Some of the most useful things people learn at work are never written down.
You learn how a team handles a difficult client. You see how an experienced colleague approaches a problem. You hear which questions are worth asking in a meeting. Someone shows you a shortcut while you are sitting next to them.
Remote work changes how those lessons happen.
Not Everything Is Learned Through Training
A new employee can learn plenty of technical information remotely.
A colleague can share a screen. A manager can record a demonstration. A process can be written down and saved for later.
But there is another kind of learning that is harder to schedule.
It happens while people are doing their jobs.
A junior employee hears how a senior colleague handles a difficult conversation. Someone notices how an experienced coworker checks a piece of work before sending it to a client. A new hire learns who to ask when a problem does not fit neatly into the company’s documentation.
Those moments are easy to miss because nobody calls them training.
Remote Work Changes Informal Learning
A 2025 study published in Vocations and Learning examined 266 Finnish employees working for an international IT company. The researchers looked at remote-work intensity alongside informal workplace learning, psychological needs, job satisfaction and turnover intention.
The study did not find that working remotely more often automatically meant less informal learning. In fact, remote-work intensity was not significantly associated with informal workplace learning in the study’s initial analysis.
The findings were more nuanced. Higher remote-work intensity was associated with lower satisfaction of the need for relatedness, while informal workplace learning was connected to job satisfaction through work engagement. The authors concluded that remote-work intensity was not clearly beneficial or harmful for learning and well-being on its own, although they noted that hybrid work may offer advantages for supporting both.
That distinction matters.
Remote work does not switch workplace learning off. It changes the conditions in which some kinds of learning happen.
The Knowledge Nobody Thinks to Document
Formal training usually has an obvious place.
Informal knowledge does not.
A company may have a guide explaining how to submit a report. It is less likely to have a document explaining exactly how an experienced employee decides which parts of that report need another conversation with the client.
That kind of knowledge is often built through observation and experience.
Remote workers can still learn it. But some of those opportunities may need to be created rather than simply happening in the background.
A manager can invite a new employee to observe a client call. A senior employee can walk through a completed project and explain the decisions behind it. A team can make time for questions that do not belong in a formal training session.
None of this needs to become another weekly meeting.
New Employees Have Less Context to Fall Back On
This matters particularly early in a career.
An experienced employee may already know how to deal with an unclear request, a difficult client or a disagreement over priorities.
Someone new to the workplace has to learn those things somewhere.
Remote work can make that learning more deliberate. Instead of hearing the answer during a conversation at the next desk, a new employee may need to know who to contact, where the information is stored or when it is appropriate to ask.
For employers, this is particularly important when hiring people at the start of their careers. Entry-level roles are evolving, and some of the routine work that once helped employees build experience is being redesigned. Read more about how entry-level jobs are being redesigned.
That is not necessarily a disadvantage. It simply means the team needs to make those routes visible.
Remote Tools Have Advantages Too
There is a tendency to treat this as a choice between office learning and remote learning.
It is not.
Remote tools can make some forms of learning easier.
A screen-sharing session can show someone exactly how to complete a task. A recorded explanation can be watched again. Written documentation can be updated when a process changes.
The problem is not that remote employees cannot learn.
It is that some learning that used to happen naturally now may require a little more intention.
Make Informal Learning Easier
A remote team does not need to recreate the office.
It can instead make the useful parts easier to access.
New employees can have a person they know they can ask for help. Managers can encourage shadowing on important projects. Experienced employees can explain how they reached a decision, not just what they decided.
Even a short conversation after a difficult project can turn an individual experience into knowledge the rest of the team can use.
Remote work has changed where people work.
It has also changed some of the ways they learn.
The companies that recognize this do not need to fill their calendars with training sessions. They simply need to make sure that useful knowledge still has a way to move from one person to another.
Sources
- Vocations and Learning — Remote Work Intensity in Knowledge Work: Associations with Informal Workplace Learning, Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intention — peer-reviewed 2025 study of 266 Finnish employees at an international IT company.
- Tampere University Research Portal — Remote Work Intensity in Knowledge Work — university record for the 2025 peer-reviewed study.