Why the biggest threat to companies is remote working, and what to do about it — EASTWEST Public Relations

With the pandemic and people either working from home or losing their jobs, one of the main tasks of business owners now is managing the expectations and the anxiety of the team, and this leads to the work done by Professor Thomas Allen. In 1997, he wrote a book called Managing the Flow of Technology, and as a result of his work, he created the Allen curve. This curve displays an exponential drop in frequency of communication between people as the distance between them grows. In fact, in the original MIT study, they had people sitting in offices, effectively a basketball court away, and they found that if people were at either ends of the basketball court, the chances of them seeing each other even just once a week were less than 10%, amazing reduction in the opportunity just to catch up if you’re not really in the vicinity. Professor Allen updated his book in 2006, where he discussed the impact of technology and found that even with all the tools available then, there was still a marked decay in the use of communication with distance. So, whilst the heart may grow fonder with distance, the understanding does not grow stronger. The challenge, then, is to to engage and bring teams on the journey and create alignment and a renewed sense of purpose.

Originally published at https://www.eastwestpr.com.