“Back to the office” may well be the most explosive executive decision a CEO can make right now.

More employees are being asked — or forced — to return to their desks after months of working from home. But the surging delta variant of COVID-19 is giving employers second thoughts about how much time workers should spend in the office — or whether they should be there at all. Big technology companies, for example, are taking no chances. Recently Twitter TWTR, -2.76% shuttered its newly reopened San Francisco and New York offices while Alphabet’s Google GOOGL, -0.38% and Facebook FB, +0.15% have made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for their office workers, whenever they return.
Such corporate soul-searching is just fine for many employees, vaccinated or not, who aren’t eager to be confined to their cubicles even when some pre-COVID normalcy returns. The pandemic has given many employees, particularly office workers, greater control over their time and how they use it. For them, working from home eases concerns about COVID or child care or commuting — and can even boost productivity.

Yet what workers want is often in conflict with a company’s motivation to keep employees under one roof, where their informal connections and camaraderie can lead to bigger and better ideas and initiatives. Many managers also are uncomfortable not being able to see and know what workers are doing on company time, even when projects are being accomplished remotely.

Management expert Robert C. Pozen is a veteran executive with a deep understanding of the dynamics between bosses and workers. The pandemic’s impact on the workplace is still in flux and more than a little confusing, which led Pozen to provide informed solutions in a new book, “Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work… Wherever You Are,”(Harper Business, 2021), co-authored with journalist Alexandra Samuel.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Pozen offers tips on how to thrive when working remotely by following established performance building habits and tools that can bring satisfaction to you and your boss. Start by seeing yourself now as an independent contractor, a “business of one,” and bring the office to you.

MarketWatch: Employees working from home are more difficult for employers to monitor because they are not working regular hours. Not every manager is comfortable with this change, but in fact it may be for the better. Why is greater autonomy for workers a desirable goal for a company?

Robert C. Pozen: Counting hours in knowledge-based industries isn’t very useful. In a knowledge-based economy, the hours worked are an input, not an output. When most work is remote, the boss can no longer walk around the office and see who’s there. The notion of “face time” — which I think is a destructive notion — was fragile anyway because it’s not a well-functioning system for knowledge workers. It basically falls apart when people are working remotely and it’s no longer possible for the boss to see when exactly they are working. Instead, the boss should be mainly interested in results — the outputs.

Having helped to run two large companies, I understand the boss is reluctant to give up counting hours unless there’s something to replace it. Professionals say, “We really want to focus on results but my boss wants me in the office at certain times,” because the boss wants some system for accountability. If employees are not in the office, what exactly are they doing?