In 2009, my future wife and I bought our first house, and I worked from home one day while my cable was being installed. Seated in my kitchen, I answered emails, took a couple of calls – normal, boring stuff. The cable installer, however, was suitably impressed. “I wish I could work from home,” he told me.

Him, and millions of other workers. At least, that was the case before 2020, when the office exuded a gravitational pull that dragged people in five days a week, 12 months a year.

Now? As recently as January, six in 10 workers who say their work can be done from home are doing so, according to Pew Research. And it’s largely by choice – only 38% of those at-home workers say their office is closed or unavailable for them to go to. (This is the current situation at ASI, by the way. Our office is open, but a lot of our employees are choosing to work from home.)

The dynamics of our professional lives have unquestionably changed. It’s a remarkable reinvention of corporate America – stodgy, bureaucratic and inflexible by reputation – to support this shift so willingly and completely. After all, look at our just-released Counselor Best Places to Work list, where 82% of companies offer hybrid or remote work.

Really great story from my colleague @SaraLav_ASI about what it means to be a best place to work in the post-COVID era. https://t.co/4W5m0f2xHE

— Theresa Hegel (@TheresaHegel) March 7, 2022

For workers like me, it’s the realization of a long-held hope that I regarded as, if not impossible, extremely unlikely. For anybody who digs breakfast in bed or might indulge in a Ferris Bueller-esque school-skipping power fantasy, working from home taps into a desire to meet the world on our schedule – even if, at the most basic level, it’s just hacking away at a different keyboard on a different desk.

Of course, there’s backlash. Innovation is plummeting without in-person collaboration, some experts contend. Employees will feel isolated and disconnected (and indeed, 60% of respondents told Pew they feel less connected to co-workers). “It’s just a job, it’s just a list of tasks, there’s no loyalty to the company,” Chris Collins, an associate professor at Cornell University who researches human resource management, told WIRED for an article titled “It’s Tough to Build a Corporate Culture in a Remote-Work World.”

For those of us working from home and loving the comfort, flexibility and increased productivity, it makes me wonder. Are we just children eating ice cream every day for breakfast – supremely happy but also fundamentally unhealthy?

We Can Make Remote Work Better

To be clear, I don’t think anyone can objectively discuss this subject. Everyone works somewhere – in a home or office, with co-workers or by themselves – and knows what they like. For this debate, they all have skin in the game.

But as someone who worked from home once a week prior to the pandemic and has pretty much exclusively worked from home these last two years, I’ve thought about remote work a lot. Editing our Best Places to Work package – and seeing what so many great companies in our industry are doing – has made me contemplate it even more intensely.

I can certainly tell you this: Remote work isn’t perfect. In its current form, it abjectly fails at replicating in-office dynamics: the casual drop-ins, the overheard conversations, the spontaneous moments of social collisions. These are the cherished bits of culture building that in-person proponents hold sacred. Think of taking in the view from a mountain peak vs. looking at a picture of it on a phone. Then think about the difference between an in-person and virtual Happy Hour. It just doesn’t automatically translate.

Still, this is really the first time that the majority of the professional world dove into remote work. And like any problem, by devoting singular mindshare to innovation and conscious strategy, there will be improvements. Virtual offices, for example, offer an intriguing simulation of office life through digital game-like spaces; my colleague Sara Lavenduski visited one recently for our Best Places to Work coverage, and she (metaphorically) walked away a convert.

Companies are also realizing that, unlike in-person, you can’t just put people to work in their homes and expect instant connection. “It’s not impossible if you’re super-intentional about communication,” said Jill Haspert, CEO of Foxtrot Marketing Group, in a recent Promo Insiders podcast I hosted with three companies from this year’s Best Places to Work list.

Be sure to check out the awesome podcast I recorded with @CrystalDFans @BlinkMktg and @foxtrot_mktg.
Great conversation from three companies on this year's Counselor Best Places to Work list on how to engage employees and keep them productive and happy.https://t.co/wPAgFrpCem

— C.J. Mittica (@CJ_ASIMedia) March 9, 2022

Foxtrot has hired employees from multiple states and is allowing them to come in as often or as little as they like. In fact, the New Brighton, MN-based distributor opened new headquarters last year without any private offices; instead, it has hotel desking and “huddle rooms.” Haspert says the company uses apps like Trello, Slack and Google Chat to keep employees constantly connecting and communicating. “You have to make it really intentional, so nobody feels isolated and everybody feels like they’re part of that team,” she says. “I think we’ve been successfully able to do that, but it’s a ton of work, and you feel like you’re communicating the same thing over and over and over because not everybody’s there to hear it all at the same time.”

I think it’s foolish to say that meaningful connections can’t be forged online. I cut my teeth in journalism working on successful fan sites with groups of people from across the world – and this was in the late ’90s! In my 13 years at ASI, I’ve forged great friendships with industry people who I’ve never met in person. Social media haters, as an indictment of digital relationships, like to critique the artifice of being “Facebook friends,” but that’s like saying all in-person interaction is simply saying “nice tie” to a co-worker as you pass in the hallway. It’s undeniable that today’s technology keeps us connected in remarkable ways. And I do believe that power can be harnessed to great effect.

Now that I’m having real conversations again with people at sports games and kids’ birthday parties, the talk inevitably turns to work – and more precisely, where someone is doing it. When people ask me, here’s what I tell them: I love working from home. I don’t miss the commute and I don’t miss real pants. I do miss running into friends from other departments. I don’t love living in email and Teams all the time, and it’s annoying that I can’t just pop over to ask one of my co-workers a quick question. But I wouldn’t trade those for the convenience and comfort of working from home. And I certainly wouldn’t trade it for the moments with my family that I’ve earned back – my wife and I spending more time together, being there for my kids every day when they get off the bus, or wrapping up work at 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon and being at my dad’s house five minutes later, drink in hand, catching up on the week that was.

“When people ask me, here’s what I tell them: I love working from home. I don’t miss the commute and I don’t miss real pants.”

Chris Rock has a classic bit about how people only have two choices when it comes to relationships: married and bored, or single and lonely. It reminds me of the in-person vs. remote debate. No single choice is perfect. Each has its strengths, as well as its flaws. As many positives as I see with working from home, I do think there’s merit to blending the benefits of remote with the connection that in-person yields.

But no matter what companies choose for the future, there’s room to make it the best possible version for their employees. In-person businesses can dish out compelling perks (such as catered lunches) and make it clear that workers have the flexibility to prioritize life and family events. Companies that work remote should go over the top with their communication and create moments that bring people together.

Amid “The Great Reshuffling” and the record numbers of worker quits, it’s clear that people aren’t going to settle for less. They want to feel like their needs are being met. They want to do meaningful work. They want to feel connected. Otherwise, they won’t stay. We’ve learned a lot in the last two years, including this: A great company isn’t just an office. It’s something bigger: an idea, a feeling, a community that radiates far beyond four rigid walls.