Terrible bosses: Calling time on the biggest hurdle to remote working

Let’s be honest here, the biggest blocker to successful remote working isn’t a lack of connection, it’s leaders with a lack of empathy.

I know the feeling; you think your head may well explode if you read any more worn-out clichés about ‘slackers in pyjamas’. You simply cannot get any work done, because you are too busy attending webinars to work out how to work remotely. 

When it comes to remote working, the biggest blocker is not video conferencing, or a lack of face-to-face communication: its terrible bosses.

While your group WhatsApp chat is aflame because that CEO whose company retracted a job offer because a creative expressed a need to leave at 5pm to do a nursery pick up a couple of times a week (shock horror), is now writing copious thought-leadership pieces about the joy of remote working. A triumph of spin over substance.

Reader, I promise you, this is not that article. Many of us have been working remotely, or flexibly, or a combination of both, for years. We’ve heard the excuses about why it won’t work, even though we successfully smash the dusty status quo that inexplicably links creativity with presenteeism on a daily basis. 

A media brand’s working from home guidelines that recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. 

Of course, no one in our industry would choose the situation we collectively find ourselves in today. But, let’s be clear, when it comes to remote working, the biggest blocker is not video conferencing, or a lack of face-to-face communication: its terrible bosses. 

Today we face another urgent issue; we need to call time on the lack of trust in the industry’s most precious asset: its people.

Bosses that fundamentally don’t trust their employees; that don’t know how to distinguish between productivity and presenteeism. Business leaders that confused the concept of ‘bringing your whole self to work’ with doing nothing but work. When your status is so inextricably linked to your job title then your meeting, or your ego, at least, demands a live audience.

The Trust Deficit 

Collectively the industry has done an incredible job in tackling consumers’ lack of trust in advertising. But today we face another urgent issue; we need to call time on the lack of trust in the industry’s most precious asset: its people.

It is a lack of trust which is not just bad for business but has a potentially corrosive impact on the mental health of staff. Business leaders who think their most pressing concern in the midst of a global pandemic is installing surveillance software to track their staff have no business being leaders in the first place.

It was a masterclass in un-empathetic leadership.

A media brand’s working from home guidelines that recently went viral for all the wrong reasons should give us all pause for thought. From instructing staff to ‘Respond within just a few minutes to a Slack or Google Hangout message from your colleagues’, to urging employees to ‘Keep your phone’s ringer turned on and answer it when it rings. Now is not the time to screen calls’, it was a masterclass in un-empathetic leadership.

For the record, now is absolutely the time to reappraise our relationships with our smartphones. To mute that WhatsApp chat spreading fake news, to be mindful of our mental wellbeing, to choose just what BREAKING NEWS alert we unsubscribe from.

Advertising for introverts

As we collectively navigate these challenging times it might feel glib to look for a bright-side; but for the advertising industry’s best kept secret - its bloody brilliant introverts - this is it. Now is the perfect opportunity to puncture the era of presenteeism and performative leadership. 

An argument that Rory Sutherland, in typical understated brilliance, manages to condense to a single tweet: “Working patterns during the coronavirus outbreak (videoconferencing, working from home, cancelling events) may be no less productive than normal. They simply reflect what the business world would do naturally if it weren’t dominated by bloody extroverts.” 

Now is the perfect opportunity to puncture the era of presenteeism and performative leadership.

With data from Creative Equals showing just 9% of creatives have their best ideas in the office; we need to collectively agree to stop sweating the small stuff.  Now is not the time for clock-watching and shoe-horning old structures into the landscape we now find ourselves in.