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The world of work is not new to condemning an idea and then watching it become a norm across the globe. Before 1886, an 8-hour work day was unimaginable. Before Henry Ford, a 5-day workweek instead of six didn’t seem like a feasible idea. Today, these are the most familiar and common ways of working. With the ongoing debate around return to office (RTO), are we at the cusp of yet another moment in the history of talent & workplace that’ll change the future of work forever?
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I recently stumbled upon this LinkedIn post: “My current company is making everyone come back to the office full-time, which is the main reason why I’m looking for a new role.” Pre-pandemic, this person’s post would have been an exception to the rule. But as the 6th State of Remote Work Report (2022) suggests, almost two-thirds of workers will start looking for a job with more flexibility if their ability to work from home is completely taken away by their current organization.
Clearly, white-collar workers - those who can afford to get things done from anywhere - aren’t very happy with the return-to-office mandates coming from their employers. The biggest evidence for this widespread unhappiness and resistance came in the form of the Amazon employees’ walkout just two weeks ago.
“If time is money, then at the start of the pandemic, many white-collar workers were given a raise. The thing is employees didn’t realize they received it and companies didn’t realize they gave it until efforts were made to return to ‘normal’, says Tim Toterhi, CHRO - Plotline Leadership shedding light on the reason why employees are struggling to return to what was once their day-to-day routine. “Overall employees have realized the value in trading commute time for family time, the rat race for a walk with the dog, and those force-fit brainstorming meetings for space to create on their own terms”, he added.
So alluring and positive has been the flexibility that came with the work-from-home setup that one in two employees are even ready to take a 5% pay cut for the flexibility to work from any location.
“I like that I’m just a two-second walk away from my kid and can choose to meet her when I want to between work”, a Reddit user shared on a thread discussing ‘work from home’. On a similar thread, another user shared a revelation, “I can choose what my every day looks like. And it doesn’t have to be wake up, drink coffee, head to the office, leave office, have dinner, sleep, rinse and repeat anymore.”
If you’re someone who reads between the lines like I do, what I hear in most of these comments made in favor of working from home or flexible working is agency. In their need to “work from home” or “work from anywhere”, people seem to be seeking agency to choose “where” they work from and “how” they get their work done. They are seeking agency over their own time and location as long as work is getting done.
And to a lot of employees, working from home hasn’t just been a boost to their work-life balance but to their productivity too. Going back to the 6th State of Remote Work Report, 62% of employees feel they are more productive while working from home. Another research by Global Workforce Analytics goes so far as to say that remote workers are 35-40% more productive than their in-office counterparts.
But do leadership teams concur?
Ideally, if employees are more productive working from home and companies can save $11,000 per employee per year with this work model, why are a lot of tech companies and others trying to get their employees back to the office? Some requesting, others persuading and a lot more are mandating their employees to come back.
Elon Musk, for one, said anything less than 40 hours a week in the office would be “phoning it in”. But even if we dismiss Elon Musk’s statements for being too radical, over 150 US CEOs want to have employees back in the office and cited stronger communication, collaboration and team bonding as the reasons for it.
But employees aren’t as gung-ho as their leaders to come back to office. Aaron McEwan, Vice President of Research and Advisory, Gartner shared an interesting perspective on this in a recent podcast where he said, "... jobs that executives do are very different to the jobs that their employees do. So employees’ jobs are often sitting alone, speaking with clients, building spreadsheets, writing reports, producing things. Executives, on the other hand, their jobs are relational. It's about building consensus. It's about negotiation and influencing. So a lot of their time is actually spent in meetings with other people. And I'm not surprised that from their perspective, it probably feels really hard to run a complex business from your home office.”
Is leadership then failing to slip into their employees’ shoes? Is it just a compulsive need to go back to a setup that has always been the comfort zone? Or are there real productivity issues to consider?
We haven’t gotten to conclusive answers on the above yet, but, in the interim, both, employees and employers seem to be inching towards the same thing - hybrid work.
“Hybrid work is possibly a guise through which large tech companies are getting employees back to work”, observed Kiran Menon, CEO of Tydy, in our recent Tydy Tea Time podcast on the same topic.
Either way, it seems to be an acceptable way forward for employees and employers, atleast for now.
