Future of work: a personal collection
Alessio Cuccu ??
Chief Kindness Officer | An Outsider Brain for Your Business | Your Trusted and Kind Innovator | Strategy | Foresight | Sustainability | Design | Materials | Innovation | Contributor @The Carbon Almanac
The July month illustration from the calendar reminds me about the different shades of the future of work; I am using this new article to collect in one place many of the articles about , and other related topics which I've shared during the past months on my social profiles.
The pandemic has changed many things; companies, managers, employers, employees find themselves dealing with the new ways of working, new opportunities, changes, with many unknowns and less certainties.
and tolerance for ambiguity and diversity will make a great difference.
I've started collecting and sharing articles and news about the changes and in the way we work since few months from the beginning of the pandemic, spring 2020, as soon as it was clear many things were going to change deeply. The summary I created below works as a reminder of the many different decisions, changes and ideas linked to the topic. By clicking on each of the dates you will get access to each original article.
(P.S. today, July 8th 2021, I decided I will continue to update interesting news related)
2024
RTO mandates aren’t for everyone. Here’s what we did instead—and it’s working: Synchrony CEO
...a company survey revealed more than 85% of our employees wanted some form of work-from-home option.
More than three years later, this way of working has empowered our company to focus even more intently on building a performance culture. We’re seeing higher employee engagement and greater productivity; we’re meeting commitments to our customers and partners; and we’re driving strong business results.
Return-to-Office Mandates: How to Lose Your Best Performers
Recent return-to-office (RTO) mandates like those at UPS and Boeing have a simple message: Come back to the office five days a week.
Too many organizational cultures use face time at the office as their metric for productivity. That’s not the best benchmark. Instead, focusing on outcomes ... allows individuals and organizations to thrive.
1 in 5 workers outright ignore their boss’ RTO mandate—here’s how they’re getting away with it
Regardless of how many days per week workers—or their bosses—want to be in the office, nobody likes being told what to do.
Just 3 in 5 hybrid workers follow their company’s RTO policy.
Still, forcing defiant workers to show face five days a week in the hopes of increased compliance could backfire: Resume Builder’s respondents only want to be in-person for three days a week at most.?
a straightforward answer as to what would actually push them to comply with the mandates: More money. ... 2 in 3 workers said a raise would move them to cooperate. They also wouldn’t mind their company’s help in paying for costs associated with a commute, like transportation benefits and a lunch stipend—or even better, catered lunch at the office.?
In second place: ... having their pick of start and end times to their workdays that best align with their needs.?
Working in the office 5 days a week to build company culture is a myth
The Big Four accounting firm conducted 13 months of research and surveyed over 20,000 business leaders, chief human resources officers and workers ... and it found that hybrid workers feel more included and productive than those who sit at their company’s desk five days a week.?
Return-to-office mandates haven’t worked. What will?
Don’t look back, look ahead. We’ve seen that return-to-office (RTO) mandates have, in many cases, failed. RTO momentum has tended to move by industry and geography
Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
The decision marks a significant shift from Amazon's earlier return-to-work stance, which required corporate workers to be in the office at least three days a week.
"Hey team. I wanted to send a note on a couple changes we're making to further strengthen our culture and teams.
When I think about my time at Amazon, I never imagined I'd be at the company for 27 years.
before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward—our expectation is that people will be in the office.
Global Real Estate and Facilities (GREF) is working on a plan to accommodate desk arrangements mentioned above and will communicate the details as they are finalized.
I'm optimistic that these changes will better help us accomplish these goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams.
Working From Home Is Powering Productivity
Hybrid work is worth about an 8 percent increase in salary... working from home three days a week saves them about five hours a week, about 10 percent of their total weekly work and commute time.??
commuting is the most detested activity in the day, disliked even more than work itself.
In the longer run, WFH could also increase fertility rates. One story I’ve heard repeatedly from talking to hundreds of employees and managers is how working remotely makes it easier to parent.
... while the micro productivity impacts on any individual firm may be neutral, the huge power of labor market inclusion means that the aggregate macro impact is likely to be positive.??
An additional macro productivity benefit from working from home is its positive impact on pollution from transportation. Lowering pollution not only improves our quality of life but can also increase growth.?
In my lifetime as an economist I have never seen a change that is so broadly beneficial.??
2023
Return-to-Office Plans Don’t Have to Undermine Employee Autonomy
“the global pandemic triggered wide-ranging, seismic societal shifts. Many employees’ priorities have changed.”
“less than two-thirds (63%) of organizations trust their employees, and just over half (53%) of employees trust their organizations.”
“67% of employees feel that going to the office requires more effort than it did pre-pandemic and 60% of employees say the cost of going to the office outweighs the benefits.”
“autonomy not only reduces workers’ fatigue by 1.9 times, it also makes them 2.3 times more likely to stay with the organization.”
“65% said whether or not they can work flexibly would impact whether they stay at their organization, and 53% cited it as a reason they were looking for a new job.”
“only 50% said their organization currently has an inclusive culture.”
Bad bosses are harder to hide on remote teams
Countless studies have proven the benefits that both employers and workers gain when working remotely
Remote work shines a light on bad managers
what matters now is the ability to learn and adapt to how their teams want to work today.
remote working forces managers to be intentional about how they communicate, engage their teams, and document clearly.
Synchronous work ties progress to communication, forcing teams to meet to share updates and pause progress on projects when someone is unavailable
Asynchronous work [...] relies instead on documentation and transparency and puts trust in employees and their ability to perform without being micromanaged.
Adopting a remote work approach allows businesses to tap into a global talent pool, fostering team diversity and enabling round-the-clock operations
Redesigning How We Work
In navigating the shift to hybrid work, we’re heading into a future we know very little about. It’s important to admit that, and to keep in mind some of the fascinating research findings on what works and what doesn’t.
Designing hybrid work to encourage knowledge flows and support innovation requires a level of intentionality that may have been missing in traditional colocated companies.
Amazon calls staff back to office three days a week
The share of days worked from home fell to 27% in January, from nearly 35% a year earlier, according to a monthly online survey of working arrangements and attitudes that Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom and others have been conducting since May 2020.
Disney's policy, announced in January, requires staff to report to the office at least four days a week as of March.
Starbucks mandates at least three days of in-person work, while gaming firm Activision Blizzard announced plans for a similar policy this week.
High profile business leaders such as Elon Musk - who ended remote work completely at Tesla and Twitter - have long made their dislike of the practice known.
But many staff have resisted the changes, and in some cases, employers have backtracked.
2022
What We Learned About Hybrid Work in 2022
1?? “The?biggest reason so many workers are still staying home isn’t because they are?antisocial,?or quiet quitting, or want to wear sweatpants. It’s because the commute?gobbles up hours of the?day, and the internet has made the trek optional.
[…] city officials seemed to realize this — and shifted to thinking long term about zoning and transit, whether they are openly planning to repurpose office space for housing, as Chicago is doing, or discussing ways to reduce the length of residents’ commutes, as New York has done.”
2?? “In a hybrid workplace, the center of gravity isn’t necessarily?the office. It’s technology and communication platforms and the norms?that shape their use. And in a truly hybrid workplace, tasks are designed so that?heads-down work can happen at home, with the office reserved for tasks that require interaction.
