On-site work vs. remote work is a topic that is on the agenda in many technical writing departments right now. Here is what really matters in practice, beyond marketing claims and tool promises.
In most companies, the discussion about remote work and on-site work is conducted the wrong way. On one side stand employees defending their autonomy and flexibility. On the other stand managers and executives demanding control, collaboration, and company culture. Both sides have arguments, and both sides overstate them.
What this debate regularly lacks is level-headedness — and the willingness to acknowledge that the right answer depends on the task, the team, and the stage of life, not on a blanket company policy.
I write this from the perspective of a leader who has experienced both: teams that worked well in the office, and phases in which remote work was necessary and productive. My assessment is nuanced, but it has a direction.
On-site work vs. remote work: what counts in practice
What actually works better in the office
There are tasks for which physical proximity makes a real difference. That is not nostalgia, it is observation.
Onboarding and knowledge transfer. Anyone new to a team or a task learns faster when questions can be asked without scheduling a meeting. The short walk to a colleague’s desk, the glance over the shoulder, accidentally overhearing a conversation that contains relevant information — all of that happens on its own in the office. Working remotely, it has to be organised actively. That is possible, but it takes effort, and in practice it is often not done well enough.
I have watched newcomers who were onboarded entirely remotely still asking questions after six months that would have been answered in the first weeks in an office setting. Not because they were less capable of learning, but because they lacked the flow of information that happens incidentally in an office.
Complex coordination. When a project is in a difficult phase, when conflicts are smouldering within a team, when a decision has to be made that will meet resistance, then a room with people in it is more efficient than a video call. Not because the technology fails, but because non-verbal communication carries nuances that get lost on a screen. Body posture, eye contact, the brief hesitation before an answer — you see that in the office; on the screen, often you don’t.
Company culture. That sounds abstract, but it isn’t. Company culture emerges from shared experiences: the lunch where a problem is mentioned in passing and a solution surfaces, the corridor conversation, the moment a new colleague realises how the company really ticks. These moments cannot be reproduced over a video call. Anyone who works only remotely over the long term knows the company from documents and meetings, but not from the inside.
What the research says — and what it doesn’t
There are plenty of studies on remote work and productivity, and they reach contradictory conclusions. That is usually not down to methodology, but to the fact that they examine very different tasks, industries, and circumstances. A study showing that remote work increases productivity has probably surveyed knowledge workers with no close coordination needs. A study showing the opposite has probably examined teams with a high need for collaboration.
My take: don’t rely on studies when it comes to your specific situation. Rely on observation. What happens in your team when everyone works remotely? Where does friction arise? What gets slower, what gets faster? That observation is more specific and more reliable than any aggregated study.
What speaks for remote work — honestly considered
I would be dishonest if I left this out. Remote work has real advantages, and anyone who rejects it across the board is ignoring reality.
Focused individual work. For tasks that require depth and uninterrupted concentration — complex analyses, writing, programming — working from home is more productive for many people than an open-plan office. By everything we know from practice, interruptions cost more time than the single outlier suggests. Someone interrupted briefly three times an hour does not lose three times five minutes. They lose the working hour.
Work-life balance. Caring arrangements for children or relatives in need of care are hard to reconcile with attendance-based models. Anyone who dismisses that as softness loses experienced staff who will find a better arrangement elsewhere. In a labour market with a persistent skills shortage, that is not an abstract risk.
Commuting time. Someone who commutes two hours a day does not just lose that time for themselves; they arrive more exhausted, work more exhausted, and go home more exhausted. That is hidden over-exploitation, not an efficiency gain for the company.
Why most arrangements fail anyway
The real problem is not whether someone works in the office or at home. The problem is that many companies have no clear idea of what they actually want to achieve.
A return-to-office mandate introduced without justification signals: we don’t trust you. That is not a leadership decision, it is a vote of no confidence dressed in administrative language. The employees who can leave, do. Those who stay are dissatisfied. The office is full, but the mood is worse than before.
