The Rise, Fall and Return of Remote Work
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies worldwide had no choice but to allow their employees to work from home. This shift to remote work had never been done on such a grand scale, but its roots can be traced back 50 years or so, when the concept was first referred to as telecommuting. IBM was at the forefront of this new idea, growing its telecommuting workforce from around 0.5% in the mid-1980s to around 40% by the mid-2010s.
With the arrival of the Internet, laptops, and faster connection speeds, telecommuting started to flourish. However, it was short-lived.
By 2017, companies that once supported working from home returned to five days in the office. Even before that, Yahoo’s CEO distributed an HR memo in 2013 that said, “Speed and quality often suffer when we work from home.” We will revisit this claim later.
The COVID Pandemic Changed the Equation for Remote Worker and Employee Expectations
Before the pandemic, working from home had become an historical anomaly; many considered it an experiment that failed. But with the onset of COVID-19 and global lockdowns, companies had no choice: allow remote work or shut down entirely.
When the crisis ended, many companies continued to let employees work from home. Many also adopted a hybrid model. It combined work-from-home days with in-office days.
However, today, just like in the mid-2010s, many companies are reversing this policy and, once again, insist that all employees return to the office full-time. Large IT companies like Meta and Google are leading this new policy, but they are not alone.
The Real Problem: Data Latency in Distributed Workforces
Fast Internet and laptops are apparently no longer enough to solve the challenges of remote work. High latency between an employee’s home and the company’s data is a significant factor. This disconnect creates a frustrating user experience and hinders productivity, not to mention, the increased data security challenges that arise.
And yet, employees the world over have come to expect a hybrid working environment. The result of forcing the Return to Office (RTO) policy is “absenteeism,” whereby the employee doesn’t go into the office but also doesn’t work from home!
The CDC Foundation (CDC) reports that absenteeism costs U.S. employers $225.8 billion annually. Data from Sedgwick shows that lost productivity alone can reach $11,000 per employee each year. Beyond these productivity losses, absenteeism also leads to operational downtime and forces employers to spend more on hiring, onboarding and overtime pay.
Why Collaboration Tools Don’t Fix Performance Issues
How can companies reverse this trend and get the best of both worlds: a hybrid work environment that delivers the same benefits as a five-day in-office model?
While tools like Microsoft Teams help with communication even when the workforce is dispersed, data latency issues still remain. This is where technology designed for the modern, distributed enterprise becomes critical.
The Data Access Fix for Remote Workers: Putting the Data Where the Workers Are
Edge appliances change the game. They cache the files employees need locally, so there’s no server round-trip every time someone opens a document. Global file locking handles the version control nightmare—multiple people can work on the same files without creating conflicts.
The result? Home performance that matches office performance.
How to Make Hybrid Work Actually Work
CTERA’s edge solutions tackle the data access bottleneck that undermines remote productivity. Companies using this approach cut absenteeism in their workforce, reduce IT costs, and empower employees by giving them flexibility, thus empowering them to be productive from anywhere, without sacrificing what the business needs: performance.
Remember that Yahoo CEO who believed that remote work often sacrifices speed and quality? She was working with old technology. The tools, especially CTERA’s, have caught up.
