Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.hcamag.com
For organizations willing to hold a different view, Zweig sees an opportunity for flexibility to be a hiring and retention weapon. “It could be a very good recruitment tool for some organizations that are willing to understand that presence does not necessarily equal performance,” he says. “Giving people some of that autonomy actually can be very motivating and enhance commitment and engagement.”
Presence is not performance
The thread connecting both perspectives is one concept: physical presence isn’t a reliable measure of performance, and organizations treating it as one are making a strategic error.
“It’s a bit of an illusion of control that they’re using presence as a proxy for performance, and that’s driving a lot of the push to bring employees back to the office,” Zweig says.
From her view inside a fully remote organization, Cheyne agrees: “In an office you can kind of get away with looking busy, whereas you can’t really hide that in a remote environment,” she says. “It’s really about how well you deliver, the impact that you have, and good self-sufficiency and time management.”
Recruiting for ‘ownership mentality’
That philosophy shapes Cheyne’s organization’s hiring, filtering for what she calls an “ownership mentality” – the capacity to deliver and be accountable without external structure – and it carries through to performance management, which centres on clear expectations, regular one-on-ones, and open feedback, she says.
