Hi, I'm Ylan Mui. From CNBC, and today I'm talking to Dan Ariely
about the future of work, and whether getting back to normal
in the workplace is even possible.
Hi, Dan, how are you?
Hi, my name is Dan Ariely. And I'm the James B. Duke Professor
of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University,
and the author of Predictably Irrational and a few other
books. And as you might have noticed, I am also the owner of
a half a beard. And if you're wondering what bet I lost, I
didn't lose any bet. I was just badly burned many years ago,
most of my body is covered with burns, including the side of my
face. So, hence the half beard.
Businesses say that workers don't want to come back to the
jobs they used to have, because of the enhanced federal
unemployment benefits. The workers say no, it's because
I'm, I have fear of safety, I've got care responsibilities, or
maybe I just didn't like that job all that much to begin with,
and so I don't want to come back. Where do you weigh in on
this? And do you think there's a way to tip the scale?
Yes. So I, this would not sound nice, but I don't trust what
people say, right now. You know, we are, we're at the end of a
very traumatic period. It's a very tough period. You know,
this has been tough in so many ways, and so much stress and so
much uncertainty, and so on. In general, when people are
stressed and anxious and worried, this is not the time
for people to be reflective and understand their own motives in
the best possible way. I wouldn't take that too serious.
The approach of saying, you know, what, you're not sure, if
you want to come back? Why don't you come back for two months?
Why don't you come for two months, if you come for two
months, we'll improve your, you know, departure benefit, if you
decide to leave, just give it two months. I think I think
people would would, would get back, I think that the the step
of coming in from the period we were with the fear and anxiety,
and so on.
Going back is just a difficult step. But if we would get people
to do it, for even a month or two, I think people would be
very, very different on the end of the experience. So, you know,
there's lots of things that you need to try out to figure out.
If you go to a mattress store, you can imagine what the
mattress feels like, and you can lay on it for five minutes. But
to really experience it, you need to use a mattress for a
month to understand how it is. And we're talking about
something that has taken a tremendous amount of time. And
people don't have really good intuition now about this
transition from this period to the next period. We need to try
it out, we need to try it out. And lots of things are standing
in the way, it's frightening, it's effortful, we get used to
doing what we, look people people did not stand there and
have empty time people filled the time in different ways. Now
they have to give up something. So it will need adjustment. The
people who did not work will need will need adjustment, but
they need to try it out.
What are some bad decisions tha you see people making as we g
through this reopening process And how can we avoid that
One thing that I am predicting is that people don't understand
how much they miss other people. And I'll give you another
analogy for this. And I'm sorry, it's another analogy from my
days in the hospital, but I was thinking about it the other day.
So when I was in hospital, initially, I had a tube to feed
me. And they would feed me one hour, yes. Three hours, no. One
hour, yes. Three hours, no. So, 7000 calories a day, 30 eggs a
day because you have to pump lots of lots of protein. I ate
this way for about four months. And at the end, they said hey,
next week, we'll take it off and we'll start eating.
And I thought to myself how uncivilized I said, you know,
who this just chewing who needs all of this activity and chewing
and effort? It's so convenient and clean and effortless? Why
would anybody, and I said you know, the future will be without
chewing. The future would be everybody will go with versions
of these tubes and will just eat. What happened was I totally
forgot. I totally forgot taste. I totally forgot what it is to
taste food. And I remembered and then I I thought about figure
out that this is the future. And I think the same thing has
happened to us about other people. You know, I think we
forget the joys that we have from other people. We forget the
joy of getting a pat on the back and a wink. You know there's
this beautiful research I love this. They show that when people
meet each other for the first time they shake hands and then
almost always Almost everybody takes their hand in the next
five minutes and smells it. And we do it unconsciously,
We smell our hands after we shake hands?
Yeah, yeah. And you know, by the way, when you ask people, do you
do it, nobody says they do it. But when you look at videos, you
see people do it all the time, we're not aware of it. But the
reality is, you're getting a little bit of the scent of the
other person, and you smell them just a little bit. Now, we're
not aware of this. And I think there's lots of things like that
in which we're unaware of the depth and the complexity of our
social interactions. You know, we think that it's just the
words, and maybe looking at your eyes and smile, and so on. But
there's so much more to it. And I think that much like I said, I
forgot what it is to taste, I think we kind of a little bit
forgot the joy, the deep joy of, of social interaction. We're
social animals, and now this has been taken away from us. And
we kind of forgot what it is, but but I think when people
would go back to work, we'll remember.
If we forgotten, the joy that can come from being around other
people, have we also forgotten maybe the creativity,
inspiration, productivity, that can come from being around other
people? And how much do you think that's going to drive the
eventual return to the office place for those white collar
workers?
