The Blessing and the Curse of Working Remote
Six years remote at Foresight, and what it cost us
The Blessing and the Curse of Working Remote
In 2019, about 1 in 6 people in the insurance industry worked mostly remote. By 2021, it was half. Today, only 7% of carriers expect most of their people in the office every day.
There’s no doubt the pandemic sped this up. Foresight went right along with it. We’ve been mostly remote since 2020. Fully remote at some points, hybrid more recently. Six years in, I have a verdict.
The blessing is easy to see. For the employee, there’s no commute. You get more time for family, hobbies, and yourself. Some people can work from anywhere. The commute never changed anyone’s paycheck, so cutting it is a raise. Same pay, less of your life spent getting to and from work.
For the employer, it’s one of the best retention tools we have. Most people want it, especially working parents. A Stanford study at Trip.com moved employees to two days a week remote, and resignations dropped by a third. Performance and promotions didn’t change. It also opens up your talent pool. You’re no longer limited to people who live within driving distance of the office. You can hire from anywhere in the country, or the world.
The curse took longer to show up.
The people who pay the most are new hires and young people. They miss the training that happens sitting next to someone. The quick question across the desk. The call they overhear and learn from. A Harvard study of software engineers found that when teammates stopped sitting together, junior engineers got a lot less feedback on their work, and women lost the most. You can schedule training on Teams. You can’t schedule overhearing.
It costs them on the career side too. Live Data Technologies looked at 2 million white-collar workers and found fully remote employees were promoted 31% less often than people working hybrid or in the office. You’re less visible. You see less of management. In a KPMG survey, nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said they’d be more likely to give in-person employees raises, promotions, or better assignments. It isn’t fair, but it’s how it works.
The culture takes a hit too, even when you’re intentional about it. We were. We had weekly virtual meetings. We did social Fridays where we didn’t talk about work at all. Every once in a while, we got together in person for an outing. It helped. It just wasn’t the same, and it wasn’t enough. When you’re not in the same room, it’s easier to go into silos and talk less. Sometimes nothing replaces a good face-to-face conversation.
As the owner, I felt it everywhere. It’s harder to manage. Harder to coach. Harder to train. Harder to build a culture. I’ve seen the difference in our training, our culture, and our performance. And I waited longer than I should have to do something about it, because I didn’t want to take away something my team loved.
So what’s my verdict? I don’t know exactly what remote work will look like at Foresight a few years from now. Here’s where my head is. New hires spend more time in the office while they learn the job, and they earn more flexibility as they get up to speed. If someone needs to work fully remote for a stretch, for whatever reason, they can, as long as the performance is there. I don’t have the formula yet. I’ll keep experimenting until I find what works.
We’ll still hire fully remote, but the bar is higher. It has to be a strong candidate, most likely licensed and experienced. Someone who doesn’t need the room to learn the job.
You have to look at your own business and decide what works for it. Some of the cost of remote work shows up on the balance sheet. Most of it doesn’t. It shows up in your culture, your morale, and how long it takes your new people to get good.
Remote work saves you money you can see. It costs you things you can’t.
Sources
The Jacobson Group, Q1 2026 Insurance Labor Market Study
Stanford Report, “Hybrid work is a ‘win-win-win’ for companies, workers” (Trip.com study)
Emanuel, Harrington and Pallais, “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers,” NBER
Morning Brew, “Fully remote workers are missing out on promotions” (Live Data Technologies, KPMG)