Remote work and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank
Prognosticators question whether remote work and 'productivity paranoia' contributed to recent economic woes in the U.S.
As stories about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) continue to surface, prognosticators are attempting to determine exactly what went wrong.
One problem, according to some articles, was an over-emphasis on remote work.
Indeed, SVB warned in its last annual report that the company “may experience negative effects of a prolonged work-from-home arrangement as well as our implementation of a broader plan to return to the office.”
It was a point picked up by several publications such as Axios, which wrote, “Whether remote work led directly to a bank failure, or whether poorly-managed remote work was simply a sign of bigger problems at the company, we may never know. Either way, what happened at SVB will likely enter the broader debate about returning to the office.”
Productivity paranoia
The argument that ‘remote work leads to corporate failure’ is undoubtedly tempting to company leaders who want employees back in the office. It also plays on fears that many managers have that their remote workers are not, well, working.
Four out of five corporate leaders say that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive, according to recent reporting from Microsoft. Also, compared to in-person managers, hybrid managers are more likely to say they struggle to trust their employees to do their best work (49% vs. 36%) and report that they have less visibility into their their employees’ work (54% vs. 38%).
“This has led to productivity paranoia… Leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased,” Microsoft said.
However, at least one article about SVB has debunked the theory that a remote-work culture caused the bank’s demise.
“At the center of SVB’s demise is a decision by management at the height of the pandemic — when a tech investment boom meant it was flooded with new deposits — to lock up half of its assets in a $91 billion portfolio of securities that made it vulnerable to rising interest rates,” the Financial Times reported. “At the time, its share price valued it at a record $44 billion, more closely resembling a surging tech company than a regional bank stock.”
This success, the Financial Times concluded in its reporting, made the bank complacent to the risks.
Even Axios hedged its bets regarding whether remote work played a role in SVB’s collapse.
“It’s certainly possible that if more executives were working in closer proximity, those missteps would’ve been avoided,” Axios wrote. “But it’s hard to really know.”
Other journalists heaped scorn on the theory.
“Companies did very well through COVID [when employees were largely working remotely] and began to stumble over the past seven to eight months as financial pressures increased, but remote had nothing to do with it,” noted Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work, a global research and analytics firm that evaluates corporate culture, and added that other financial institutions like Bank of America and American Express continue to be profitable while embracing remote work.
Many commentators note that while some companies may have good reasons to want employees back in the office, fear of corporate failure is generally not one of them.
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