[…]
At companies?still struggling to make this transition, Larson says, it?would help?if senior leaders stopped coming in five days a week. “C-suite people hate it when I say this,” she admits. But by showing up every day, they’re signaling that hybrid work isn’t compatible with a senior role and undercutting their efforts to help employees establish a new rhythm”
3?? “most bosses are gradually becoming comfortable with managing and?evaluating?employees they don’t see every day?— and not with creepy surveillance software, which Bloom dismisses as “awful.”?
[…] The exceptions he (Bloom) has found are people who have “30-plus years of work experience, and have been very successful and have done that all in person …?but they are real outliers.”
“In the companies that do?truly?want workers?back in person more often, managers?have tried insisting they?return to the office; they’ve tried luring them back with perks; they’ve begged. Despite this, hybrid seems here to stay. Perhaps that comes as a surprise to powerful people who are used to having their orders followed. “
41 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2023
41 inspiring new trends for the new coning year.
1. Hybrid work will be here to stay
4. The age of the tech CEO hero will come to an end
7. Cities will feed themselves
9. The healthcare worker shortage will grow, and we’ll turn to tech for help
15. Philanthropists will demand less – and trust more
19. Cities will turn themselves into "urban reserves" to limit mass tourism
20. ...and we’ll think twice about traveling anyway.
24. Money will rush into women's sports
33. We'll be wearing mushrooms and seaweed
37. The labor movement will surge, and employers will fight back
“It's easy for managers to say "let's just go back to how it was before, because it's too much trouble to figure this out," she said. "That's not really what anybody wants."”
April - Brian Chesky on Twitter
“Our design for working at Airbnb has 5 key features:
1?? You can work from home or the office—whatever works best for you
2?? You can move anywhere in the country, like from San Francisco to Nashville, and your compensation won't change
3?? You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location
4?? We’ll meet up regularly for team gatherings. Most employees will connect in person every quarter for about a week at a time (some more frequently)
5?? To pull this off, we'll operate off of a multi-year roadmap with two major product releases a year, which will keep us working in a highly coordinated way
The world has become more flexible. Our business wouldn’t have recovered as quickly from the pandemic if it hadn’t been for millions of people working from Airbnbs
Companies will be at a significant disadvantage if they limit their talent pool to a commuting radius around their offices. The best people live everywhere”
‘I don’t know how you build great management’ virtually'
″It’s important that these people be at the office, in my view,” Schmidt, 66, ... arguing that for decades, the in-office style has been proven effective. “I’m a traditionalist.”
Schmidt says, a largescale movement to permanently work remotely would deny at least 30 to 40 years of workplace experience.
“I think there is a lot of evidence that humans are social,” he says. “And that the current virtual tools are not the same as the informal networks that occur within a corporation.”
Employees Are Returning to the Office, Just to Sit on Zoom Calls
"Those at companies pushing for?in-person work are asking: What’s the point, if we’re still meeting online?"
"those who prefer working from home, but are now required to come into the office, it’s also a source of frustration.?"
“It’s pointless. Even when we are in the office, we're not collaborating any more than we would just over Slack at home.”
“They’re trying to push for us to go back to the office, but it’s a financial and mental strain,”?she said. “And?there’s still no?actual communication in person.”
"... only 3% of white-collar employees prefer to work in the office five days a week, and 86% want to?work from home?at least two days a week."
" ... companies need to be intentional about how and why people are going back to in-person work, ... Right now, many firms are overlooking that in the rush to reopen offices.?
Remote-Work Experts Are in Demand as Return to Office Begins Anew
in 2004, the field was an academic backwater. Less than 5% of all full workdays took place at home,
“Even more now because people are realizing remote work is not going away and they are concerned about doing it the right way.”
"while it’s clear most employees want to work remotely, it may not always be in a company’s best interest to let them. That’s a tension corporate America has yet to resolve."
Twitter Inc. and Facebook—now called Meta Platforms Inc.—got big headlines by saying many employees can work remotely on a permanent basis.?
banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. still plan to haul most of their people back to the office as soon as possible.
Salesforce.com Inc., meanwhile, talked about letting employees go fully remote a year ago but seemed to backtrack in November
“I think most are just ducking the issue and hoping it goes away,”?
“I don’t think any of the business schools know where this is going to lead,” she says, “but there’s a great deal of experimentation going on.”
many people have experienced is that not having a commute to work every day profoundly enriches their lives. In fact, the number one reason people want to work remotely full-time or on a hybrid schedule is to avoid commuting and to put their saved time into better use—including into their work.
“What many managers don’t realize is that the most desired perk prior to COVID was having a flexible work schedule. But now, that desire has been turbo-charged, and we must meet the moment by giving employees greater flexibility on where and when they work as long as they get their work done.”
Twitter to reopen offices this month but commits to ‘forever’ remote work a day after Google announces forced office return
"Twitter said it would open its its offices here and around the world March 15 but that employees can work remotely permanently"
“Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working at home full-time forever,”
“Anyone who has joined a meeting remotely while others are in a conference room knows this pain,” he wrote. “There will be lots of challenges in the coming months, and we’ll need to be proactive, intentional, learn and adapt."
Google's CEO Just Shared the Best Plan Yet for Returning to the Office
If you're going to have people come into the office, it should be for a reason. That reason shouldn't be only that you've spent a lot of money on a fancy workspace and you have to justify the expense.?
you should be intentional about using that time for things you can't otherwise do virtually.
"tensions to play out has been watching companies of all sizes try to figure out?the best way to bring their employees back to the office. On the one hand, the pandemic has taught many of us that there are a lot of jobs that?simply don't require being in an office."
the future of work will be flexible...
we do think it's important to get people in a few days a week, but we are embracing all options. A set of our workforce will be fully remote, but most of our workforce will be coming in three days a week.
?If you feel the need to constantly be meeting with your team to talk about what they're working on, you're doing it wrong.?
Belgium permits four-day week to boost work flexibility post COVID
"a new labour accord aimed at bringing flexibility to an otherwise rigid labour market."
"Employees who request it will be able to work up to 10 hours per day if trade unions agree, instead of the maximum 8 now, in order to work one day less per week for the same pay."
"Belgians will also be able to choose to work more during one week and less the following one, allowing people to better manage their work-private life"
"The agreement also introduces the right to disconnect after normal working hours for companies with more than 20 employees."
Only 3% of white collar workers want to return to the office full-time
A full 86% of employees want to?work from home?at least two days a week
“Employers have to realize that the genie is out of the bottle,” Andrew Mawson, managing director of AWA, said in a statement. “Workers have seen that flexibility can work and bosses who are not sensitive to their employees’ needs will suffer accordingly.”
"We’re keen to avoid mandating X number of days per week. It’s customer led,” Bowerman said. “So far we’ve seen no detriment to productivity and the flexibility has produced a lot of goodwill.”
Companies are grappling over whether fully remote employees should be paid the same as in-office staff.?
?businesses continue to grapple with?the return to office,?companies who are allowing staff to choose their preferred long-term working models must decide how to handle pay for remote workers who have relocated away from offices.
