When remote working isn’t implemented well and fails, who pays the price?

There has been a great deal of debate recently about remote working, triggered by some big-name companies implementing a return-to-office policy. While remote working has been transformative for many businesses and workers, reducing operating costs and allowing employees more flexibility and work-life balance, there can be a downside.

If you’ve ever received a disconnected, disjointed, or just plain distant service experience, you already know that remote work doesn’t always work if implemented poorly.

Not for the customer.

Not for the team.

Failing the customer

In a B2B, service-based business, you are not buying outputs; you’re buying partnership.

You’re paying for confidence. For continuity. For someone to carry the weight with you.

And when a supplier’s remote model is poorly designed, you feel it;

• Slower responses
• Lack of urgency
• Repetition, handovers, and follow-ups that feel like you’re doing their job for them 

You might not know what’s going on behind the scenes, but you can feel when a team isn’t in sync.

And it makes you wonder:

“If this is how they show up for me, what’s happening in the background?”

Failing your people

Although many people benefit from remote working, one area in which it has challenges, especially for less experienced team members, is that of professional growth and development.

Professional growth doesn’t just come from training modules or 1:1s.

It comes from the in-between moments:

• Sitting in on a tricky client call
• Overhearing how someone else handles objections
• Leaning across a desk to say, “Quick question - does this sound right to you?”

Remote-heavy setups erode those moments. Knowledge gets siloed, and context is lost.

Juniors don’t get exposure. Seniors don’t get feedback. Everyone misses the nuance.

And over time, the collective IQ of the team drops. Not because people aren’t smart, but because they’re no longer learning together.

What you get is a team that’s working hard, but not getting sharper. And that matters to your customers, because the better your people get, the better their experience.

Failing your teams

It isn’t just your people at an individual level that remote working can fail.

High-performing teams rely on rhythm, friction, and flow, and in a remote model, especially one without structure, the default becomes:

• Working in isolation
• Over-reliance on documentation over discussion
• Less challenge, less creativity, and less shared momentum

Without the ability to see the whole, individuals can only optimise their part.

And that’s how brilliant teams become just competent ones. Still accurate. Still professional. But missing the spark that sets them apart.

Choosing to be office-first

That’s why at Ascend Payroll, we are proudly office-first. We believe performance is powered by presence and shared energy, by overheard conversations, and by the context you can’t always capture in a Google Doc.

Our model;

• Office-first for connection, learning, and edge
• Flexible when it matters -because we trust our people
• Designed to protect our service promise, not just convenience

It gives our people the development edge and our team the cohesion edge.

And our clients, the service edge that so many are quietly missing. It’s not just about having a supplier you can contact; that is easy enough to do with remote working (although many are still not getting this right!).  You need a partner who’s close; close to each other, so they can stay even closer to you.

That’s what we’ve built at Ascend.

Because in a world of distributed teams and disappearing standards, we’re here to raise the bar together, in the room, every day.