The home office, despite all the momentum it has gained, has accumulated its share of critics over the years. Corporate and government leaders frequently reiterate orders to return to the office, citing performance concerns. Professor and best-selling author Scott Galloway described remote work as one of the worst things to happen to young people.
Recently, The New York Times reported on a study that concluded that “younger workers have suffered in their careers by working from home, receiving less training and fewer opportunities for advancement.”
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As the leader of Tulsa Remote, the largest remote worker attraction program in the United States, it may surprise you to learn that I agree with most of these criticisms — but not with the proposed solutions.
Although Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of remote work, few resources and organizational investments have been made to support employees and managers in this new professional environment.
As a traditional oil and gas city that has suffered population decline — and a “brain drain” of college graduates, like many of its regional counterparts — Tulsa in 2018 launched an experimental program to attract remote workers and diversify its economy.
While the program depended on professionals’ ability to perform their work from anywhere, its success would depend on redefining what it meant to “work remotely.”
If newcomers to the city worked in isolation in their new apartments, spending most of their days on video calls without any connection to the surrounding community, we knew they were unlikely to stay.
To combat this, our program overcompensated for the shortcomings of remote work by investing in in-person experiences and human connection.
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In practice, this meant that a remote worker would be assigned a “membership onboarding specialist” upon arrival in Tulsa, who would offer one-on-one support to connect them with groups, activities, and volunteer opportunities that align with their interests.
Tulsa Remote provided free coworking space so participants could work alongside their peers and hosted multiple events per month, from happy hours to baseball games to museum visits, to facilitate in-person engagement.
To further encourage connection, the program used Slack, with hundreds of available channels organized by shared interests, hometown or industry, allowing remote workers to find others with similar affinities or trajectories.
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By facilitating connection, we create natural mentoring opportunities and replicate the chances that arise from proximity to co-workers. Participants began helping each other with professional challenges, such as learning new tools, dealing with management issues, advocating for promotions and even negotiating salaries.
We have started offering professional development opportunities led by our own members to support upskilling in remote careers.
The demand for this training was so great that we recently launched a remote work certification course, in partnership with NYU, to help professionals navigate this new environment and manage distributed or hybrid teams.
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In keeping with our belief in the value of in-person connection, three-quarters of this course will be offered virtually, with the final module held in Tulsa.
Remote Work Programs Need to Fill in the Gaps
Simply put, Tulsa Remote filled the gaps left when the office went from being a building to being a laptop. Leaders need to do the same, rather than expecting remote workers to rebuild the office on their own.
For our remote and hybrid team members, it is necessary to reformulate the same organizational structures that break down barriers, expand information sharing and increase engagement in productive in-person environments.
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This can be achieved with a serious commitment to facilitating connections. Leaders should focus on organizing both remote and in-person interactions across the organization, helping employees gain mentors and mentees, and introducing remote workers to communities inside and outside the organization.
The same rigor needs to be applied to training tailored to the specific skills needed to thrive in a remote environment or to manage distributed teams.
Finally, remote employee leaders need to invest in in-person resources and experiences, whether it’s coworking space, regional team meetups, company-wide summits, or all of the above.
We saw this work in Tulsa. Since 2018, we’ve helped nearly 4,000 remote workers move to our city, with job satisfaction doubling and more than 80% of participants choosing to stay after completing the year-long program.
Our thousands of engaged remote workers have generated more than $600 million in economic impact, created more than a thousand local jobs, launched new businesses and nonprofits, and volunteered time to support other Tulsans in need.
When remote work is practiced correctly, there are significant organizational benefits. A 2024 Stanford study, for example, found that “employees who work from home two days a week are as productive and just as likely to be promoted as their colleagues who work exclusively in the office.”
A Harvard Business School study on the adoption of a “work from anywhere” policy at the United States Patent and Trademark Office resulted in a 4.4% increase in production.
Remote work is not failing our workers. We are the ones failing to lead them. Until we invest in connection and build the infrastructure that helps our employees perform better and stay engaged, we will continue to confuse bad management with a flawed model.
If Tulsa, Oklahoma, can create this support system from scratch and help thousands of strangers thrive in a new city, any organization can adapt to support its employees in this brave new remote world.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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