By August 2021, most Big Tech firms (a group including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft) had announced they would?slash the pay?of employees who relocated out of Silicon Valley, arguing that existing wages were pegged to high living costs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Other firms, however, say pay shouldn’t be linked to location; rather, employees will receive the same wage regardless of their local cost of living, because their work can be done from anywhere, and that cutting remote-worker pay could mean good staff leave.?
Working from home: how it changed us forever
For many of us, once we had cleared a decent space at the kitchen table and evacuated our children, working from home for the first time in our lives was a revelation.
The fashions we’d cultivated were now obsolete. Bras and heels and other such fripperies seemed suddenly absolutely ridiculous, and Zoom style (bold accessories and jazzy jumpers) took hold.?
And still, still we did our work. Better, some say. Faster, without the grim commute or distraction of eight other people’s failing relationships, or emails about toilets and printers and “please refrain from leaving plates in the sink”, or the exhausting knowledge that at any moment the person you fancy from the post room might appear and you’ll have to look up, glittering and fabulous.
Then?the announcement?came. You will return to work. No exemptions, unless your work decides it. An excitement and a chill. A fear as well. Will I lose the easy sharing and continuity I have with my partner, where we have to come to know what each other actually does daily as well as the triumphs and grinds of the jobs we do?
Now that the injunction to be at the office is seriously on the table, discussions are more focused on the practicalities of avoiding rush hour or finding childcare again and on the nervousness of leaving one’s nest, how to get as much work done as one was doing when not commuting, managing one’s boss’s expectations and so on.
Why We Need to Think of the Office as a Tool, with Very Specific Uses
"The future of work is not going to be a choice between in-person, remote, or hybrid. You need to “be fabulous in all of them and learn how to connect with people and work well with people”
"They want better work arrangements. They want better wages and salaries. They want better managers. If you’re a mediocre or poor manager, watch out, people are leaving."
"how many in the banking industry started to pivot from, “This is an aberration. It will never change. We want butts in seats in the offices,” to, “Actually, we’re postponing yet again.” So we’re seeing a shift, a major shift, even from those who’ve resisted the most."
"it’s interesting what you learn from the companies that are doing it well. And I will tell you, people will say all or nothing is easy, in-between or hybrid is the toughest one. So we have to acknowledge that it will require work, it will require a culture change."
"the Covid pandemic showed how much could be done by video."?
"I suspect the desire to get people back is more about motivation, oversight and control."?
"... just because people of Generation X and older have always done this face to face says nothing about whether Gen Z will care to or need to."
2021
Apple Scraps Office-Return Deadline Without Setting New Date
"Employees were informed of the move via a memo sent by Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook on Wednesday."
have a look to the previous decisions taken by Apple
June 2021 https://businessinsider.com/apple-tim-cook-return-office-working-from-home-three-days-2021-6
Looking forward for the next one, maybe next spring.
Covid: Work-from-home guidance reintroduced in England
"Today's change of advice will frustrate some companies keen to keep their staff in the offices and many city centre businesses may also despair that they will lose customers in the build up to Christmas."
"Other companies will find the change less jarring, returning to at home ways of working that are already tried and tested; many workers were not back full time in the office anyway."
"By the last week of November, many people were yet to go back to the office full-time - but seven in 10 travelled to work at least once."
Why executives like the office
“executives are far keener to get back to the office than other employees.”
“Why are bigwigs so much keener on the office?”
1?? Executives like the status that the office confers … when they walk the floors, it is an event. When they sit in meeting rooms, they get the best chairs. On Zoom their biggest privilege is not muting themselves, which isn’t quite the same power rush as using the executive dining room.
2?? Executives believe that in-person interactions are better for the institution they lead. Digital first does not mean never in person … but the advantages of the office can also be exaggerated. Every workplace has corners that people never visit; no gulf is greater than that between the floors.
3?? People advising youngsters to go into the office are those who made their way in that environment. Executives who have achieved success by working in an office are the least likely to question its efficacy. That is a problem
Managers needs to improve both the environments, not assume that one is obviously superior to the other."
Remote-first work is taking over the rich world
"Most office workers remain steadfastly “remote-first”, spending most of their paid time out of the office."
"Last year British government ministers exhorted workers to get back to the office; now they are quieter."
"A few factors explain why remote-first work remains dominant.
"Managers who had once popped their head round someone's door may have found it harder to convey precisely what they needed when everyone was working remotely"
"Patent applications for work-from-home technology are soaring"
"Firms will have to experiment as they get used to a new way of working... offices will still have a role after the pandemic - even if they are mostly empty"
The next phase of remote work will be even more disruptive
"The next phase of remote work will transform economies, as more companies revise their policies to accommodate employees who have permanently shifted to working remotely, and more workers move to places they’ve always wanted to live but couldn’t"
"[...] remote-first startups will figure out new ways of working asynchronously, making fully-remote work more manageable than the version we use today"
"[...] a lot of businesses and a lot of workers have found that remote work works better than they thought."
"[...] this way of working is a lot more productive than they thought. There are a lot of important benefits to this way of working, and it makes sense as a longstanding change not just a short-term adaptation for a lot of roles."
" [...] a general purpose technology ... it’s going to have implications for all sorts of changes at the firm level. We’re in the early stages."
"One of the bigger strategic changes that companies are going to have to make, is to make knowledge more formalized and make processes more formalized, so that you don’t need to rely on oral tradition at the company in order to pass down key knowledge."
"some types of work can be done very well asynchronously, and other types of work require more synchronous coordination."
"it allows people to put more weight on their diverse desires and less weight on one specific aspect, which is are there jobs there"
Remote Work Persisting and Trending Permanent
"U.S. companies' return-to-office plans remain on hold."
"In contrast to the high rate of remote work in white-collar professions, working remotely is far less prevalent among workers with interactions that typically occur in person, such as in education (48%) and healthcare (35%)."
91% of remote workers interviewed in May/June (those fully and partially remote, combined) indicated they wanted to be hybrid (54%) or exclusively remote (37%).?
"Employers may still worry about the effect remote work has on company culture, but most workers do not share this concern. The greater risk to culture could be?not?providing options for work location flexibility that match what employees desire and make them more productive. Gallup research suggests that a mismatch between where employees work best and where they are required to work could impair employee engagement, and ultimately, employee retention."
Arup’s seven-day week: is this the future of work?
"Over a third (35 per cent) of the professionals involved in the experiments chose to do some weekend work."
"It is impossible to return to old ways of working once employees have been given more freedom"
" [...] a lesson that is being learnt by employers who try to return to a culture of office presenteeism: workers are resistant,"
" [...] work patterns have not altered dramatically but employees enjoy the autonomy. Nonetheless, it is not straightforward culture change. “Letting go of some of the past [behaviour] is a challenge, particularly at a leadership level,”?
"Senior leaders also made sure their flexible work was visible. “I purposefully pushed the boundaries so others could see what was acceptable,”
"How the new working week will pan out in other parts of the world as the programme is rolled out globally is yet to be seen. “There will be cultural differences,” says Thornhill. “It will mean something different in Japan, it will mean something different in different countries in Europe. But we know people want more flexibility.”
