Telework Sweet Spot Is Tough to Find

Automattic is the web company that’s responsible for WordPress, the software running the site at which you currently find yourself, along with many, many others across the web. WordPress is one of the key technologies that allows TAI‘s employees to write remotely when necessary,  helping sever the link between work and the office. So it seems almost fitting that its parent company is now ditching the office entirely after realizing that its employees weren’t making the commute to its trendy San Francisco digs often enough to justify the rent. Quartz reports:

The office at 140 Hawthorne went on the market after CEO Matt Mullenweg came to the realization not enough employees used it. As he explained on the Stack Overflow podcast earlier this year, “We got an office there about six or seven years ago, pretty good lease, but nobody goes in it. Five people go in it and it’s 15,000 square feet. They get like 3,000 square feet each. … There are as many gaming tables as there are people.”

Automattic has always given its 550 employees the choice of working remotely; the San Francisco space was an optional co-working space, spokesman Mark Armstrong said. The company maintains similar offices in Cape Town, South Africa, and outside Portland, Maine, and gives employees a $250-a-month stipend if they want to use commercial co-working offices elsewhere. And if they’d rather work at Starbucks, Automattic will pay for their coffee.

For some workers, the loss of a central meeting place might not rise to the level of inconvenience. In the information economy, productivity is becoming divorced from co-location, and some studies suggest that workers can increase their effectiveness by working remotely.

That said, there are still benefits—both tangible and intangible—to schlepping in to an office and working alongside one’s coworkers. So-called “water cooler interactions” can foster innovative new ideas that might not arise via emails or a chat window. Moreover, working in an office is a social task that can help build camaraderie; conversely, working remotely can erode that sense of being a part of a team. Studies have shown that too much telework can be alienating for employees.

There’s a balance to be struck here, somewhere between 100 percent office-time and 100 percent telework. That sweet spot will obviously vary industry to industry and company to company, but one study ballparks the optimal amount of remote work somewhere in the region of 2.5 days a week. Different firms will make their own adjustments to that formula, but it would stand to reason that the Goldilocks point lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

Silicon Valley is struggling to find that point, recently. Automattic is now swinging to one extreme, while IBM and Yahoo have swung to the other by nixing remote work entirely. As we progress in the transition away from an economy based on the manipulation of “stuff” and into one based on the manipulation of ideas, data, and information, finding this balance is going to be more and more important. Clearly, that’s easier said than done.