Another week, another ‘Wave’ ???

5 news items from the world of work and workplace you can digest in 5 minutes.

This week:

1. Superstar cities need to embrace hybrid neighborhoods to survive
2. The biggest future of work trends in 2024
3. Dropbox CEO on RTO: ‘They’re not resources to control’

Hybrid Neighborhoods: Superstar cities are facing a new reality in which hybrid work worsens vacancy rates, threatens the vibrancy of neighborhoods, and thus makes urban cores less attractive to employers, employees, and residents. But cities and buildings can adapt and thrive by taking hybrid approaches themselves, reports 麦肯锡 . Priorities might include developing mixed-use neighborhoods, constructing more adaptable buildings, and designing multi-use office and retail space. Mixed-use neighborhoods—that is, neighborhoods that are not dominated by a single type of real estate (especially offices) but instead incorporate a diverse mix of office, residential, and retail space -? have suffered less during the pandemic than office-dense neighborhoods have. That resilience gives investors, developers, and cities more reason to engage in placemaking and developing hybrid neighborhoods. Read Full Article.

What’s in store for 2024: What are the biggest future of work trends in 2024 that we need to be ready for? The impact of breakthrough technologies (particularly AI) will be felt more keenly than ever as the rate of adoption accelerates, reports Forbes . This wave of digitization and transformation will affect everyone, even those outside of the high-tech industries and tech-focused roles where it is already the norm. Sustainable working practices, and understanding and reducing the impact of our actions on our environment will be high on the agenda. There will also be a focus on future skills, employee experience, digitization of work, lifelong learning and a decentralized workplace. In 2024, more of us will choose hybrid working arrangements, combining the collaborative and cultural benefits of face-to-face coworking with the flexibility of remote working. Read Full Article.

AI Revolution: The company powering the AI revolution is quite happy to let staff keep WFH, reports Business Insider . 英伟达 dia creates the high-powered chips used for AI trailblazers like ChatGPT and Bard. It's not adopted the strict return-to-office mandates enforced by some Silicon Valley firms and CEO Jensen Huang is "perfectly comfortable" with staff working from home. And while many CEOs have about-turned on their pro-WFH stances, Nvidia has stuck by this flexible policy. Beau Davidson, MILR , its vice-president of employee experience, said flexible work helped attract and retain staff. He called it "a way for employees to balance their personal and work obligations, while preparing for the future, so they can focus on doing their life's work." Read Full Article.

Flexible Work is Key: Goldin’s Nobel prize shows flexible work is key for women, despite what CEOs say. Best known for her work on women’s careers and how they can be derailed by marriage and motherhood, Claudia Goldin is only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Her findings can certainly help businesses reduce the professional gender gap. Remote work makes a big difference and Goldin's research found that women value "temporal flexibility" above pay. Working from home allows more temporal flexibility, as you don't have to spend all that time commuting. Allowing job sharing, and focusing on productivity rather than time-in-seat also help women succeed. Read Full Article.

Not Resources to Control: Dropbox ’s CEO Drew Houston has a message for bosses who want workers to return to office: ‘They’re not resources to control.’ While Dropbox used to work near-entirely at its Bay Area headquarters, Houston has completely warmed to a distributed model since the pandemic—and is mystified as to why other leaders haven’t joined him. “The unlock for us was realizing we’re not going back to the office as we know it, but we also don’t want to be stuck at home on Zoom for the rest of our lives,” he said. “What’s the ideal environment? A windowless conference room?” Dropbox’s chief people officer, Melanie Rosenwasser said: “Any future of work strategy we chose, we wanted to ensure that employees had control over not only how they work, but where they work. We’re trying to put practices into place that, if adopted on a wider scale, make everyone more productive and efficient.” Here, here! Read Full Article.