Turmoil at Bezos’ Blue Origin: Talent exodus came after CEO’s push for full return to the office
“We are seeing attrition rates comparable to those reported by other companies as part of what many are calling ‘The Great Resignation,’
"the departures are a direct reflection on the leadership of Smith – in sharp contrast to the praise they gave for the passion and creativity of their peers within the company."
The central sticking point, and cause cited by many people who recently left, was Smith’s strong push this year for all Blue Origin employees to return to the office. Called “Blue Back Together,”
He wanted every single employee back into the office by September, with no flexibility for a hybrid model – and planned to effectively ban remote work, these sources said.
Dropbox billionaire predicts 40-hour workweek will become a ‘thing of the past’
"The return to work will be effective only when employees are on board. If they’re not, companies should be prepared to lose talent.”
"the 40-hour week is ‘an artifact of factory work’"
“the workplace will now be wherever work happens, and the workweek will be whenever work happens best for each person”.
"Most employers were concerned about communication and productivity – but research has shown that, overall, the benefits have outweighed the risks"
"Workers appreciate the absence of long commutes and increase in family/personal time, while companies have begun recruiting from wider geographical swathes, diversifying the candidate pool."
"Younger workers tend to prefer remote and hybrid work, whereas older generations less comfortable with the technologies seem to favour more traditional work models."
“The first thing you want to do is survey your employees to truly understand their preferences in terms of how they want to see their work arrangements post-Covid-19 – meaning do they want one or two days a week of remote work? Do they want remote work full time? Do they want nothing to do with remote work? What do they really want? And these surveys should be collected anonymously, so that we truly have a real picture of what people want,” Ms Tsedal said."
12 Questions About Hybrid Work, Answered
"Extensive data across surveys indicate?that most?people want hybrid work arrangements — that is, a mix of in-person and remote work"
"Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index, a study of over 30,000 people in 31 countries, found that 73% of respondents desire remote work options"
"Remote work has allowed people to eliminate stressful commutes, reduce daily expenses, and increase quality time with family and friends."
"Leaders need to design plans that combine the preferences of their workforce [...] and they need to be prepared to adjust as they go."
"Migrating to hybrid work is often cast as a question of in-person versus remote options, with time and space being the core elements of concern. The mindset shift that hybrid work requires, and the changes we make because of it, will serve us well as the digital revolution further changes the nature of work through data and technology."
High Quits Rates, Poaching: U.S. Firms Are Plagued by Turnover
“Companies are much more concerned about their talent getting poached than with finding ways to cut staff,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at the job-placement firm, said in the job cuts?report. “They are in full retention mode.”
"U.S. employers aren’t just having a hard time attracting workers, they’re increasingly struggling to hold onto them."
"For employers, it means higher salaries to keep workers from leaving and lower revenue because of the lack of staff."
"Many employers were hopeful that the end of pandemic-era supplemental unemployment benefits would bring workers back to the labor market. Instead, they’ve faced a surge in Covid-19 infections and continued to struggle with staff levels and a so-called gray wave of early retirements, particularly in occupations like nursing.?"?
Hard Work Isn’t the Point of the Office
"Remote is the status quo for many American workers now. People are?quitting their jobs?rather than be forced back into offices. It is the corporate headquarters, not the bedroom office, that is, or is about to be, the novel intrusion for much of today’s white-collar workforce."
"white-collar workers can do hard work from home just about as well as they can do it in the office—and maybe even better, precisely because their colleagues aren’t interrupting them."
"What we found in our study is that communication outside of groups declined, but communications within teams became more densely connected."
"if today’s corporate conventional wisdom were true, the pandemic would have created a hellscape for productivity. Instead, corporate earnings are rising, wages are rising, and?official measures of productivity?are rising too, in practically every state."
"But?a great deal of office-based collaboration turns out to have been pure wasted time. Other research suggests that we’ve been consumed by?“collaboration overload”?for years and that we might be better off?clawing back up to 20 percent of collaboration time?for ourselves to avoid burning out from an eternal purgatory of circling, circling, circling back."
"Some people, especially extroverts and some managers, welcomed this change. Spending their weekdays just, like, talking to corporeal beings all the time was such a pleasure! Others hated the new arrangement so much they promptly quit …"
"The virtual office skeptic says, “we can’t go fully remote, because the serendipity of personal connection is too important.”?"
"The real challenge of remote work isn’t that it somehow erases the mysterious serendipity of magical office collisions. The problem is that making connections digitally requires enrollment and effort. If we do it with intent, it actually works better."
"The real magic of connections at the office was that we were having these connections without trying. It’s not that they were better, it’s that they were effortless. But they didn’t work for everyone in the same way. They often reinforced status roles and privilege. They were unevenly distributed and didn’t usually appear when we needed them. All of which added up to a new layer of stress for many people."
The office is back - but not as you know it
"The return to work that so many companies had planned as the pandemic ebbed has not happened"
“Firms have told us that they remain committed to retaining a central London hub but how they operate will change to reflect post-pandemic trends, such as hybrid working,”
“Businesses don’t want to think about building compliance, air quality, sanitisers, extra cleaning and more. They want all of that to be taken care of.”
“People need to feel they’re in an environment where they’re getting more than they get at home, especially as they might be commuting from further out,”?
"the “definitive book on the future of hybrid working” by?London Business School professor Lynda Gratton
?“We are experiencing the greatest global shift in the world of work for a century. So, how do we make the most of this unique opportunity and radically redesign the way we work forever?"
Why Are So Many People Reluctant To Return To The Office?
“psychological research has highlighted some of the key variables that make workers thrive, as well as those that significantly impact the probability that someone will be engaged, productive, and happy with their careers (or not).”
1?? Autonomy: adapting work to our life rather than our life to work.
2?? Productivity: you can expect productivity to be higher in this group [people who opted into WFA] than in people who are forced to do so, often with no training and inadequate resources.
3?? Bad bosses: who really want to go back in, and opt-in to regroup with their bosses in person, are probably working for a competent boss (and yet, I would also guess that those bosses are least likely to force people into the office).
4?? Trust: it is a lot harder to pretend to work when nobody is watching. This is why for the most part of modern history there was a hidden premium for those who parked their cars before the boss arrives and where still parked in the office parking lot when their bosses left.
It’s performance that counts rather than number of hours at work.
5?? Toxic politics: The gap between performance and success is largely a function of toxic politics, which includes privilege, nepotism, impression management, and the ability to take credit for others’ achievements while blaming them for your mistakes
6?? Distributed teams: just like the 9-5 shift is archaic, the in-person meeting has been significantly downgraded even pre-pandemic. If you want people to be more global and collaborate globally – and of course you care about controlling expenses and not destroying the planet – they will continue to work virtual through technology”
Nike closes offices for a week to give employees a mental health break
"... employees can “enjoy additional time off to rest and recover,” according to a statement.
The move is celebrated by?those who work at the company, which has its headquarters near Beaverton."
“It’s not just a ‘week off’ for the team ... It’s an acknowledgment that we can prioritize mental health and still get work done.”
“It’s not only a chance to recharge and keep us together, but also a thank you for an impressive year.”
