servers and algorithms
that torture artists on a regular basis,the fact of the matter is,
they are a 20th centuryhorse and buggy business.
(04:54):
Yeah, they have warehouses full of stuff.
That stuff needs to go on wagons.
The wagons go to people's homes.
That's their business, right?
Right, right.
And so, you know, an old school
approachis not the most unreasonable thing.
The third thing I think has to do with
(05:15):
the kind of management companyyou want to be.
And what I am going to say is information
based on publicly available data.
It is not.
You know, Jeff Bezos does not need me
to tell him how to run a business.
Right. JeffBezos does not know who we are.
(05:37):
Yeah.
Well, but I'm sure his lawyers do,
you know, a simpleGoogle search can flag that or.
Right.
But here's the thing.
Amazon has a management style
that they take pridein, which is produce or die.
Do as you're told, do what we say,and nobody gets hurt.
(06:00):
I mean, that's basically their stock.
They have a 150% turnover every year.
Oh I'm not sure I really like.
Most of that is in there.
Where every staffwhich are not working remotely anyway.
Right.
The the number is lower than that
(06:21):
for admin and office staff,but it's still a pretty high turnover
organizationand that's how they choose to operate.
They always have as we we in Las Vegaswhere there is a big Amazon presence,
we like to say everybody knows a lot ofpeople who used to work at Amazon.
(06:42):
My stepdad used to work at Amazon,but we're in Indianapolis.
But yes.
Right.
They have high turnover. It'sMarch or die.
This is how they choose to operate,and they are free to do so.
I mean, it's their business, their rules.
Now, you asked a questionbecause I was paying attention.
(07:03):
So those are the three things, right?
There's kind of this legacy real estateproblem, which is tied to CEO ego.
There's what kind of business win.
And then there is what's your generalattitude towards your people?
It was three.
And I remember you did.
You did. Yeah.
(07:25):
So you have to start thinking about whatis this going to mean in the long run?
In the short term,
along with the announcementthat Amazon was going
to do this.
Announced
that they were cutting their managementstaff by 15%
and increasing the numberof direct reports each manager would have.
(07:49):
Well, it would not be the worst thingif I were at Amazon to say
everybody has to come back to the officeand 10 or 12% of your managers
said, the heck with that, I'mgoing to find a job somewhere else.
And they go, okay, that's done right?
They insist this is not
(08:10):
a way of laying off managers.
But yes, in any way. Unintentional.
The result is probably going to be aboutthe same that that it also makes sense.
You know, if you want to have thatin office mentality, divesting yourself
of the people who don't share thatmentality is probably not a bad policy.
(08:32):
I mean, you want peoplewho are going to buy in, right?
Of course.
Now, what is this going to mean long term?
And this is where you startto look at other companies besides Amazon.
You know, Google said,
a year ago, year and a half ago.
Everybodyget your crap back to the office.
(08:54):
And there was plenty of pushbackto the point where, quite as it's kept
more people working there every daythan there used to be.
But ain't all thatnow, you you had sent me,
an interesting article about Ubisoft.
For the gamers in the audienceand the ones that do not know,
(09:16):
Ubisoft is a very, very,very large gaming company.
If you're familiar with thingslike Rayman or Assassin's Creed,
they make those games.
And yeah, to your point, like I saw thisarticle, just the other day
that employees in France
are actually threatening to strike overreturn to office mandates.
And at the time that we're recording this,that strike has it happened yet?
(09:39):
But by the time you're listening to this,
if it if the strike goes through,it will have already happened.
So I'll be linking to a storyfrom PC gamer about it,
and I'm sure there will be updates on itas you're listening to this.
But speaking of that, like,you know, we've been talking about Amazon
in the US a lot here, but do you thinkthat we're going to see more worker
(10:02):
pushback globally against these policies,like what Ubisoft is doing in France?
Well, I think that we are inand I've said this before,
and people are rolling their eyesand getting tired of hearing me say it.
We are in the middle of a seismic change
in what it means to have a job.
What does it mean to work for somebody?
(10:23):
What does it mean to have employees?
Right?
