In the last few years, businesses have experimented with remote work on a massive scale. While flexibility has its benefits, one truth has become increasingly clear: in person teams consistently outperform remote teams when it comes to culture, communication, and long term organizational health.
Culture Cannot Be Built Through a Screen
Culture is not a slogan or a Zoom background. It’s the energy people feel when they walk into a room. It’s the shared discipline, the unspoken expectations, the way teams learn from each other simply by being present.
When teams work remotely, culture becomes diluted. The rituals, the camaraderie, and the accountability all fade. What remains is a group of individuals completing tasks, not a team building something together.
Communication Suffers — and Productivity Follows
Remote work introduces friction into communication. Questions that would take five seconds in person become 20 minute messages, threads, or meetings. Coordination becomes heavier. Misunderstandings increase. Research backs this up.
A study published in the Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics found that when IT professionals shifted to remote work, productivity fell 8%–19%, even though employees worked longer hours. The biggest reason? Higher communication and coordination costs. Similarly, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research reports that fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity, driven by communication challenges, weaker mentoring, and difficulty maintaining culture. These findings confirm what leaders have felt intuitively: when communication weakens, performance declines.
Connection Drives Performance
People perform better when they feel connected to their team, their mission, and their leaders. In person environments create spontaneous learning, faster problem solving, and stronger trust. These are the elements that drive high performing organizations. Remote work can deliver convenience, but convenience is not the same as connection.
In Person Teams Build Momentum
When people share space, they share energy. They build momentum. They innovate faster. They solve problems before they escalate. They hold each other accountable in ways that simply don’t translate through a webcam. In person teams do not just work together, they grow together. And that is why businesses that prioritize in person collaboration consistently outperform those that rely on remote work.