Sixteen Months of Pandemic - Part 3: The Future of Work

In Part 1, I've presented a collection of sources and data about the experiences we’ve all shared in the past 16 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. In?Part 2, I’ve reviewed the main lessons we’ve learned in that time of Covid-19 crisis. In Part 3, I’ll now review what’s next for us and showcase various scenarios in the future of work, our work.

So, what’s next?

Looking at the present situation (in early July 2021), at a time when most countries are softening their various lockdown restrictions and many of us are being vaccinated, what work scenarios are likely to prevail in the coming years? There seems to be a consensus that going back to the pre-Covid normal is not likely to take place. We have found that many activities, like meetings, collaborating, teaching or learning can be done online. This means for many, no more daily commuting, less pressure and stress, fewer business trips, and supposedly less carbon print on the environment.

At the same time, there is a consensus that we don’t want to do everything remotely. The office is a place where we work, but also a place where we create social exchanges, conviviality and human interaction (see below for more insights). Both options above are of course subject to differences on the industrial, professional and cultural levels. And some of us just don’t have this choice. Consequently, as argued above, the future will be most likely hybrid. What does this mean for us all?

There are various hybrid scenarios i.e. a balance between onsite vs online work/study. Does this mean that our traditional office space or lecture room will become obsolete? No, but they will need to be reengineered – open spaces must be adapted to a post-pandemic era. Working from home (WFH) has certainly become popular.

Another aspect of hybrid work formats is rethinking the need to travel. During the pandemic, we drastically cut on professional mobility, which deeply impacted the airlines and hospitality industries. For many of us now, in-person meetings are not an absolute necessity anymore, and we are shifting strategies, saving money, travel time and carbon print on the environment by doing more business, teaching or learning virtually.

Let’s look at all this in dilemmas terms:?on the one hand we need to create a sense of engagement and belonging to our organizations, and on the other hand we want to be empowered to work productively in environments of inclusion, where trust, autonomy and freedom are present. We all need to reflect on this reconciliation of opposites with first generating a sense of belonging and then ultimately a feeling of well-being. See this article from University World News (UWN) that suggests that universities become agents of human and societal well-being, as stipulated in the Magna Charta Universitatum (MCU) 2020.

A review of the mental and social aspects taken from Part 2 “The lessons we’ve learned”.

On the mental and emotional level, our dilemma is about reconciling action vs reflection, which are two sides of the same coin. Our challenge here is to find the right balance between action-oriented management versus reflecting and thinking about our values, ideals, norms, principles and practices. They give meaning and purpose to our lives, hence also to our jobs. Additionally, we need to address both the interpersonal level featuring many differences in personality types, and cultural expectations regarding work values, norms and practices. Indeed, personality-wise, we know that extroverts have a greater need for synchronous interaction with colleagues than introverts, and this dichotomy needs to be actively managed.

Many remote workers have reported a sense of loneliness, so for them a move back to the office will offer them some relief. From an intercultural perspective, we know that some cultures are more relationship-oriented and others more task-oriented. These opposing value orientations influence our decision on running meetings, gatherings and encounters. It’s about?synchronous or more asynchronous modes.

Further, as we all need social contacts, having best friends at work help maintain rapport with our coworkers, whether remotely or onsite. Close relationships have proved crucial to fighting isolation, solitude, depression or burnout and can help create a better work environment. As shown in this study by Axios, people with close friends at work were 96% more likely to say they felt “extremely satisfied with life.”?

A bridge between the social and organizational aspects: in the process of going back to some kind of normalcy and reducing the risk of infection, some companies are trying to prevent office workers from mingling.

But how can we stay apart?when our urge to mingle is so human? It’s indeed entirely understandable that we miss the office and want to return to our desks because it’s not only a place to perform our tasks, but it’s also a place to gather and learn about ourselves and others. Our offices are in fact common spaces, and they offer a critical physical and mental buffer between our work and personal lives. There is an existential toll on missing the office and co-workers, as brilliantly explained in this article in Quartz at Work

To enable a smooth and safe return to our desks, some have suggested that we can use technical devices like sensors to measure room occupancy, download smartphone apps sending us health and safety alerts, etc. But as one study by Bloomberg found out, 60% of interactions among workers violated distancing guidelines. We can be quite skeptical about the meaningfulness of such measures. It’s debatable if we can foster that kind of connection without a physical gathering space. Another and more positive way to look at this is to envisage these measures only as a temporary preparation for hybrid work formats. The coming six months will presumably put some clarity to this process.

