A Harvard Business School expert professor Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury cautions that while “work from home” may have sufficed during the pandemic, the true model needs to be “work from anywhere,” in a new report on CNBC.

“Remote work is more than work-from-home, and the form of remote work I am most excited about is work-from-anywhere, where the employee has the choice to live anywhere,” Choudhury said at a recent CNBC Workforce Executive Council virtual event.

For starters, any firm that is looking at real estate savings as a primary driver is making the decision for the wrong reason. Yes, there are cost savings to be had, but it is the ability to hire talent globally and allow talent to choose a location based on their own preferences — whether a lower-cost locale or to be closer to family — which should be understood as the much bigger driver.

Some other key points from the report:

  • The C-suite needs to think of itself as remote work team, like any other — in fact, as a “shining example”
  • Short of a full-scale transformation of how an organization works, including all of its communication, collaboration and productivity procedures and systems — which he said could be a “multi-year” project — companies trying to implement remote work permanently will struggle.
  • The idea that people miss an office environment is misguided, said Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder and CEO of GitLab, at the CNBC Workforce Executive Council virtual event. 
  • “If you try to do hybrid you will have an A team and a B team, those in the office and those deprived of information and career opportunities,” the GitLab CEO said. “Two ways of working is very, very hard and companies should not do it lightly. It’s ok to say ’back to the office or all remote, but hybrid can turn out really bad.”
  • “Rewarding people who come early and leave late is a habit to break,” Sijbrandij said. “Same as ‘brb, getting coffee.’ We don’t care when you are working. We care about output and we’re very meticulous about measuring that,” he said, noting that GitLab has hundreds of indicators it tracks, but hours punching in and out are not among them. “We reward results, not time in seat,” he said.