An employee gets into his automobile just after arriving to perform to a shuttered Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) headquarters on March ten, 2023 in Santa Clara, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Pictures News | Getty Pictures

The SVB report noted staff could struggle with perform-life balance although remote, which could lead to “lowered productivity and/or considerable disruptions in our organization operations.” It also flagged on the internet connectivity problems and cybersecurity threats as other remote-associated dangers.

But some workplace specialists say blaming functionality problems on remote perform as an underlying result in for SVB’s current failure is “a practical excuse that ignores deeper organizational problems and fails to address the root causes of the dilemma,” says Dan Schawbel, managing companion of the HR analysis firm Workplace Intelligence.

“Remote perform itself is not the result in of functionality problems,” he tells CNBC Make It. Rather, “what probably contributed to SVB’s collapse was a lack of helpful leadership, communication and management practices.”

Authorities say a drop in employee functionality has extra to do with leadership than operating remotely. Operating from residence could adjust the technologies of acquiring perform performed, but “a higher-trust leader can carry out on a park bench with a can and strings and produce a fantastic expertise for staff,” says Michael Bush, CEO of Wonderful Location to Function, the international analysis and analytics firm that evaluates corporate culture.

The majority of SVB’s eight,500 staff perform remotely across the U.S., which includes leading-level executives, FT reports — in contrast to economic giants like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan that have championed returning to the workplace all through the pandemic. The Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Corp, which took more than SVB, told workers to continue operating remotely, except for vital workers and branch staff, per Reuters.

There is tiny information to assistance that remote perform hampered productivity for the duration of the pandemic, as organization functionality skyrocketed all through 2020, 2021 and most of 2022 primarily based on Wonderful Location to Function information from 30,000 international firms, ten million leaders and just about 40 million staff.

But an increasingly volatile economy with increasing inflation, interest prices, earnings pressures and worker’s fears of job insecurity has an outsized influence on engagement and functionality, Bush says.

“Corporations did quite effectively by means of Covid and started to stumble more than the previous seven to eight months as economic pressures enhanced, but remote had nothing at all to do with it,” Bush says, adding that other economic institutions like Bank of America and American Express continue to be lucrative although embracing remote perform.

SVB could have also struggled with onboarding new staff for the duration of a pandemic hiring spree.

Bush recognizes remote perform tends to make it extra tough to onboard early-profession and new staff but adds that firms have normally struggled with onboarding, even prior to Covid. He says it could take an additional 4 to 5 years for organizations to figure out how to onboard new staff efficiently in a virtual atmosphere, no matter whether that suggests incorporating some in-individual education early on or investing in metaverse technologies to boost the transition.

Bush says it will not be surprising to see extra leaders point to remote perform as dangers to productivity, but that it oversimplifies how organizations must consider about the future of their hybrid and remote perform policies.

SVB’s collapse could be the initially to come about in the new era of remote perform, but it really is worth noting that a lot of other significant firms failed even with the majority of their staff operating from an workplace.

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