Are We Still Resisting the Future of Work?

As we continue to see return-to-office demands and attempts to will people back to pre-pandemic ways of working, it seems some leaders need assistance in letting go of the past in order to capitalize on the opportunities that lie ahead.?

Chapter 4 of my new book The Flourishing Effect highlights several antiquated work practices that were ripe for disruption and continue to be ineffective for the majority of today’s workforce. Where and how we work are proving to be the most difficult to align on, even several years into a new reality that’s provided the direct experience and mountains of data to demonstrate there is a better way.?

Most are aware of the well-documented benefits of flexible/distributed/hybrid work, including increased productivity, satisfaction, equity, belonging, and engagement, improved culture, and reduction of burnout. These are the same metrics leaders are chasing. So why the resistance?

Perhaps these leaders (the majority of whom are older, white males) forget that they have very different lived experiences from their average employees. It’s easy to take for granted that our workplace norms are still largely based on masculine defaults and white professional standards of the Mad Men era. While face time was never an accurate measure of productivity or impact, our workplaces were found by, and for people who were able to prioritize time in the office above all else. . . including caregiving, personal well-being, and family because he had someone at home whose sole job was to care for him, the home, and the children.?However, this doesn’t reflect the way today’s typical employee looks or lives. For our current workforce, these experiences often entail microaggressions, code-switching, emotional labor, the second shift, and other inequities, all of which are mitigated when people are able to work with flexibility and choice.?

Return-to-office demands not only ignore the needs of the workforce and hinder their best work, but also increase the likelihood they will leave the organization by 2.5X because they clash with 3 psychological tensions—reactance, loss aversion, and gaslighting. Reactance arises when the autonomy to choose is threatened, triggering resistance. Loss aversion amplifies the pain of losing freedom experienced during the pandemic. Gaslighting dismisses the reality we’ve demonstrated during the past few years and the data to back it up. In my book, I discuss these in detail and offer alternatives to engage employees, boost performance, and transition to new work models.

For those of you trying to help your leadership teams understand, I think you’ll find my recent article for the Flex Index on how to address 5 common objections to flexible and distributed work helpful.?