The organizational aspects of returning partly to the office

Before considering the various organizational aspects of office return, let’s first consider the big picture offered by this McKinsey report arguing that “return is not a phase; it’s a way of operating, and a nerve center can help build the capabilities that businesses need in the next normal.” It’s indeed a complete process that won’t happen overnight. Let’s then answer the following questions: why do we need to return to the office, who needs to return and how often? Concretely, we are facing the following issues:

- What are the advantages and disadvantages of office return?

- What will the mix online vs onsite forms look like?

- How can we innovate the future of the office?

- How do we (re)build trust and team spirit in the office?

- How do we manage productivity?

First, do we all want to go back to the office and if yes, in which format?

As many of us are now returning to our offices, some are struggling to re-adapt to things we are now missing at our workplace. But after more than a year of working remotely, we find the office is not quite the same – dress codes have become more casual, and we are more comfortable asking for flexible work accommodations and arranged schedules. We are now aware, as studies have shown, that we are happier and more productive when given greater hour-by-hour autonomy. These adjustments may be the first of many, as I’ll explain. Others will follow in the coming six months when we are going to experiment with new work formats.

A few facts and figures.

A study in The Conversation at Canadian and Australian universities on remote work shows that about a third of the respondents preferred a 50-50 balance, while two-fifths wanted to do the majority of their work at home and a quarter chose the opposite. This study likewise indicated that academics are typically more negative about online work, while administrative and professional employees have had more positive experiences. Finally, women as a whole wanted slightly more remote working time than men.

Another recent and ongoing study conducted among employees of a Dutch university, found out that most employees welcomed a hybrid work model. For instance, 47% of the support staff prefers to work 26-50% from the office, while 37% of the scientific staff prefers to work this amount of time on campus. Most of the grad students (32%) prefer to work 76-100% on campus. The overall average of the percentual time that employees want to work on campus was 53%.

Finally, another study (a Truity survey) shows that workers’ feelings about returning to the office may depend heavily on their job roles, home situations, demographics and personality traits. There seems in fact to be a wide gap between how managers feel about the return to the office, compared to what employees prefer. And there is a clear gender difference: women as a whole feel less enthusiastic about returning to the office. The same goes for introverts, as indicated previously in this article.

Consequently, because remote work is too varied and complex to generalize, decisions cannot be imposed on all employees, and we must take into account our needs, rights and desires, recreating a welcoming environment that works best for each of us and our organizations as a whole. As an example of this general reflection process, see here this interesting initiative from the University of Aalto Summer School in Finland featuring an online open course about the Future of Work.?

Can we extrapolate the results of these studies to our own institutions? Here, we must consider the cultural differences. For example, with remote working being now predominant, the lines between our personal and professional lives have become blurred. And people in some cultures, like the Dutch, don’t like that. They prefer a clear-cut separation between these two domains. But there is also presumably common ground between these studies at HE-institutions around the world, and most likely as well in the business communities.

Second, where do we work the best: remotely or at the office???

After 16 months of experiences in remote work, it’s a legitimate question to ask ourselves. Not everyone is skilled for working from home. Apart from logistical limitations, some personality traits also make us better suited for remote work. Further insights about this issue can be found in this Forbes article.

Positive aspects of remote work are: more collaborative and less authoritative mode (see the trust vs control interface in Part 1), self-reliance and more autonomous process, steady and predictable continuum, and often more attention to details. In contrast, challenges are: mixing home responsibilities vs work focus, limited physical environment and possible imbalance in work and personal lives.

And what about innovation? As suggested by this article in the NYT, bringing us back to work together onsite may, in fact, harm innovation. Many of us are now accustomed to the flexibility of remote work, and pushing us back into the old normal commuter life and fixed office hours may prove stifling and uncomfortable.

And what about productivity? Studies show that countries which have shorter working weeks, in general, are more productive, whereas countries that have a culture of presenteeism and long work hours actually get less out of their teams. Hours of work are indeed often a product of cultural and workplace expectations and not tied to productivity. So, if we work better remotely and we are allowed to do so, we would be more efficient and productive and attain more job satisfaction at the end.

