T here are benefits and opportunities to both working remotely and working in an office — neither of them is perfect. And, if you’re trying to create the ultimate culture, as mentioned above, you’ll need to take into consideration the unique implications of both. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of both working in an office and working remotely.

Office

Working in an office is the traditional standard method of employment. It is familiar and pretty well-established as a practice. While there some offices that skew outside the norm (we’re looking at you, startups with ping pong tables!), for the most part, people know what to expect when they take an office job.

Pros

• Able to quickly collaborate with teammates.
• Can visually manage in-person employees.
• Easy to build culture if everyone is present.
• Clients can come and visit.

Cons

• Quite easy to become distracted.
• Expensive and hard to scale office space.
• Lose out on amazing talent not directly near you.
• Miss out on international support hours, unless you hire overnight employees.
• Lack of life flexibility for things like appointments, family emergencies.

Remote

Working remotely is still somewhat new. While lots of companies are doing it and they are all willing to share what has or hasn’t worked for them, it can still be a black box for teams looking to make it their own. Here are a few of the pros and cons, both from a company and an employee perspective, for working remotely.

Pros

• Availability for talent pool is much wider.
• Do not have to pay for office space.
• Risk of distraction is much lower for remote employees.
• Potential better quality of life for employees.
• Reduced stress for employees.

Cons

• Employee isolation.
• Potential difficulty tracking employee performance.