"office culture" is not an excuse to exclude people

This week, certain corners of the internet were abuzz about an op-ed by Washingtonian CEO Cathy Merrill, in which Merrill lamented the rise of remote work and suggested that if workers don’t want to come back to the office and want to stay remote, managers could change their status to “contractor” instead of full-time employees, so they lose benefits, healthcare, etc. Washingtonian employees took a stand over the op-ed on Friday and refused to publish on the site.

Much of Merrill’s argument seems to center around the loss of “office culture.” She writes:

I estimate that about 20 percent of every office job is outside one’s core responsibilities — “extra.” It involves helping a colleague, mentoring more junior people, celebrating someone’s birthday — things that drive office culture. 

One immediate fallacy (and there are many) with this line of thinking: none of these things require being in a physical office to happen. The last year has shown us that you do not necessarily need to be in the office together to help your colleagues, mentor junior employees, and celebrate birthdays. I’ve seen all those things continue to happen in the past year remotely, through Zoom, Slack, and other tools. Going remote didn’t make people stop caring about their colleagues. (And over at Nieman Lab, Laura Hazard Own has a good piece on why tasks like buying the birthday cake are what’s considered “non-promotable tasks,” and are often shouldered by women and people of color.)

Merrill also then goes on to warn that employees who choose to continue to work remotely will be out of the “informal loop,” will miss out, and thus that will make them less valuable employees — and easier to let go:

Those who work from home probably won’t have FOMO, they will just have MO. The casual meetings that take place during the workday. The “Do you have three minutes to discuss X?” These encounters will happen. Information will be shared. Decisions will be made. Maybe if you are at home you’ll be Zoomed in, but probably not. As one CEO put it, “There is no such thing as a three-minute Zoom.” Being out of that informal loop is likely to make you a less valuable employee.

The weirdest part of this is Merrill’s apparent acceptance of bad practices, her attitude that they can’t be fixed — and the message that if you’re a remote employee who suffers as a result of being excluded, it’s your loss. This is a common argument: remote employees won’t be included, they’ll be out of the loop. But executives who say that should really think twice about what they’re saying. Who makes the decision to include or exclude someone?

Good leaders should take it upon themselves to change that practice, if it exists. It shouldn’t be the accepted norm that remote employees get left out, and executives just shrug their shoulders in defeat. They can instead practice being inclusive leaders — the ones who always set up a Zoom for a meeting and ensure that anyone working from home feels included and never left out of meetings or decisions.

Honestly, if you are a manager and you don’t include a member of your team in a team meeting simply because it required setting up a Zoom, you’re not doing a good job of being a fair and inclusive manager. And what’s so bad about a three-minute Zoom? You might have to put in more effort and take the extra step to ask someone to hop on a Zoom, versus popping by their desk or seeing them in the kitchen — but it’s still possible, and I would argue it’s your responsibility if you’re a manager. The executives who say it isn’t seem to be misunderstanding a big part of their role as leaders.

It reminded me of another recent big story about executives and workers, at Basecamp — where the leaders of the company laid out new policies banning “societal and political discussions” in an attempt to “reset the culture” at the company. In his newsletter Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel made the very good point that executives don’t get to just decide to “reset the culture” with a sweeping decree. “Company cultures solidify slowly, taking form over years and decades. They’re complex ecosystems because they’re made up of real, live human beings — not lines of code.”

Company culture, I would note, is different than “office culture.” Whether or not you’re in a shared physical office together, company culture still exists. It’s something that develops over time, as Charlie notes, and consists of sets of practices and habits and behaviors that will exist no matter where your employees are.

If your company culture is one where you don’t include people in meetings because they’re remote, or you don’t have conversations with them or include them in decisions because setting up a Zoom is too much effort, then it’s time, as a leader, to fix your company culture.

Good things to read

The inadequacy of the term “Asian American,” Vox.

The oldest productivity trick around, New York Times.

It’s not their job to buy you cake, Nieman Lab.

These Instagram accounts want to make therapy less white, Buzzfeed News.

Why can’t I stop thinking about child-free women?, Elle.

Online shopping changed, and we barely noticed, Vox.

Burn all the leggings, The Atlantic.

The forging of Kate Middleton into a future queen, Jezebel.

On the profoundly modern marriage of Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, Vogue.

Ageism hurts all of us, even young people, Elle.

Good things to cook

This week I was on an Omsom kick! I used two of their starters to make Thai chicken larb, and pork bulgogi. (I promise this is not sponsored in any way and I didn’t get anything free from them. I bought an Omsom starter kit myself and just genuinely love them!)

A newsletter recommendation

From time to time I’m going to keep using this space to recommend other newsletters I love.

This week’s recommendation is Jillian Anthony’s Cruel Summer Book Club, which is not actually a book club but is a great newsletter about love, loss, and living well. I love Jillian’s essays and interviews, and almost always find interesting links to read that I haven’t seen elsewhere!

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