Third, the most credible scenario in the coming post-pandemic area will be a hybrid system of both remote work and relocation to the office.

As I’ve argued in this article, there will be no uniformity, nor homogeneity in relocating back to our offices. So, let’s try to see what the picture will be like in this bumpy process.

An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, in nine countries conducted by McKinsey (see here) shows that some forms of remote work are likely to persist long after Covid-19 is behind us. Likewise, the potential for remote work is determined by tasks and activities, not occupations. Consequently, we will need to recreate our office spaces and their immediate environments. We will need to go first through many shifts in reengineering our urban economies: investing in new digital infrastructure, reshaping office space, reinventing logistic lines for commuters, remodeling the structural transformation of cities, food services, commercial real estate, retail, etc.

Additionally, this partial relocation process will also produce social risks, accentuate our existing professional inequalities and create new psychological and emotional stress among us. For many of us, having work partly outside and partly inside the office will require reinventing many business processes and HR-policies. As an illustration, see in this article from Forbes how important it is where we will be sitting next after coming back to the office in maybe a new flexible seating arrangement. Near the boss, at a window or facing a wall? This may impact on our career prospects.??

But consider the following question: can you force your workers back to the office? Many of us now have the freedom to choose less organized and more personal and flexible lifestyles in locations we’ve always wanted to live, but others don't have that choice. But coercing employees back to their offices may not work in the long run. And remember: higher productivity often depends more on freedom to choose and job satisfaction.

Moreover, a return to the workplace has left many of us feeling apprehensive. Research in the UK has shown that 40% of employees – and 50% of those under 35 – believe a full-time return to the office would be bad for their mental well-being. As a matter of fact, this means some of us may seek a new role or a new job, target firms that actively combat burnout or offer as much control over their days as possible by making small adjustments. So, freedom is an important incentive.

Likewise, there are doubts about whether the hybrid workplace will last long as expressed in this article from the Boston Globe. It’s all about the sense of belonging and creating social ties, one of the greatest predictors of our professional and social longevity. And it is clear that we are not designed to be alone. The following opposing two examples makes this clear: The CEO of the Dutch national railway company doesn’t believe we will stay home for a long time and instead will massively go back to our offices (interview in Dutch newspaper Financieel Dagblad). In contrast, the Financial Times reports about initiatives to lure workers back to the office ranging from making the new workplace more attractive (and still corona-proof) to extra perks, like offering free meals or even pay employees extra to come to the office!

Roughly speaking, as most studies or experts state, hybrid models of remote and office work are likely to persist long after the pandemic and will go again along the lines of blue vs white collar employees. This means there will be flexibility and choice option for a highly educated, mobile and well-paid minority. Indeed, for those happy few, the Covid 19 crisis, after breaking through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work, has now set in motion a structural and professional shift, where work will take place. More on this Working From Anywhere (WFA) model later. And see in this SHRM article about aspects to consider when moving to a hybrid work model.

Another interesting aspect to consider is that the hybrid workplace could become a cybersecurity nightmare, according to this article in the WSJ. As we are presumably soon going to toggle between office and remote set-ups, that is working in and out of our company networks. We are exposing ourselves more to hackers and increase the probability of getting infected with malware and the like. Here is again another challenge for our security teams. What can we do about it? Well, at least implement the usual recipes: Update our devices with the latest software patches, strengthen security practices among employees and consider developing zero-trust systems.

Another warning is expressed in this article from CNN: the pandemic forced a massive remote-work experiment on us. But now comes the hard part as many of us are partially moving back to our offices. Here, the proximity bias comes into play: those present at the office will get more face time with our bosses. Consequently, we may be assessed more positively than those absent and not really visible. In short, this inequality can lead to better relationships among those present, which in turn increases access to information and allows us to be first in line for better tasks or assignments.

An additional aspect to consider is the presumably reduced office space. Because many of us will keep working remotely or mix with irregular office presence, we may not all be assigned a fixed desk and work in open spaces. So, to meet our needs of a hybrid workforce, managers will need to modify and adapt office designs. We will use more collaborative and shared spaces for increased team-focused work in the office, while individual work will be done at home. These changes will ask for new flexibility and enhanced resilience from us and may have an impact on our social relations and mental and psychological health. See this article from The Conversation about the open-plan office and its consequences for those among us?returning to this format of workspace: it increases stress and worsens mood. We’re warned!