Diana Vicheva, an editorial manager at the Expo Travel Group said: “Working remotely is pleasant, as it creates an unmatched flexibility. It gives me the opportunity to complete my tasks in the comfort of my room and to make more quality time for my kids. Traveling is another major benefit I've enjoyed. Long stays in three cities (so far) and numerous short trips to other destinations, all without major interruptions in my work.
Yet, I like to return to the office for meetings and events, which allow me to interact with my colleagues face-to-face, feel that I belong to a team, find support and a strong community. This is why I believe that the hybrid model is the best of both worlds.”
Just declaring your workplace as a hybrid one won’t solve the problem. It might look shiny on a job description but beyond that, a great deal of onus falls on the shoulders of the leaders and HR teams to define this new way of working.
Anastasiia Khyzniak, Talent Enablement Director at Jooble rightly recommends that you start with the why. “The first thing to consider is why you’re trying to bring employees back to the office. Is it because you believe that your teams will be more efficient together, or you want things to be as they were “before Covid”, or you’re trying to justify holding on to an expensive but now big and empty office? Try to be honest with yourself and the rest of the leadership team about your reasons and assumptions about people’s behaviors before attempting a big “back to offline” campaign.”
Once you know your why and if hybrid is your way forward, remove the obstacles for your employees. Jessica Chang - Cofounder and CEO of Weecare, the largest childcare network in the US, for instance, says access to childcare benefits, such as tuition subsidies, backup care, or childcare search assistance, is essential for bringing employees back to the office.
And then decentralize power. Hand over more power to managers and team leaders to take a call locally for their teams. Any sense of agency and autonomy given out to teams will be deeply appreciated by employees.
Lastly, introduce flexibility in other avatars. If there’s anything to learn from people clinging to working from home so hard is that flexibility matters to them. Identify and innovate new flexibility policies. Many companies are experimenting with a four-day workweek, no-meeting Fridays, job-sharing and more.
In short, and as the latest research points out, we are headed to a future where we’ll have four times more people working from home compared to pre-pandemic times but only two-fifths in comparison to the pandemic days.
Written by Soumya Samuel | Published in June 2023
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The world of work is not new to condemning an idea and then watching it become a norm across the globe. Before 1886, an 8-hour work day was unimaginable. Before Henry Ford, a 5-day workweek instead of six didn’t seem like a feasible idea. Today, these are the most familiar and common ways of working. With the ongoing debate around return to office (RTO), are we at the cusp of yet another moment in the history of talent & workplace that’ll change the future of work forever?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I recently stumbled upon this LinkedIn post: “My current company is making everyone come back to the office full-time, which is the main reason why I’m looking for a new role.” Pre-pandemic, this person’s post would have been an exception to the rule. But as the 6th State of Remote Work Report (2022) suggests, almost two-thirds of workers will start looking for a job with more flexibility if their ability to work from home is completely taken away by their current organization.
Clearly, white-collar workers - those who can afford to get things done from anywhere - aren’t very happy with the return-to-office mandates coming from their employers. The biggest evidence for this widespread unhappiness and resistance came in the form of the Amazon employees’ walkout just two weeks ago.
“If time is money, then at the start of the pandemic, many white-collar workers were given a raise. The thing is employees didn’t realize they received it and companies didn’t realize they gave it until efforts were made to return to ‘normal’, says Tim Toterhi, CHRO - Plotline Leadership shedding light on the reason why employees are struggling to return to what was once their day-to-day routine. “Overall employees have realized the value in trading commute time for family time, the rat race for a walk with the dog, and those force-fit brainstorming meetings for space to create on their own terms”, he added.
So alluring and positive has been the flexibility that came with the work-from-home setup that one in two employees are even ready to take a 5% pay cut for the flexibility to work from any location.
“I like that I’m just a two-second walk away from my kid and can choose to meet her when I want to between work”, a Reddit user shared on a thread discussing ‘work from home’. On a similar thread, another user shared a revelation, “I can choose what my every day looks like. And it doesn’t have to be wake up, drink coffee, head to the office, leave office, have dinner, sleep, rinse and repeat anymore.”