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The Great Resignation is here and no one is prepared
"The trend is worldwide. In the UK, job vacancies soared to an all-time high in July, with available posts surpassing?one million?for the first time."
“Someone can finish at a company on a Friday evening, have a new laptop delivered, and start a new job on Monday morning without leaving home.”
"The Great Resignation is being keenly felt in Germany, Europe’s largest economy: more than a third of all companies are reporting a dearth of skilled workers"
"Retention is the new fight for bosses, and it’s one that’s being waged digitally. “You have to support your staff and make them feel valued,” ... “If you don’t, you’re not just competing with every company in commuting distance to retain that employee, you have to compete with potentially every company in the world.”
“People who hadn’t previously considered moving jobs are expecting flexibility and have the choice of being able to work from anywhere. It’s the companies which meet those expectations which will be the winners.”
Work reimagined: The sustainable and inclusive workplace of the future
"Most businesses will use the physical corporate space much more deliberately, and design it to be where employees, teams and leaders go to connect and collaborate., with most of the individual work being done remotely/at home."
"The future role of this space is now shifting from “the” place to work to a “network of spaces” that serve many purposes. Bricks is one of the three key Bs (bricks, bytes, behaviors) required to reimagine work,..."
Apple delays mandatory return to office until January 2022
The company, which previously discouraged working from home for most employees, changed its stance in June when?Tim Cook said he would test a hybrid work model?that would require employees to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. That date was then moved?to at least October?— and now the New Year.
Some employees have?pushed back strongly against this model, saying they want a more flexible policy where anyone who wants to work from home can.
"There are some drawbacks, though, especially for hybrid companies with a mix of remote and in-office workers: potential communication issues, isolation for remote people on in-person teams, and culture challenges.
"In early June, the Labor Department released a report that revealed a record four million Americans had quit their jobs in April alone—part of a phenomenon that news outlets called “The Great Resignation.”"
"These people are generally well-educated workers who are leaving their jobs not because the pandemic created obstacles to their employment but, at least in part, because it nudged them to rethink the role of work in their lives altogether."?
Managers should take this opportunity to reset how teams are run, wherever they are
“There must be the suspicion that some people have spent the last 15 months working from home but haven’t actually been doing very much,”
“It’s hard to know who is deserving of a promotion when people are working remotely,”
"If after 15 months, you have only a “suspicion” about what your people are up to, and find it “hard to know” who are your top performers, you are guilty of neglect at best, mismanagement at worst."
"big companies trying to bring knowledge-workers back to the office are “delusional”. It makes no sense, he says, to think that forcing your staff to commute is a good way to inspire loyalty and creativity."
"The truth is in-person, office-based working has always been subject to such agreements. The problem is they were mainly tacit, and sometimes toxic."
"Perhaps another unspoken agreement dictated that staff who matched their leader’s hours were working hardest, or that the most vocal colleagues were the most valuable."
“Why do you think that the best way to get mentorship for a young person starting their career is from their creepy boss at the office?” It is easy for managers to take a rose-tinted view of how great they were at running teams in person."
Work-life balance: has New Zealand missed a Covid pandemic reform opportunity?
"Offering flexible hours and working from home can help employers to retain employees and save on recruitment costs. It can also improve diversity by widening the area in which workers can live, and there is gathering evidence worldwide that it increases productivity."
Staff working flexibly?are also happier and take fewer sick days, save money on commuting costs and spend more time with their families.
“There are too many advantages to hybrid working. We have software designers and coders who do a lot of focused work, and they can work from home without interruptions. We also need fewer desks so we’ve sublet space in our Auckland and Wellington offices.”
?“organisational culture, trust and the need to control people” are the main barriers from companies to more flexible working. “Managers need to be able to set output-based goals that aren’t about the amount of time you spend at work,” she says. “It’s getting that mindset to shift to how we measure productivity.”
“The pandemic has taught us that all these things we were told were impossible were able to happen effectively overnight – providing housing for the homeless, increasing benefit payments, freezing rents and flexible working arrangements.”
The Biggest Mistakes Bosses Will Make With Workers Returning After Covid-19
No. 1: treating their employees like children.
"If managers ignore some of the lessons remote work has taught us, empty offices may remain the norm—but this time it will be because resentful employees have moved on to other companies that better serve their new needs."
Location-based pay is the newest conflict between workers and employers,
"Neither Google, nor Facebook have actually cut workers' pay. And a spokesperson for UK prime minister Boris Johnson said civil servants would not be punished for continuing to work remotely."
"Companies such as Google and Facebook have invested vast sums in large, fancy campuses and want to see a return on their investment by having employees in the building."
"But workers argue that they shouldn't be penalized for cutting their living costs, and that their employers may make savings in the long term."
"employers attempting to reassess pay could drive away talent."
"If they want all staff to work from an office, they may face an increase in formal requests to work from home that cannot be ignored. If they offer fully remote working and wish to reduce salaries, they will need to gain consent. That may not always be given."
The Blinkered Boss: How Has Managerial Behavior Changed with the Shift to Virtual Working?
"managers became more blinkered: turning inward, becoming task-focused at the expense of relationship-building, and finding few opportunities to develop new skills."
New Model Allows 3M Employees To Choose How And Where They Work
"The operations specialist and mom of three is still working remotely with most of the 3M workforce."
“What we have discovered is our employees are probably even more productive working from home, in that non-production environment,” Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Denise Rutherford said."
"...?with this model the employee can come up with their own workflow. The new model means employees will tell their supervisors if they want to be remote or hybrid, and they will come up with a personalized plan."
“It’s not about where you are or how you’re working, the number of hours you are putting in, it’s about the work output that we agree together is important for us to get done,” Rutherford said.
?“I really feel like not only is my work product respected, but also the ability to have a successful and fulfilling life is respected.”
"... eventually figure out how to give plant workers more flexibility, too."
The return to the office will only mean more Zooms
Bosses are convinced that three days a week in the office will make us more collaborative. Data shows otherwise
“The idea that we collaborate more when we are together in person is not backed by data”
“The buzzing, collaborative office that many were expecting has actually turned into something quite desolate – and video call heavy.”
“To be honest I would like to go back full time. But if I'm going to be doing Zoom calls, from my house or from the office, there’s not much difference.”
“If anything needs to decide how often we come together to collaborate, it should be the work that we're doing,” …
her team is tackling hybrid working like an experiment, she says.
“We’re going to start to really rethink what the office space needs to be and the purpose it needs to play,” says Cambon. “And maybe that purpose actually isn’t an office at all. Maybe it’s something completely radically different.”
Technology promotes inclusion for the world’s largest minority group: people with disabilities
“For many people with disabilities, remote working can open up a wider range of job opportunities, as travelling is a major impediment. […]
Remote working allows disabled people to create a tailor-made workspace taking into consideration all their needs, which is not always possible in a physical office.“
It’s Chaos on Wall Street as Delta Variant Upends Return
The fractures reflect two views. Some see little reason to rush back to offices after Wall Streeters proved they can earn outsize profits working from home. But there’s also anxiety in the upper ranks that traders and dealmakers -- famous for crosstalk over rows of desks and an endless appetite for meetings -- can’t do their jobs remotely forever.