All of this stuff is changingprobably more dramatically
than since the 1920s or 30s,
when we got a 40 hour workweekand a five hour or a five day a week,
schedule and
(10:44):
people commuting this seismic change
that nobody really knowswhere it's going to wind up.
Part of it.
And the Ubisoft, Ubisoft, employees. I'm
I'm sorry,
guys, that it's happening.
I'm not surprised that it's happeningin France, because France has a long
(11:07):
history of work stoppagesand using their protest,
and certainly much moreso than North Americans do.
But it speaks to the fact
that there is a generational change.
There is a changebased on the type of work one does.
(11:30):
That changes people's
relationship with their employerand whether they feel like
where the work gets done as importantas what work gets done.
I mean, if you're a coder
and you're spending your time in the darkwith your mother shoving food,
you under the door
and any hour of the day or night,you can get inspired and work on stuff.
(11:51):
Swiping a bag at 9:00 every morning
may be of questionable value.
Right.
The other thing, and I'm verging on
breakingone of our sacred rules at the cabinet.
I can very groupwhich is oh, no political.
But there
is a sense in the workplace right now,
(12:14):
and every studyis kind of bearing this out.
As benefits start to go away for moreand more employees.
Boeing, for example,just announced its dropping health care
for its employees.
People want a sense
(12:34):
of being able to earn somethingor have a perk.
And one of the few negotiable bills
at this moment is work flexibility.
Right.
It's one of the few things that employers.
Yeah. Okay.
If you want to stay homeMonday and Friday, knock yourself out.
Are we benevolent?
(12:57):
It's a short sighted policy.
It's a short sighted policyon the part of the employees.
It's a short sighted policyon the part of the employer.
But it keeps people from quitting
or gives people enough motivationto come and work for you.
But we'rein the middle of all of this chaos
(13:18):
where
it used to be that if you wanted to workin a certain field or
something, there was a place that you wentand did that.
Now you have a few more optionsabout where you work.
What I would say about this
and I babbled a lotand we've covered a lot of ground.
But let me kind of boil this downto a couple of things
(13:41):
for employers.
It is going to be
a matter of time before you figure out
what are the thingsthat are really important to them.
What is the return on investment
for having these big real estate kind of
(14:01):
investments, and what kind of people dothey want to attract?
We've said before that, you know,
when you say we have flexible work,
or remote work, but you need
to be in the office once a week.
You've really said, I want the best people
(14:24):
I can getwho live within 20 minutes of the office.
Right?
You don't really want the bestpeople, right?
I mean, that's which is fine.
That was always who they were hiring.
But with remote work and the advent of,
kind of dispersed work and
(14:44):
we've reached this point where, you know,we could hire
different people, we could hirea different type of employee,
but not if we're notif we're stuck with that old paradigm.
It is totally the company'sright to do that.
The golden rule, the one with the goldmakes the rules right.
Now I'm going to say something which
is, perhapsunpopular with some of our listeners,
(15:09):
which is what will make this workincrease.
Remote work is that we, as the employees,
need to prove that we are worthy of it.
We need proof of concept.
We need proof that the employeris not giving everything up by
letting us do that.
(15:29):
A lot of the argumentsthat people use about remote work are,
well, I want time with my family,I want this, I want that.
Well that's nice.
Your boss doesn't really care.
Right? Right.
It does. It benefits. Employees.
Satisfied voices are importantonly insofar as it affects your work.
(15:51):
Well so real quickI'm going to go slightly off on.
It's going to take a while. Okay. Okay.
Oh I think we had a slight delaybut I think it's solved now.
I was just going to say on the same line
as we're talking about,you know, employers and CEOs.
A recent survey of CEOs actually suggests
that remote workwill be dead in three years.
(16:13):
What is influencing this belief?
Like, is it just wishful thinking?
Mostly it's wishful thinking.
I mean, there was a CEO in the UKwho was famous for a microsecond
for saying what we really needis 20% unemployment.
So all these people will rememberwho they are.
I remember us talking about thatin a past episode on like.
(16:36):
So there's some of that.
Here's what it's going to take.
And I don't know who's going to do it.
I don't know how they're going to step upwhen somebody becomes the next Google,
when somebody becomes the next big companywith a remote first policy.
