Trading Flexibility for Soft Surveillance

Now that companies are (grudgingly) accepting remote work, they want something in exchange.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

A quick dissection of a HBR piece by Margaret Luciano, called 4 Ways Managers Can Increase Flexibility Without Losing Productivity. I wanted to use this as an example of how hard the transition to a fast-and-loose, self-willed organization will be for traditionalists.

The abstract includes this declarative sentence, which sets the tone of the article:

If employees want the benefits of flexibility, they’ll also need to shoulder some of the responsibility that goes with it, like autonomous problem-solving and providing and checking for updates.

I doubt that many workers want to avoid autonomous problem-solving, but the real quid pro quo is this: if workers want flexibility they will have to accept some soft surveillance with managers in exchange.