Solomon, 59, and Dimon, 65, both thrive on Wall Street’s culture of in-person meetings, according to people familiar with their management styles.
“If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York, none of this ‘I’m in Colorado, working in New York and getting paid like I’m sitting in New York City,’” Gorman said at an investor conference in June. “Sorry, that doesn’t work.”
Is remote working better for the environment? Not necessarily
climate calculations of remote v office work are complex
"... many companies are announcing that post-pandemic work won’t necessarily take place?at work?– at least not five days a week."
"Will remote work mean they move from city apartments to sprawling suburban homes, which use, on average,?three times more energy? Will they buy cars? Will they be electric or?gas-powered SUVs?"
Letting workers who can work remotely split their time between home and office is emerging as the dominant choice for companies navigating the new normal.
“I think they are well-intentioned, but unfortunately common sense is not the same thing as carbon math.”
“I think there’s a real risk that companies miss the boat on what could be a really important moment to bend the carbon curve over the long term,
The success of hybrid work hinges on employees' psychological safety
“managers now face the delicate task of expanding the range of work-life issues that are safe to raise. Obviously, it will take more than a few magic words such as “just trust me” for employees to feel safe.”
"help your team recognise that managing this new hybrid workplace situation is challenging for everyone involved. Promote shared ownership of the problem through a discussion."
"Invite employees to play a creative and responsible role in managing that change. As a group, everyone must agree to be clear and transparent about their job requirements and the needs of the team."
"Go slow. It takes time to build trust. [...] avoid creating the pressure to conform. Use your tact and skill to give employees the evidence they need to buy in, but let them do so on their own."
“pressuring, comments such as “So, when will we see you in the office?” or “things will be easier when we can all meet face to face” […] leaders should help their colleagues frame such remarks in more inclusive ways. For example: “We understand you may be facing constraints at the moment. What do you think would be the best way for us to get your inputs on xyz?”
LinkedIn will allow individual teams to decide if they ever want to return to the office
The company outlined a fresh hybrid-working plan and says it intends to "step away from a one-size-fits-all policy."
In an internal poll, 87% of LinkedIn's 16,000 global workers said that they would still like to come into the office at least some of the time.?
"It's going to be hard, it's going to require our managers to talk to us and to engage in dialogue as leaders and as an organization,"?
LinkedIn is leaning into the idea that companies should trust employees to know where they work best.
“companies should invest more in training managers to communicate respectfully and nurture employee well-being, rather than kitting out offices with trendy new accessories.
“They can invest in employees’ personal development, in addition to professional development, to help them become better citizens of society,”
After a year of being remote, some workers now say they value flexibility and autonomy more than gorgeous office decor and free food.
There’s “respectful engagement,” which refers to being a good member of the team and doing a good job; and “autonomous respect,” which has to do with feeling respected for who you are beyond your position. […] the latter matters more.”
A Culture of Appreciation
"The old models of micro-managing people in an office or engaging people extrinsically will not cut it any more.?People want to be treated as adults and to take responsibility for their own work ethos and standards and they want to be engaged from the heart.?Many people are assessing the quality of their experiences at work and they want more."
"Now is the opportunity to create even more powerful work experiences and the capacity to share and learn from what is good at scale in ways that engage deeper connection, belonging and meaning, regardless of where the work gets done or how it is organised."
How to lead from afar
"A few things must change when people work remotely. But not everything does. Managers will need to make a more determined effort to keep in contact with their staff but those who are good at listening, and who can empathise with how their team members are coping, should still be able to flourish."
The Psychological Benefits of Commuting to Work
"Many people who have been working from home are experiencing a void they can’t quite name."
"In a 2001 paper, two researchers at UC Davis attempted to divine the ideal commute time. They settled on 16 minutes. To be sure, this was a substantial shortening of the study participants’ actual commutes (which were half an hour, on average). But it was not zero. In fact, a few wished for a?longer?commute."
““Rituals are friction,” he told me. Like the commute, “they slow us down. They’re so antithetical to most of our life, which is all about efficiency and speed.” “
Ex-Google HR chief: Why returning to the office could be a 'recipe for disaster'
"No one coaches an athlete to come back from an injury by immediately trying to set a new personal record. Companies may not want to hear this, but the road to full strength requires you to relax your performance standards in the initial phase."?
"Setting realistic goals can take many forms [...] but it should be meaningful and expressed clearly from the outset."
"The right approach for your sales team may be very different from the right approach for your engineering team. And their needs may change as the weeks pass, so plan to evolve your approach."
"you need to be making plans for this now; doing so the week after you return to the office is too late."
Uber is the latest tech company to rethink its return-to-office plans
"Less than three months after announcing that its employees would be required to come back to the office at least three days a week, Uber is backtracking."
"[...] the company is continuing to gather feedback from its workers and wants to provide more flexibility as it figures out the "right long-term model" for post-pandemic life. "While we still believe in the value of in-person collaboration and the community that builds, we also value our employees having the choice to decide where they want to work while they're not in the office,"?
"Like Uber, Google initially announced?it would require workers to come back to their pre-pandemic offices a few days a week only to loosen that policy later by allowing employees to apply for permanent remote work or to change their office location."
'Great Resignation' gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect
"Bullock said he likes working from home and spending more time with his friends and family in Salt Lake City. “I realized this is the only way I want to live.”
"a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs, and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position"
"In a survey of more than 350 CEOs and human resources and finance leaders, 70% said they plan to have employees back in the office by the fall of this year - if not sooner - according to a report by staffing firm LaSalle Network."
"9 out of 10 organizations will be combining remote and on-site working, according to a separate McKinsey survey. Most companies, however, said they’ve haven’t hammered out the specifics of what that will look like.??"
‘They’ll demand it moving forward’: Bosses frown on remote work post-pandemic at their own peril
Think all bosses are on board with flex work? Think again
"[...] remote work was a “permanent civilizational shift” and suggesting it is an even more important development than the internet itself."
Employers who fail to be as flexible about flex work as Houston and Andreessen may well find themselves on the wrong side of history when it comes to work trends —and, in the more immediate future, on the losing side of employee retention.
"the “Great Resignation” is well underway, as a wave of employees not getting what they want and need from their bosses are choosing to simply walk away."
“Companies that truly embrace a flexible work model, which includes flexibility in terms of both the where and when people work, will have a competitive advantage in attracting, winning and retaining talent,”
"Rigid hybrid work models — including mandating that employees be in the office a given number of days and taking away the power of workers to operate according to a schedule that best fits their personal and professional responsibilities — “will undermine the trust built between employees and management throughout the pandemic, and force many employees to look for new jobs"
Deloitte tells staff they can work from home forever
"More than 90 per cent of Deloitte’s workforce said ‘choice’ and ‘flexibility’ should be at the heart of how the business operates in future."
“It has also shown that we can trust our people to make the right choice in when, how and where they work.”
Citi bank boss says staff work better in the office
New Future of Work: Driving innovation via cross-company research with Jaime Teevan and Brent Hecht
How PepsiCo is rethinking the office: More remote work. No assigned desks
"The office will no longer be the primary location?for where work gets done, and corporate employees around the globe will decide with their managers which days they'll be in the office and when they'll be remote."