Further, the Dutch daily newspaper Financieel Dagblad reports on an experiment at Deloitte with virtual reality (VR) glasses in the new hybrid work model. While this type of communication enhances some rapport-building between people, it’s still using two instead of our usual five senses in face-to-face encounters, simply because it’s virtual. And to be honest, I recently participated in an experiment with VR-glasses at my work and got an upset stomach from using the device!

Consequently, we need to make the hybrid workplace fair for us all, to benefit both employers and employees. For that purpose, we must understand the power differentials we create within teams and take steps to level the playing field. This HBR article offers four strategies that our leaders and managers can take to manage the structurally inevitable differences in location, working hours, modularization of asynchronous vs synchronous working patterns. And let’s be clear here: Not doing so can damage our relationships, impact effective collaboration, create toxic working environments and ultimately reduce performance.

Incidentally, this study in Bloomberg?notes that recent data from national economies that have already opened fully or partially show that many of the apps and collaborative platforms that have facilitated remote work and remote living have either stabilized or faded. The report also notes that while the current boost will push them permanently above pre-pandemic levels of usage, their growth in the future may slow down or plateau.

And let’s not forget one somewhat negative side of hybrid modes: if you’re in the office and others are remote, it means everybody has to work remotely. Similarly, this BBC Worklife article assures us that we're about to zoom past Zoom fatigue because video chats won't be around forever, at least not in the way many of us have been using them during the pandemic. We can expect more people to adopt a "mix-and-match" approach that incorporates onsite meetings and phone calls, with less use of Zoom and the like. Face-to-face communication is surely not dead yet!

This means that remote work may not necessarily be only WFH but rather working from anywhere (WFA).

Here too, there are various options. As we have discussed above, our future of work may even be more complicated than we imagine. We are now trying to adapt to the new hybrid working world.?For some of us, WFH will be, say, on Mondays or Fridays, but some of our colleagues will have the same idea, resulting in offices being too crowded on Thursdays. Thus, it may become confusing to organize offices hours for all. Likewise, recruiters say they’re having difficulty finding workers who are willing to work five days in the office. And finally, we may also be complaining about vague WFH-policies, or pandemic-era work promises that have not been kept by our managers.

So, here comes the real challenge with hybrid work. While it took us months to adjust to working remotely during the pandemic, the next era of work might be even more difficult to adopt to. There often seems to be opposing opinions between managers and their workers concerning remote work. This study in Fast Company found a disconnect between workers and management that starts with but goes beyond the issue of the remote-work policy itself. Broadly speaking, they found three recurring themes in these anonymous posts: broken remote-work promises, confused remote-work policies and corporate culture not being aligned with practice.

So, what does the new remote work actually mean for us in the near future? There are several options varying from the now common working from home (WFH) to the geographically broader working from anywhere (WFA).

Let’s review the options

A first option is moving from your main residence (city) to a holiday home (countryside) as this has happened during the pandemic in Italy, Ireland and Norway, to cite just a few out of many examples (see in Part 1). Incidentally, the French weekly L’Expansion/l’Express reports about the transportation costs of commuting from your holiday home, which under French law must be paid up to 50% by the employer. This can turn into a high price tag for some companies.?

A second option is to create physical co-working spaces in a neighbourhood or suburb to actually take the employees away from their homes and create a nearby transition model between home and office. This is the so-called hub-and-spoke model that bridges the remote and onsite work environment, i.e. a central main office (the hub) can be augmented by smaller offices or co-working spaces close to home (the spokes). Proponents of the model say it allows companies to drastically reduce the amount of space they need at the main office, while providing convenience and flexibility for employees. See here in an article by the SLOAN Institute at MIT a clear call for this set-up.

Other options for co-working spaces are offered by hotels (as suggested by The Economist). To compensate for the lack of guests during the pandemic, some of them have tried to attract remote workers with rented rooms for use as an office.

Another option is creating international virtual co-working spaces, where people can meet in a place and work close to each other and not feel alone while working. This virtual setting can prove mentally much better because people from everywhere in the world meet and while sharing common collaborative platforms, still work independently.

