Too Good to Lose: The Reality of Making Remote Work, Work

When conversations about remote working surface, they often become polarised. Some leaders worry about productivity, visibility and culture, whilst others see flexibility as essential for retaining talent.

Having recently met with a Head of Finance to discuss their experience of offering remote working, this article sits somewhere more practical. Less ideology, more lived experience. And an experience worth sharing.

When the employee in question, a highly capable member of the finance team, mentioned they were planning to move to Scotland, their manager didn’t receive a resignation letter.

Instead, they received notice of intent. An honest conversation about life changes. Around the same time, another team member had already resigned, and between them they held a significant amount of operational and system knowledge.

Losing both wasn’t just inconvenient. It felt risky.

A Retention Decision, Not a Remote Policy

Importantly, this wasn’t an employee demanding flexibility. It was the company that initiated the idea. Rather than defaulting to “that won’t work”, the leadership team paused and asked a different question: what would it take to keep them?

The answer was surprisingly simple. The employee would work remotely from Scotland, travelling to the Sussex-based office once a month for a full week, typically around month-end. When weighed against recruitment fees, onboarding time, training, the risk of a mis-hire and the loss of ERP system knowledge, the decision to prioritise retention over recruitment and to support remote working became compelling.

Remote work does not work for everyone, and this example doesn’t pretend otherwise. Speaking openly, the Head of Finance described their colleague as self-motivated, curious, proactive and quietly ambitious. They continued learning independently, initially completing a basic SQL course, which enabled them to build reports supporting multiple departments, often without being asked. When something could be improved, they acted. When they had an idea, it was shared.

This matters because remote work magnifies behaviours. Strong habits become stronger. Weaker ones become more visible. In this case, distance didn’t dilute performance. It amplified it.

One of the most surprising outcomes was communication. Moving away from office chit-chat, communication became more intentional, with weekly one-to-ones becoming non-negotiable. Finance meetings took place monthly, sometimes twice monthly. On top of that came regular ad hoc Teams calls, often resulting in four or five touchpoints a week.

Instead of sending emails, they started picking up the phone. Instead of issues lingering, they surfaced faster. Remote work didn’t reduce accountability; it actually increased it.

What did change was the need to plan.

When they came down for their office week, work was structured around what was better done face-to-face: auditors, system discussions and collaborative problem-solving. Projects were queued intentionally. Nothing was left to chance.

That planning mindset extended everywhere, from travel contingencies, including train cancellations, to work prioritisation. Remote working removed spontaneity but replaced it with clarity, which benefited both sides.

One insight stood out above all others:

“If you’ve got a motivated person, they’ll motivate themselves wherever they are. But you need to make yourself visible. You need to make yourself available.”

Remote working didn’t reduce the manager’s role; it actually brought it into sharper focus. Trust became more explicit, with expectations becoming clearer. Support became more deliberate.

Crucially, this wasn’t rolled out as a precedent. There wasn’t a flood of similar requests as other departments saw the output, not the postcode.

So, what are the downsides?

They exist, but they’re conditional.

Remote work requires trust, and trust must already be earned.

It demands self-motivation, not supervision.
It requires better planning, not better technology.
It places responsibility on managers to stay engaged, not disengage.

For the wrong individual, it creates more work, not less. For the right one, it becomes a retention and performance lever.

Final thought…

This wasn’t a flexible working experiment. It was a decision rooted in value.

The business didn’t “allow” remote work but chose not to lose someone who mattered.

And perhaps that’s the real lesson I took from the conversation, in that remote working works best when it’s treated not as a policy, but as a considered response to a great employee.

Be open-minded. Be clear. Be honest about expectations. And if the person is too good to lose, don’t lose them.

Although this article has been written confidentially, I’d like to thank my contact for taking the time to share their experience on such a discussion-worthy topic.

Have you offered remote working within your team but had a different experience? Or have you personally worked in a fully remote role? I’d be genuinely interested to hear your perspective.

And if you’ve navigated the difference between hiring remotely from day one versus retaining remotely, that feels like a conversation worth continuing.