If you’re someone who reads between the lines like I do, what I hear in most of these comments made in favor of working from home or flexible working is agency. In their need to “work from home” or “work from anywhere”, people seem to be seeking agency to choose “where” they work from and “how” they get their work done. They are seeking agency over their own time and location as long as work is getting done.
And to a lot of employees, working from home hasn’t just been a boost to their work-life balance but to their productivity too. Going back to the 6th State of Remote Work Report, 62% of employees feel they are more productive while working from home. Another research by Global Workforce Analytics goes so far as to say that remote workers are 35-40% more productive than their in-office counterparts.
But do leadership teams concur?
Ideally, if employees are more productive working from home and companies can save $11,000 per employee per year with this work model, why are a lot of tech companies and others trying to get their employees back to the office? Some requesting, others persuading and a lot more are mandating their employees to come back.
Elon Musk, for one, said anything less than 40 hours a week in the office would be “phoning it in”. But even if we dismiss Elon Musk’s statements for being too radical, over 150 US CEOs want to have employees back in the office and cited stronger communication, collaboration and team bonding as the reasons for it.
But employees aren’t as gung-ho as their leaders to come back to office. Aaron McEwan, Vice President of Research and Advisory, Gartner shared an interesting perspective on this in a recent podcast where he said, "... jobs that executives do are very different to the jobs that their employees do. So employees’ jobs are often sitting alone, speaking with clients, building spreadsheets, writing reports, producing things. Executives, on the other hand, their jobs are relational. It's about building consensus. It's about negotiation and influencing. So a lot of their time is actually spent in meetings with other people. And I'm not surprised that from their perspective, it probably feels really hard to run a complex business from your home office.”
Is leadership then failing to slip into their employees’ shoes? Is it just a compulsive need to go back to a setup that has always been the comfort zone? Or are there real productivity issues to consider?
We haven’t gotten to conclusive answers on the above yet, but, in the interim, both, employees and employers seem to be inching towards the same thing - hybrid work.
“Hybrid work is possibly a guise through which large tech companies are getting employees back to work”, observed Kiran Menon, CEO of Tydy, in our recent Tydy Tea Time podcast on the same topic.
Either way, it seems to be an acceptable way forward for employees and employers, atleast for now.
Diana Vicheva, an editorial manager at the Expo Travel Group said: “Working remotely is pleasant, as it creates an unmatched flexibility. It gives me the opportunity to complete my tasks in the comfort of my room and to make more quality time for my kids. Traveling is another major benefit I've enjoyed. Long stays in three cities (so far) and numerous short trips to other destinations, all without major interruptions in my work.
Yet, I like to return to the office for meetings and events, which allow me to interact with my colleagues face-to-face, feel that I belong to a team, find support and a strong community. This is why I believe that the hybrid model is the best of both worlds.”
Just declaring your workplace as a hybrid one won’t solve the problem. It might look shiny on a job description but beyond that, a great deal of onus falls on the shoulders of the leaders and HR teams to define this new way of working.
Anastasiia Khyzniak, Talent Enablement Director at Jooble rightly recommends that you start with the why. “The first thing to consider is why you’re trying to bring employees back to the office. Is it because you believe that your teams will be more efficient together, or you want things to be as they were “before Covid”, or you’re trying to justify holding on to an expensive but now big and empty office? Try to be honest with yourself and the rest of the leadership team about your reasons and assumptions about people’s behaviors before attempting a big “back to offline” campaign.”
Once you know your why and if hybrid is your way forward, remove the obstacles for your employees. Jessica Chang - Cofounder and CEO of Weecare, the largest childcare network in the US, for instance, says access to childcare benefits, such as tuition subsidies, backup care, or childcare search assistance, is essential for bringing employees back to the office.
And then decentralize power. Hand over more power to managers and team leaders to take a call locally for their teams. Any sense of agency and autonomy given out to teams will be deeply appreciated by employees.
Lastly, introduce flexibility in other avatars. If there’s anything to learn from people clinging to working from home so hard is that flexibility matters to them. Identify and innovate new flexibility policies. Many companies are experimenting with a four-day workweek, no-meeting Fridays, job-sharing and more.
In short, and as the latest research points out, we are headed to a future where we’ll have four times more people working from home compared to pre-pandemic times but only two-fifths in comparison to the pandemic days.
Written by Soumya Samuel | Published in June 2023
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