People will start to pay attentionon a larger basis.
(16:58):
Right now, the companies that aresuccessful remote first are very niche
in terms of the industry that they're in,and they tend to be fairly small.
All they tend to be startups.
When a company reaches mega status
and works in this new way, followsthis new God help me, I use the word
(17:22):
paradigm, then it will start
because people follow the leaders.
Right? Right.
And so that's what it's going to take.
Somebody has got to really breakout of the box.
Or remote work is going to continueto team
by team, organization by organization.
(17:42):
Bit by bit.
And it's never going to 100% takeover.
Right. Of course.
Like we don't expect it.
They're still going to be.
Well if you listen to people out thereeverything is binary right.
Either.
It's death to the officeand burn your ties,
and you never have to go backinto the office again.
(18:04):
Seize the means of production.
Or. That was a lovely little experiment.
Get your butt back to your desk.That's fair.
And I don't think it's going to bethat simple, but our goal in in
with this show,and I hope our listeners understand this.
Our goal is just whatever the situation
is, whatever your situationis, find a way to make it work right.
(18:27):
Make some good decisionsabout your own attitudes,
your own behaviors, and your own choices
so that you can navigate this crazychanging workplace
and keep body, soul, and spirit intactin the weasels away from your ankles.
That's what we're here for. Okay? Right.
(18:47):
So, Wayne,thank you so much for this conversation.
And there was a lot of stuffthat I would have loved to get to,
but we do not have time.
So probably another show.
And before we go,
the second edition of the Long-Distanceleader is now available.
This updated guide is perfectfor navigating today's remote
and hybrid work environmentswith new principles and proven strategies.
(19:08):
Kevin Barry and Wayne Trammell
show you how to lead effectivelyno matter where your team is located.
Don't miss out
on the latest insights and exercisesdesigned to boost productivity and morale.
Order your copy now!
At Long Distance Work life.com/ldl andstrengthen your remote leadership skills.
Today.
And thank you so much for listening
to Long Distance Worklife for Shownotestranscripts and other resources.
(19:31):
Make sure to visitLong Distance Work life.com.
If you haven't yet, subscribe to the showso you don't miss any future episodes.
And if you're on Apple or Spotify,please give us a rating and review.
Your feedback helps us improveand reach more listeners just like you.
Feel free to contact us via email orLinkedIn with the links in our show notes,
and let us knowyou listen to this episode,
or suggest a topic for Wayneand AI to tackle in a future episode.
(19:53):
We would love to hear from you.Thank you for joining us.
And as Wayne, like, say,don't let the whistles get you down.
Welcome back to long distance worklife,
where we help you lead work and thrivein remote hybrid teams.
I'm. Marisa Eikenberry.
And joining me because my co-hostand remote work expert Wayne Turmel.
Hi, Wayne.
Hi. Hello. That would be me. Hi.
How are you? I'm great. How are you?
I am swell.
And the great scheme of things.
Well, I'msure you're going to be even more swell.
(00:29):
If not, your brain will explode hereshortly as we're tackling
the big question of.
Is this the end of remote work orjust the beginning of a new conversation?
So one of the things that I knowyou've been talking a lot about lately
is that Amazon just decidedthat everyone is returning to office.
And if you didn't want to do that, well,have fun finding a new job.
(00:52):
So why do you think that some companies,like Amazon, are pushing for this
full return to office
mandates, despite remote workbeing successful during the pandemic?
Okay, so there's about five thingsto unpack in that sentence.
Things.
That's fair.
I kindof gave you a loaded question right?
And there was a lot going on.
(01:13):
First of all, you know,were we successful during the pandemic?
Generally speaking, yes.
Work got done.
Productivity.
Depending on the type of job
rose or fell a little bit.
People generally got their work done. Why?
Because people generally get their workdone.
(01:34):
There are people who don't,and there are people who will overachieve.
And it all kind of averages outin the great scheme of things.
But how does this apply to companies
wanting to go back to the blessedbefore times?
And I think there are.
And I didn't write this down.
So you have to count for me.
(01:56):
I think there are threemajor things going on.
Okay.
Number one is companies have
tons of money invested
in real estate, space, equipment,all of this stuff.