"Prior to the pandemic we had a policy by week -- people could ask to work remote up to two days upon manager approval."
"Our people were asking us for choice. They were like: 'Give me the opportunity to decide where and how I do my work.'"
"We believe the office as a physical location is going to evolve quite a lot."
"We found this beautiful convergence around people and leadership believing?that the average time in the office per week will be around 2.5 days. We don't believe that, in opening up this policy, that people will never go back to the office, nor do we believe managers are going to be irrational, asking folks to spend too much time in the office if there is no need."
"The one thing that is giving me a bit of pause, to be very frank, is that people have had a lot of time to reflect and look at life and work with a bit more perspective or a very different perspective. And sometimes what we are seeing when people are leaving companies, it is because they are making very different choices. It's not incremental changes to their lives. These are radical changes like, 'I am going to move close to my parents because that has become super important to me' or people who have said, 'listen, you only live once. I am going to make a drastic change in my career.' We are seeing some of those things."
"The problem isn’t remote working – it’s clinging to office-based practices - Do we need to go to offices? Work 9 to 5? At this unique moment in history, employers can rethink everything"
"Pre-pandemic, it was not uncommon for an employer to ask staff to justify their need to work from home. Post-pandemic, employees may ask employers to justify the need to come into the office."
"when we work, where we work, how we work – are designed around location. Worse still, they were designed decades ago, and it is only now, with the pandemic forcing change, that we have been given the unique opportunity to question those structures."
the “when” of work. By default, our days are organised around 9-5, a system that was formalised for factory workers by Henry Ford in the US in 1926. Many of us do not work in factories however."
"The “how” of work was perhaps the most worrying discovery of our research. There is a long-held assumption that the hallowed meeting is the best way for us to collaborate. This culture of meetings was established in the 1950s, before methods of work that allowed us to collaborate outside meetings?"
"we need to stop designing work around location, and start designing work around human behaviour. Employees will work better, stay at their organisation longer and keep healthier if they are placed at the centre of work design – trust me, we have the data that proves it."
The fight to get back to the office: Only 21% of workers have returned in NYC compared to 50% in Dallas - as bosses prepare for a standoff with reluctant staff who want to work from home forever
'There is a fundamental difference in how workers feel about remote work and what they’ve seen as possible, and the deep seeded beliefs of high level executives. They want to see work being done to believe it's being done."
WILL EMPLOYEES RETURN TO THE OFFICE FIVE DAYS A WEEK?
“I expect we will see three or four days a week in the office as the UK recovers [...] Over the longer term, I’m quite hopeful that we will see people return five days a week.”
"while the 9-to-5 will be around for as long as work itself, “it’s got to happen in different places… [There’s been a] fundamental change in the geography of work… using technology to cut the commute.”
“Your business doesn’t stop if you’re not all sitting in the same office every day,” Dixon points out. “There is a new normal [and that’s] a local office, or an allowance to grab an office down the road.” Rather than a place where you go, he argues, “work becomes a thing that you do.”
How Working From Home Has Changed Employees.
“employees might look like the same people. But rest assured, many aren’t.
… bosses should consider renewing their relationship with every single employee—even those they’ve managed for years—as if they are starting from scratch.
… think about them as fresh hires, asking them how it feels to be back, …
There is a good chance that those who have been working from home have come to appreciate the autonomy they have gained,”
Bosses who are nervous about allowing in-office employees the same kind of autonomy they enjoyed at home should pause and remember what they observed during the pandemic. That is, more productive workers.
if a pre-Covid office was the kind of place where people would get the side eye for spending too much time chit-chatting in the break room, bosses can make an explicit break with that past.
Recognizing that different employees have different needs has always been the most important—and the hardest—part about being a manager.”
Remote Workers Reluctant to Return to the Workplace
"... a broader trend that has emerged over the past few months, namely a reluctance among workers to give up location flexible work after the pandemic."
"While 24 percent of those workers would like to work from home full-time, 37 percent would prefer a model that leaves them the option to come into the office occasionally. Apple’s suggested model, i.e. working in the office most of the time, with the option to work remotely some days, is only preferred by 12 percent of those that shifted to remote work over the past year."
Apple employees rally against office working plan
"Apple's policy has "already forced some of our colleagues to quit"
"Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our wellbeing, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple,"
Apple Staff Resist Call to Return to Office 3 Days a Week: Verge
"Employees called for a flexible approach that allows them to work remotely, the news service said, citing the letter from about 80 of the workers. The note was sent to Apple staff for signing on late Friday, according to the report."
Remote working has been life-changing for disabled people, don’t take it away now
In the rush to go ‘back to normal’, must we sacrifice all the gains that have been made on disability inclusion?
"The shift to working at home over the past year brought new opportunities to those previously excluded from the workforce. As one woman with agoraphobia told me: “Lockdown has opened my world”"
“The office is ‘going back to normal’ and they don’t want us at home even though I can do a better job [here],” she said."
"Too often, cultural prejudice around disability assumes disabled people don’t need the same pleasures as everyone else, but health doesn’t change who you are."
"As we rightly celebrate a return to normal, it should be remembered that, for disabled people, “normal” too often means being excluded from everyday life.?"
Silicon Valley may look very different after the pandemic
"Some of those relocations are more permanent than others, as companies and workers start to reckon with the kind of offices they want after more than a year of working from home"
"The result could have a big impact on Silicon Valley companies that spent billions on campuses and perks to keep workers at work as long as possible, and also on other big cities who are vying to attract talent away from the heartland of the tech industry."
"A survey of Uber employees in September last year showed 75% would prefer a hybrid model where they came into the office a few days a week."
"The pandemic has blasted this whole idea that you have to be in the place you are,"
"Krishnamurthy said Uber considered all possible options before settling on its three-days-a-week approach, but fears a downside to Silicon Valley companies — particularly smaller startups — that decide to go fully remote."
Companies spending more on wages and supplies, but still can’t find enough workers, Fed report says
“Although continued vigilance is warranted, the inflation and employment data thus far appear to reflect a temporary misalignment of supply and demand that should fade over time as the demand surge normalizes, reopening is completed, and supply adapts to the post-pandemic new normal,”
Apple asks staff to return to office three days a week starting in early September
Employees can work remotely for up to two weeks a year
"Cook said that most employees will be asked to come in to the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with the option of working remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays."
Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home
The drive to get people back into offices is clashing with workers who’ve embraced remote work as the new normal.
many?chief executives have publicly extolled the importance of being in offices. Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon said at a recent conference that it doesn’t work “for those who want to hustle.”
But legions of employees aren’t so sure. If anything, the past year has proved that lots of work can be done from anywhere, sans lengthy commutes on crowded trains or highways. Some people have moved. Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues.
“They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” she said. “It’s a boomer power-play.”
It’s still early to say how the post-pandemic work environment will look. Only about 28% of U.S. office workers are back at their buildings, according to an index?of 10 metro areas compiled by security company Kastle Systems.?
But as office returns accelerate, some employees may want different options.?A May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work.
The generational difference is clear:
Among millennials and Gen Z, that figure was 49%, according to the poll by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News.