The other way round: teams that work fully remotely without ever having the chance for informal exchange lose cohesion over time. It is not a dramatic collapse, but a gradual drifting apart. People know their colleagues’ tasks, but not the human beings behind them. You notice that at the latest when things get difficult.
What good leadership means on this question
Good leadership on this question means not making the decision depend on the calendar — „remote allowed on Mondays and Fridays“ — but on the task.
Onboarding phase: in person. Not because there is a rule, but because it makes sense and can be explained to the employee.
Focused project work without ongoing coordination needs: remote possible. When the result is what counts and not the route, you don’t need anyone in the office.
Critical project phases, conflict conversations, decisions of greater consequence: prefer in person. Not as punishment, but because it works better.
This requires leaders to know their teams and their tasks well enough to make these distinctions — and to have the courage to justify them to their staff. Not with a guideline from HR, but with an honest argument.
What is often forgotten here: the difference between trust and control
In the debate about mandatory attendance, many companies actually have a different problem: they have no functioning leadership by results. When the only way to judge whether someone is working is their physical presence, then the remote-work problem is in truth a leadership problem.
That sounds harsh, but it is meant as an invitation to honest self-reflection. I have seen teams who sat side by side in the office and were not particularly productive. And teams who worked dispersed and delivered excellent results. The difference was never the location. It was whether goals were clear, whether progress was made visible, and whether leaders insisted on commitment.
Anyone who leads by results can use in-person and remote work as equivalent tools — and choose the right one for each situation. Anyone who does not lead by results will build good teams neither with mandatory attendance nor with remote freedom.
Hybrid models: what works, what doesn’t
Hybrid models — mixed forms of in-person and remote — are the most common solution, and often the right one. But here too the rule holds: a hybrid model is not a blanket arrangement that works equally well for every role.
What works in hybrid models: fixed office days for the whole team on which collaborative work happens, not just status meetings. Days on which people see each other because they are actually doing something together — joint planning, problem-solving, feedback. That is presence that makes sense.
What does not work: office days packed with video calls you could just as easily run from home. When staff come into the office and sit in front of a laptop all day running calls with no counterpart in the room, the attendance rule is a formality without substance. That frustrates people and produces exactly the distrust you were trying to avoid.
My assessment: two to three office days a week, with genuine collaborative work planned for them, is a sensible baseline for most teams. Fewer can work when the task allows it. More can make sense during intensive project phases. What does not work is a compromise without a reason.
What the companies that do both well say
In my consulting work I have spoken with companies that have implemented hybrid models consistently and without major friction. What they have in common is not a particularly clever remote-work policy. It is a leadership culture in which results are made visible.
Weekly goal reviews that ask not about attendance but about progress. Retrospectives in which teams talk openly about how they want to work. Leaders who themselves model that in-person and remote are equivalent options — and who actively insist on presence for particular situations because they can explain why.
That sounds like a lot of effort. It is less effort than the alternative: months of discussions about remote-work quotas, ill feeling in teams that perceive the topic as a question of appreciation, and managers who spend their time administering attendance lists instead of leading.
The real question
The debate about remote work and attendance often distracts from the real question: do we have a leadership culture in which trust and a focus on results go together? Or do we need physical presence because we have not learned to lead by performance?
That is uncomfortable. But it is the right question.
Companies that answer this question honestly arrive at nuanced models that come down to neither blanket mandatory attendance nor complete remote freedom. They arrive at arrangements that fit the task, the team, and the employees’ stage of life. And they explain these arrangements — not as a decision from above, but as a jointly understood way of working.
That takes more effort than a guideline. It is worth it anyway.
If you are currently wrestling with this question in your company: don’t start with the remote-work policy. Start with the question of how you measure performance and how you lead. The rest follows from there.
Further standards and industry information are available from tekom — the German professional association for technical communication.
You can find more on concrete real-world cases in our article series on Artificial Intelligence and Technical Documentation.