>It would be trivial to see how much workers were communicating with each other in a remote team. Only if you keep metrics on all your communication tools rega

>It would be trivial to see how much workers were communicating with each other in a remote team. Only if you keep metrics on all your communication tools regarding who talks to whom and for how long. That means, chat, email, phone calls, etc. Which many workers would be uncomfortable with since it's blatant and visible tracking. Worse, easy to gather numeric metrics that are known about tend to become KPIs which tend to become gamed. >In fact, I don't know how you would even get your purported "useful information" unless as a manager all you're doing is micromanaging your employees all day? You lift your head and walk around the office every so often. Amazing what you can see from a distance. Who is sitting next to whom and talking. Who is with whom in an conference room white boarding. Chat with people casually about what's going on next to the coffee machine. And so on. Trivial, to use your own phrase, for any half-decent manager without coming off as micromanaging but rather just sociable. edit: >In a remote-only organization, communication is necessarily all done in a matter that's transparent and not transient like face-to-face communication. You claim doing so remotely is more difficult but do not substantiate this. You claim that face-to-face discussions are effective... for what reason? What about face-to-face communication makes this more effective? Just a bunch of unsubstantiated claims made here. It's obvious to anyone with social skills and common sense. As a species we have evolved to communicate face to face. Not just words but gestures, facial expressions, posture, tone, etc. That's all part of what we consider communication. Especially important when there's potential conflict going on. Digital mediums are far from perfect and lose many of those characteristics.