And when a CFOor a CEO walks into a building
(02:20):
that is 50% empty, they have an immediate,visceral reaction, right?
They're not getting water.On their business.
Yeah.
It's not unreasonable because the question
is, well, this doesn't make any sense.
And here's the problem.
If I have kind of negotiated that,you're going to spend three days
(02:41):
in the office in two days out,and you can't shrink your footprint
because you need spacefor the people who come in
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,if everybody's there those days,
you still need as much spaceas you had before.
Right.
So there is a sunkcost factor to all of this.
(03:04):
That is not unreasonable.
I mean, if we're going to change the waywe work, if we're going to change the size
of our footprint, we need to reexaminewhat it means to have an office.
And what does it meanto have physical space,
and what should thatphysical space look like?
(03:25):
Which is a really big conversation
that is harder to havethan, let's get people back,
right?
Right.
It's just it's a big problemthat requires heavy
thoughtand radically changing what you do.
And business is not primedfor that for the most part.
(03:47):
The second thing I think, is that
it depends on the kind of businessthat you're in.
And it's funny because Kevin and Iare constantly on this list,
on these lists of best remote thinkersand all that stuff.
And I say that not to say, look at me,I'm on cool lists, but to say that
(04:09):
we get lumped in with the four day workweek,
death to the office.
Do your job on the beach
kind of people.
And we're really not right.
We've talked about this before.
Every business has to examine what it doesand how does it serve its clients,
(04:33):
and what kind of company doesit want to be when it grows up?
And you look at a company like Amazon
and for all of their cool computers,
computer servers and algorithms
that torture artists on a regular basis,the fact of the matter is,
they are a 20th centuryhorse and buggy business.
(04:54):
Yeah, they have warehouses full of stuff.
That stuff needs to go on wagons.
The wagons go to people's homes.
That's their business, right?
Right, right.
And so, you know, an old school
approachis not the most unreasonable thing.
The third thing I think has to do with
(05:15):
the kind of management companyyou want to be.
And what I am going to say is information
based on publicly available data.
It is not.
You know, Jeff Bezos does not need me
to tell him how to run a business.
Right. JeffBezos does not know who we are.
(05:37):
Yeah.
Well, but I'm sure his lawyers do,
you know, a simpleGoogle search can flag that or.
Right.
But here's the thing.
Amazon has a management style
that they take pridein, which is produce or die.
Do as you're told, do what we say,and nobody gets hurt.
(06:00):
I mean, that's basically their stock.
They have a 150% turnover every year.
Oh I'm not sure I really like.
Most of that is in there.
Where every staffwhich are not working remotely anyway.
Right.
The the number is lower than that
(06:21):
for admin and office staff,but it's still a pretty high turnover
organizationand that's how they choose to operate.
They always have as we we in Las Vegaswhere there is a big Amazon presence,
we like to say everybody knows a lot ofpeople who used to work at Amazon.
(06:42):
My stepdad used to work at Amazon,but we're in Indianapolis.
But yes.
Right.
They have high turnover. It'sMarch or die.
This is how they choose to operate,and they are free to do so.
I mean, it's their business, their rules.
Now, you asked a questionbecause I was paying attention.
(07:03):
So those are the three things, right?
There's kind of this legacy real estateproblem, which is tied to CEO ego.
There's what kind of business win.
And then there is what's your generalattitude towards your people?
It was three.
And I remember you did.
You did. Yeah.
(07:25):
So you have to start thinking about whatis this going to mean in the long run?
In the short term,
along with the announcementthat Amazon was going
to do this.
Announced
that they were cutting their managementstaff by 15%
and increasing the numberof direct reports each manager would have.
(07:49):
Well, it would not be the worst thingif I were at Amazon to say
everybody has to come back to the officeand 10 or 12% of your managers
said, the heck with that, I'mgoing to find a job somewhere else.
And they go, okay, that's done right?
They insist this is not
(08:10):
a way of laying off managers.
But yes, in any way. Unintentional.
The result is probably going to be aboutthe same that that it also makes sense.
You know, if you want to have thatin office mentality, divesting yourself
of the people who don't share thatmentality is probably not a bad policy.