Further, so-called 'Workcations' or ‘staycations’ i.e. working remotely while on a temporary trip and possibly combining work with a vacation, are also becoming popular formats. But while they allow professionals to change sceneries and step out of their daily routines, experts also warn that those 'workcations' could drastically worsen isolation, and result in depression and burnout. So this may remain a limited and seasonal option.

And now, meet my friend… the digital nomad, a fairly new character meant as a clear reaction to the supercharged WFH trend.?In this article the WSJ argues that the number of people who work remotely will likely increase from 2% to anywhere between 8 and 10%, and the number of people traveling while working full-time is likely to go up as well. This blog by the Entrepreneur argues that, due to the pandemic and changing attitudes to workplaces, there’s never been a better time for potential digital nomads to make the move. So are you the next one?

Areas of growth without an office

There are three key areas of growth for 2021 and beyond that don’t require our presence in an office: Data-driven marketing, high-quality content production for lobbyists, influencers and virtual jobs. This new trend will be often combined with extended stays at hotels, resorts and the like, changing the face of hospitality and creating new remote work environments. Here again, some hotels have started offering subscription services and special sojourn rates for nomadic workers.

Moreover, some countries (for example, Estonia, Georgia, Greece and Portugal in Madeira) have begun changing rules by offering remote workers visas, in order to bring in revenue. But this situation also shows the reverse side of the coin: it may lead to physical and social isolation, loneliness, lack of structure, as well as relocation, finance, tax and organization issues. See this article in Nomadic International Business Psychology for an overview of the pros and cons of WFA.

Finally, let’s mention the growing importance of the so-called 'third spaces' (the first for home and second for work) as a part of the hybrid work model. They are those physical social spaces including sports schools, entertainment hubs, community centers, where we are regularly turning to and that traditionally presented not only economic, but also social and inclusive ramifications. The pandemic has forced us to readjust our habits and look for alternatives. What’s lost with the pandemic is the sensory sense of being with other people and sharing activities in these third spaces.

What the consequences of this loss will be are not quite known yet, except that experts say that people may remain more fearful and anxious for a longer time. For more aspects on the future of work post-Covid 19 and on ways our jobs will be affected, read this article in Forbes. Finally, consider this study presenting 21 points about the plans a sample of 2,000 companies have for remote work after Covid-19. These are of course generalizations, and personally I miss there the assumption that big changes will not happen only at the company level, but also at the profession, occupation and physical site level. As we know, some professions can more easily work remotely than others. Also, there are huge cultural, social and individual differences in working models. So let's see in six months' time where we are!

Conclusion

Let’s look at what work will look like on the longer run after the current vaccine rollout, and what we will need for the new era.

Digitization and artificial intelligence, remote work and automation platforms for collaborative, blended teaching and learning tools are just a few of the key components that now constitute the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In a new globalization process, international high-tech systems will need to be better interconnected, and we probably also need new medical, economic and legal frameworks to help overcome some aspects of the current pandemic. As a matter of fact, online working, meeting, collaborating, teaching and learning are now embedded in our practices and will stay.

The question now is: what else do we need? According to Yuval Noah Harari, this pandemic has meant a triumph for science and technology and a defeat for our political leaders. Why? Because scientists have been cooperating on a global scale, while politicians have mostly been quarrelling with each other. He gives us three recommendations for our future: Secure our digital infrastructures (those that saved us during the pandemic), scale up our public health systems and create a world agency for sanitary prevention.

Additionally, we will need to acquire new skills and capabilities. These new competencies will presumably embrace digital, cognitive, social and emotional skills as well as adaptability and resilience mindsets. Considering the quick pace of change of the past year, we can expect resilience and digital fluency to be the two priority skills we need to build for the six months to come and beyond. This is confirmed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported that more jobs will require technological, social, and emotional skills by 2030. Some projections indicate the following evolution: Physical and manual –2%, basic cognitive –14%; but higher cognitive +8%, social and emotional +29% and technology +48%.

In this context we must also consider cultural differences – some countries focus more on resilience and others more on digital fluency, depending on various infrastructural but also collective, mental and emotional needs.

When all is said and done, it is clear that we will be creating a radically new sense of well-being, both on the individual and collective levels. This, along with our need for community and connectedness, will mean that we will be more engaged and more productive in, hopefully, a better world.?