“High-five to them,” said Sara Sutton, the CEO of FlexJobs, a job-service platform focused on flexible employment. “Remote work and hybrid are here to stay.”
"The lack of commutes and cost savings are the top benefits of remote work,"
Bosses Are Trying to Gaslight Employees Into Believing They Miss the Office.
It's Not WorkingEnraged employees are having none of managers' attempts to herd them back to their cubicles, a range of sources show
"There was this belief that if you really wanted to move up in the company, you had to be in the office, and be seen in the office, which often meant coming in early and staying late, because otherwise you weren't noticed."
"Before you start extolling the joys of "being back together again"?or thinking you're clever scheduling that in-office happy hour, know your workers are on to you.?
If you want to keep them around and happy, skip the autocratic demands and ham-fisted manipulation and instead opt for a thoughtful and empathetic conversation with your team about the right balance of remote and in-person work for your business going forward."
Jamie Dimon, fed up with Zoom calls and remote work, says commuting to offices will make a comeback
“We want people back to work, and my view is that sometime in September, October it will look just like it did before [...] And everyone is going to be happy with it, and yes, the commute, you know people don’t like commuting, but so what.”
"... not everyone at JPMorgan is thrilled with the prospect of more face time at the office.
“The wife of a husband sent me a nasty note about `How can you make him go back?”
1 in 4 workers is considering quitting their job after the pandemic
"Workers who want to quit overwhelmingly say they’re looking for a new job with more flexibility. Indeed, even among those who aren’t considering changing jobs, half of people currently working remotely say if their current company doesn’t continue to offer remote-work options long-term, they’ll look for a job at a company that does."
"With workers better able to take a job from anywhere, they’ll seek ones that pay well, have opportunities to learn and advance, and provide benefits that center work-life balance."
The pros and cons of working remotely
"A great debate is raging in organizations over whether employees will return to their offices or continue to work remotely once COVID-19 is under control and most people are vaccinated."
"people find that they have a lot more time for their work?and?their families."
"The absence of time wasted in commuting and travel is an obvious benefit, but they also found they were more focused when working without all the typical office distractions."
"Remote work provides clear cost savings for both employers and employees. Employers have dramatically reduced the cost of business travel, while employees avoid commuting costs."
"remote work further encourages horizontal interactions with increased equality. In a?Zoom?meeting, there is no privilege on seating order or physical presence, as everyone’s screen is the same size."
for all these significant benefits, there are several negatives of remote work
Many leaders depend on the informal, spontaneous interactions that occur from “managing by wandering around.” ... ?such informal dealings are hard to replicate remotely."
"CEOs who adapt rapidly by creating their ideal environment will build stronger companies and wind up with stronger, more committed talent."
What employees are saying about the future of remote work
"Employees want more certainty about postpandemic working arrangements—even if you don’t yet know what to tell them"
"Organizations may have announced a general intent to embrace hybrid virtual work going forward, but too few of them, employees say, have shared detailed guidelines, policies, expectations, and approaches. And the lack of remote-relevant specifics is leaving employees anxious."
Apple Encourages Staff to Get Vaccinated, Offers Paid Time Off
Many corporate employees are still working from home, but the company has gradually brought back retail staff as Apple stores
“There’s no replacement for face-to-face collaboration, but we have also learned a great deal about how we can get our work done outside of the office without sacrificing productivity or results,”
How has working from home impacted productivity? This UK survey has answers
One potentially long-term consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is the new normal of working from home (WFH)
52% of respondents are currently WFH. Only 31% of the respondents were working on business premises
"post COVID, British employees want to retain WFH for about two days a week, but there is a huge variation in preferences. This is going to cause headaches for employers"
'Hybrid working will become the norm'
"One big UK employer, the Nationwide building society, has indicated that it does not intend to force people to return to the office if they have been successfully able to work from home during the pandemic."
Its leader of people and culture, Jane Hanson, told the BBC that about two-thirds of its 18,000 employees had been working from home for the past year.
"We won't be asking them to go back to the office and we've given people a commitment at the moment that the current working practices will continue until at least June, whilst we're working out what the future looks like," she said.
The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work—Are We Ready?
"We’re all learning as we go, but we know two things for sure: flexible work is here to stay, and the talent landscape has fundamentally shifted. Remote work has created new job opportunities for some, offered more family time, and provided options for whether or when to commute."
"Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has been anticipating and leading just such a refashioning of her city, following the model of urbanist Carlos Moreno and his notion of a 15-minute city, where you can live, work and send your kids to school within a small radius. Some of the work that used to be done in the CBD will move out into private offices, coworking or neighbourhood third spaces."
2020
How the pandemic is forcing managers to work harder
"Remote work brings benefits to employees and employers alike—but requires more effort on the part of executives"
"One change that is all but certain to last is employees spending more of their time working at home."
"This is what the office will look like in 2022"
“Figuring out who will work from home and who will require actual office space, which offices to prune and which to keep, how they will be configured and shared, and precisely where they should be sited,” professor Richard Florida wrote in the?HBR last month, “requires more strategic thought, analysis, and planning than ever.”
four major trends that will become common in the coming years
THE HYBRID (NOT REMOTE) WORKFORCE
THE WORKPLACE ECOSYSTEM
DECENTRALIZATION
"Remote Work Is Killing the Hidden Trillion-Dollar Office Economy"
From airlines to Starbucks, a massive part of our economy hinges on white-collar workers returning to the office
How to Hold Remote Workers Accountable Without Micromanaging
"Millions of people are working remotely for the first time, and managers are trying to adjust. Most are used to seeing their direct reports in person throughout the day, and think this gives them an idea of what exactly folks are doing with their time. But here's the thing. Good managers don't actually care what folks do with their time. They care if they get their job done or not."
"Micromanaging does not work remotely. Trust does."
"Twitter Will Allow Employees To Work At Home Forever"
"Two months into working from home, Twitter makes it permanent for some."
“People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way,” Christie said. “Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
"The Pandemic Has Exposed the Fallacy of the “Ideal Worker”
"With most of us working from home these days, Americans’ workday has increased by 40% - roughly 3 hours a day - the largest increase in the world"
"Many employees are now doing the work of three or more people."
"Post-pandemic, let’s resculpt workplace ideals so they reflect people’s lives today—not half a century ago."
"Under COVID, many jobs that were “impossible to do remotely” went remote with little transition time and modest outlays."
"The unthinkable has become not just thinkable but mundane."
Re-opening the White Collar Workplace: 4 Things Employees Want You to Know
1. We‘re not ready.
2. We’re concerned about exposure risk, generally.
3. We‘d like to continue remote work (for now).
4. We can continue to adapt.
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3 年Ciao Alessio, condivido il tuo pensiero, e credo che sia solo l'inizio di un nuovo modo di vivere il lavoro. Tutti ricordiamo lo stupore davanti al primo cellulare o il primo videogioco ma difficilmente potevamo immaginare lo sviluppo che sarebbe seguito... fino ad oggi. Il lavoro a distanza lo vedo proprio cosi, un concetto destinato ad evolversi che , trasformatsi fino a diventare un nuovo modo di vivere.