(08:32):
I mean, you want peoplewho are going to buy in, right?
Of course.
Now, what is this going to mean long term?
And this is where you startto look at other companies besides Amazon.
You know, Google said,
a year ago, year and a half ago.
Everybodyget your crap back to the office.
(08:54):
And there was plenty of pushbackto the point where, quite as it's kept
more people working there every daythan there used to be.
But ain't all thatnow, you you had sent me,
an interesting article about Ubisoft.
For the gamers in the audienceand the ones that do not know,
(09:16):
Ubisoft is a very, very,very large gaming company.
If you're familiar with thingslike Rayman or Assassin's Creed,
they make those games.
And yeah, to your point, like I saw thisarticle, just the other day
that employees in France
are actually threatening to strike overreturn to office mandates.
And at the time that we're recording this,that strike has it happened yet?
(09:39):
But by the time you're listening to this,
if it if the strike goes through,it will have already happened.
So I'll be linking to a storyfrom PC gamer about it,
and I'm sure there will be updates on itas you're listening to this.
But speaking of that, like,you know, we've been talking about Amazon
in the US a lot here, but do you thinkthat we're going to see more worker
(10:02):
pushback globally against these policies,like what Ubisoft is doing in France?
Well, I think that we are inand I've said this before,
and people are rolling their eyesand getting tired of hearing me say it.
We are in the middle of a seismic change
in what it means to have a job.
What does it mean to work for somebody?
(10:23):
What does it mean to have employees?
Right?
All of this stuff is changingprobably more dramatically
than since the 1920s or 30s,
when we got a 40 hour workweekand a five hour or a five day a week,
schedule and
(10:44):
people commuting this seismic change
that nobody really knowswhere it's going to wind up.
Part of it.
And the Ubisoft, Ubisoft, employees. I'm
I'm sorry,
guys, that it's happening.
I'm not surprised that it's happeningin France, because France has a long
(11:07):
history of work stoppagesand using their protest,
and certainly much moreso than North Americans do.
But it speaks to the fact
that there is a generational change.
There is a changebased on the type of work one does.
(11:30):
That changes people's
relationship with their employerand whether they feel like
where the work gets done as importantas what work gets done.
I mean, if you're a coder
and you're spending your time in the darkwith your mother shoving food,
you under the door
and any hour of the day or night,you can get inspired and work on stuff.
(11:51):
Swiping a bag at 9:00 every morning
may be of questionable value.
Right.
The other thing, and I'm verging on
breakingone of our sacred rules at the cabinet.
I can very groupwhich is oh, no political.
But there
is a sense in the workplace right now,
(12:14):
and every studyis kind of bearing this out.
As benefits start to go away for moreand more employees.
Boeing, for example,just announced its dropping health care
for its employees.
People want a sense
(12:34):
of being able to earn somethingor have a perk.
And one of the few negotiable bills
at this moment is work flexibility.
Right.
It's one of the few things that employers.
Yeah. Okay.
If you want to stay homeMonday and Friday, knock yourself out.
Are we benevolent?
(12:57):
It's a short sighted policy.
It's a short sighted policyon the part of the employees.
It's a short sighted policyon the part of the employer.
But it keeps people from quitting
or gives people enough motivationto come and work for you.
But we'rein the middle of all of this chaos
(13:18):
where
it used to be that if you wanted to workin a certain field or
something, there was a place that you wentand did that.
Now you have a few more optionsabout where you work.
What I would say about this
and I babbled a lotand we've covered a lot of ground.
But let me kind of boil this downto a couple of things
(13:41):
for employers.
It is going to be
a matter of time before you figure out
what are the thingsthat are really important to them.
What is the return on investment
for having these big real estate kind of
(14:01):
investments, and what kind of people dothey want to attract?
We've said before that, you know,
when you say we have flexible work,
or remote work, but you need
to be in the office once a week.
You've really said, I want the best people
(14:24):
I can getwho live within 20 minutes of the office.
Right?
You don't really want the bestpeople, right?
I mean, that's which is fine.
That was always who they were hiring.
