Oodle answers: Why do employers fight remote work (especially when they’re saving so much on rent)?

This is a regular series where Oodle experts answer your marketing questions. To submit your own question, email questions@oodle.io.

Oodle Partner Ryan Hughes: It all boils down to, they don’t know how to lead remotely. Everything turns into, “Well, I don’t know how to work in a remote world. I’m used to the old school where everyone showed up every day in a suit and a tie, and we sat in a room and took notes by hand.”

OK, cool, but the stone age is over. It’s on you as a leader to figure out how to lead and empower without leveraging the crutch of the physical office. 

I also think folks who are micromanagers tend to want people in the office. They want to be able to walk by and see, “Oh, yeah, they’re working.” Even though the employee might not be doing anything. Just because your hands are on the keyboard doesn’t mean you’re being productive. 

Oodle Partner Mark Hughes: I think the short answer is fear. 

Ryan: It’s a lot of fear and not knowing some of the data. We know the data because we’ve looked at it, we keep a pulse on it, and we’ve experienced it. 

Take productivity. If you asked some folks who insist that everybody needs to be in the office, I guarantee you they think people are more productive in the office. We know factually, from data, that is not true. 

To the second point, that employers save so much money on overhead by not being in the office, specifically on rent. Yes, you save rent. But you incur a hell of a lot more overhead.

We used to have a closet, we had the room of requirement at the office, and that’s where everything lived. Now it’s distributed, it has to be sent to wherever those people are, and it gets a lot trickier. It’s actually a lot more expensive, and honestly a lot more difficult, to maintain things in a distributed environment. 

For more on remote work, listen to Ep. 5 – Remote work works.

‘Oodle Answers’ is a regular series where Oodle experts answer your marketing questions. To submit your own question, email questions@oodle.io.