When people work remotely, their own tasks may still be completed on time while a new colleague struggles to get an answer, find a mentor or learn informal ways of working. Fortune describes research by Wharton professor Peter Cappelli and researcher Y. Jasmine Wu on this difference. CEOs need to manage cooperation separately from individual output metrics.
What the researchers observed
Fortune reports on a study by Cappelli and Wu, published in California Management Review. In late 2023, they conducted 38 group interviews with about 760 employees of one international financial company in the United States, United Kingdom and India. When participants said work was getting done, they usually meant their own assignments and KPIs. Answering a colleague’s request, helping a newcomer understand an informal process or making time to mentor someone was harder to fit into an individual workday. In remote communication, sending a message is easy but receiving a timely answer is not guaranteed. People were more willing to call and help colleagues they already knew. Someone without an established network could wait longer and, after repeated failed attempts, become less willing to ask again. A weak connection delays help; delayed help further weakens the connection. This does not prove every spontaneous office conversation is valuable. It shows that some coordination relied on relationships which the management system had not recognised as work.
Why a return-to-office rule is not a complete solution
In the company studied, hybrid working did not always bring together the people who needed to collaborate. Office space had been reduced, shared desks could be scarce and attendance days were not necessarily coordinated. An employee could commute only to join the relevant team on a video call. Large online meetings did not automatically produce a shared understanding either; participants described cameras being off and parallel work leading to yet more meetings. Some employees nevertheless valued the quiet and concentration of home. For others, fewer informal office interactions were an advantage. The CEO’s choice is therefore not a universal number of office days. First identify which interactions the business is losing, which tasks benefit from physical presence and whether dependent colleagues actually meet on the same days. Otherwise an attendance policy can raise commuting costs without restoring coordination. Presence is an input to team design, not a substitute for it.
Make mutual help part of the operating model
Describe invisible team work as seriously as individual results. If an experienced specialist trains newcomers or responds to cross-functional requests, that contribution needs time, expectations and recognition in performance assessment. Cappelli and Wu suggest accounting for help and mentoring in job descriptions, performance criteria and promotion decisions. Planned introductions beyond the immediate team can support new employees; coordinated office days can support work that genuinely requires several people together. CEOs might ask managers how long typical cross-team questions go unanswered, whom a new hire can contact in the first week, where critical knowledge is concentrated and what happens when those people are unavailable. These signals do not replace KPIs; they add an organisational-capability dimension to them. The boundary of the research is important. Interviews at one company cannot establish that remote work caused every reported problem or identify the best policy for all businesses. They give a concrete hypothesis to test against the company’s own processes.
Key takeaways
- The researchers conducted 38 group interviews with roughly 760 employees at one international financial company.
- Individual KPI work continued, but help for colleagues and new-hire integration more easily fell off the daily agenda.
- Shared office days are useful when the people whose work depends on one another attend together.
- This one-company interview study does not establish causality or a universal remote-work rule.
What this means for CEOs
CEOs should measure access to help, speed of onboarding and knowledge transfer alongside personal productivity. Hybrid work performs better when interaction is designed for it rather than left to chance.