But with remote work and the advent of,
kind of dispersed work and
(14:44):
we've reached this point where, you know,we could hire
different people, we could hirea different type of employee,
but not if we're notif we're stuck with that old paradigm.
It is totally the company'sright to do that.
The golden rule, the one with the goldmakes the rules right.
Now I'm going to say something which
is, perhapsunpopular with some of our listeners,
(15:09):
which is what will make this workincrease.
Remote work is that we, as the employees,
need to prove that we are worthy of it.
We need proof of concept.
We need proof that the employeris not giving everything up by
letting us do that.
(15:29):
A lot of the argumentsthat people use about remote work are,
well, I want time with my family,I want this, I want that.
Well that's nice.
Your boss doesn't really care.
Right? Right.
It does. It benefits. Employees.
Satisfied voices are importantonly insofar as it affects your work.
(15:51):
Well so real quickI'm going to go slightly off on.
It's going to take a while. Okay. Okay.
Oh I think we had a slight delaybut I think it's solved now.
I was just going to say on the same line
as we're talking about,you know, employers and CEOs.
A recent survey of CEOs actually suggests
that remote workwill be dead in three years.
(16:13):
What is influencing this belief?
Like, is it just wishful thinking?
Mostly it's wishful thinking.
I mean, there was a CEO in the UKwho was famous for a microsecond
for saying what we really needis 20% unemployment.
So all these people will rememberwho they are.
I remember us talking about thatin a past episode on like.
(16:36):
So there's some of that.
Here's what it's going to take.
And I don't know who's going to do it.
I don't know how they're going to step upwhen somebody becomes the next Google,
when somebody becomes the next big companywith a remote first policy.
People will start to pay attentionon a larger basis.
(16:58):
Right now, the companies that aresuccessful remote first are very niche
in terms of the industry that they're in,and they tend to be fairly small.
All they tend to be startups.
When a company reaches mega status
and works in this new way, followsthis new God help me, I use the word
(17:22):
paradigm, then it will start
because people follow the leaders.
Right? Right.
And so that's what it's going to take.
Somebody has got to really breakout of the box.
Or remote work is going to continueto team
by team, organization by organization.
(17:42):
Bit by bit.
And it's never going to 100% takeover.
Right. Of course.
Like we don't expect it.
They're still going to be.
Well if you listen to people out thereeverything is binary right.
Either.
It's death to the officeand burn your ties,
and you never have to go backinto the office again.
(18:04):
Seize the means of production.
Or. That was a lovely little experiment.
Get your butt back to your desk.That's fair.
And I don't think it's going to bethat simple, but our goal in in
with this show,and I hope our listeners understand this.
Our goal is just whatever the situation
is, whatever your situationis, find a way to make it work right.
(18:27):
Make some good decisionsabout your own attitudes,
your own behaviors, and your own choices
so that you can navigate this crazychanging workplace
and keep body, soul, and spirit intactin the weasels away from your ankles.
That's what we're here for. Okay? Right.
(18:47):
So, Wayne,thank you so much for this conversation.
And there was a lot of stuffthat I would have loved to get to,
but we do not have time.
So probably another show.
And before we go,
the second edition of the Long-Distanceleader is now available.
This updated guide is perfectfor navigating today's remote
and hybrid work environmentswith new principles and proven strategies.
(19:08):
Kevin Barry and Wayne Trammell
show you how to lead effectivelyno matter where your team is located.
Don't miss out
on the latest insights and exercisesdesigned to boost productivity and morale.
Order your copy now!
At Long Distance Work life.com/ldl andstrengthen your remote leadership skills.
Today.
And thank you so much for listening
to Long Distance Worklife for Shownotestranscripts and other resources.
(19:31):
Make sure to visitLong Distance Work life.com.
If you haven't yet, subscribe to the showso you don't miss any future episodes.
And if you're on Apple or Spotify,please give us a rating and review.
Your feedback helps us improveand reach more listeners just like you.
Feel free to contact us via email orLinkedIn with the links in our show notes,
and let us knowyou listen to this episode,
or suggest a topic for Wayneand AI to tackle in a future episode.
(19:53):
We would love to hear from you.Thank you for joining us.
And as Wayne, like, say,don't let the whistles get you down.
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