I think that when offices would open up, people would say, Oh, I
got used to being at home, it's perfectly fine. But very
quickly, they would realize what they were missing, and they
would want to be more with other people. And I think it would
improve tremendously in terms of creativity, and brainstorming
and camaraderie, and human connection and feeling loyalty
to the company and your team, and so on. So it's a wonderful
thing. Now, that being said, there's some really good things
about working from home. Not all the time. But home does give us
an environment that you know, people should spend at home
maybe a day or two a week. It's not it's not a zero, none. But
there's another risk. And the risk is that companies that will
try to be nice to their employees and say, hey, do
whatever you want. What will happen is that people would very
quickly move back to the office. Why?
Imagine that we have an important meeting. And five
people are in the office and five people are remote, and they
joined by videoconference, the five people joining remote are
going to be second class citizens, they're not going to
be heard, they're not going to participate, they're not going
to be able to complete each other's sentences. So what will
happen is that if it's a mixed model, for every important
meeting, everybody would show up to the office. And very quickly,
the benefit of having at least a day a week, will go away. So in
my my lab at Duke, what my plan is to do is to give a day a
week, in which I ask nobody to come so, it's coordinated. And I
people not to have meetings. Time at home is important. But
people shouldn't do office work at home, they should do a
different kind of work. It's not working from home is a bad idea.
It's a really good idea for some things, but we should coordinate
so we can do it in the fall in a good way.
Is this the time to make a big life change? Or do we risk sort
of overreacting to our circumstances, and doing
something we might regret later?
So yes and no. So mostly, we don't do enough life changes.
Like if you look, if you look at regular life, most people don't
make a lot of life changes. Because every day it's very
convenient to do the same thing you did before. And of course,
when people get to age 40, 50, midlife crisis, sometimes they
do big changes. But generally speaking, people don't make
enough big change. Big changes are painful and difficult and
complex. And so on. So I think in general, people need to do
more life changes. But but, this is not the point, this is not
the right time to do it because you might make the wrong one. So
so, I think that the tendency to make more life changes is
certainly a good one. At this point, people might not take the
right one.
How do we approach decision making post pandemic?
We live in an environment in which a lot of our freedom has
been taken away from us. They're things that all of a sudden we
can't do. flying is different, kids might not be able to go to
school. All kinds of things have changed. And this is an
environment that sometimes is referred to as an environment
with learned helplessness, that we just don't have the same
control over our lives and the lack of control is very tough to
deal with. When we drive we feel very much in control. When the
control is taking away from us, a lot of our psychological well
being is taken away with that. And for that, we need to figure
out how we can get it. I mean, even in, but the work
environment, we don't know, will they. Will we go back? Will we
not go back? When will we go back? What will be the
condition? And all of this uncertainty is creating stress
and lack of control. So what we need to do is to get control
back. Now, can we get all of the control back? Of course not. But
can we get some of it? Yes.
So, you know, I was a burn patient in the burn department
for about three years, and I had a button. Like I had no control
over anything, I had the button that six times a day, I could
say when I want pain medication, that was it. But it was a big
deal. Because you move from zero control to a little bit control
and of something important, that was that was very useful. And in
the same way, we need to figure out how we gain some control. So
we can gain some control by exercising, we can gain some
control by having a routine, we can gain some control by opening
a savings account and putting some some money into there.
Companies can help employees gain control by telling them
here is the plan. If this goes we'll open in August, if this
happens, we'll open in September, here are the three
things we're considering. Not knowing anything is terrible,
knowing about the few options is is much better.
So, the first thing about all of this is that we need to figure
out how we gain a bit control over our lives. The second thing
for our psychological well being is to have plans. You know, if
you say I want to have a plan for my August holiday, you can
say I don't know what's happening, what's happening with
the new variant, what will happen, what could I do or not
do. It's okay to have uncertainty, but nevertheless,
we need plans. And then the third thing I would say, and
then we can talk more is, is that I would hate for this
period to be gone without us using it in a meaningful way. So
So when when COVID started, I said to myself that when this
period is over, I want to say this was something I did that is
different, during that period. So I decided to try and write a
kids book, not something I've ever done, not necessarily
something I'm good at. But I wanted for this period to
symbolize not just a black hole of time, in which I'm waiting
for it to pass, but to fill it with something that is
meaningful and useful. And something that I wouldn't do in
a regular, in a regular time. So all of those things, I think can
bring meaning and a sense of control and a sense of optimism
into this difficult period.
Are we ever going to get back to normal? And is our definition of
normal changed forever.
So I think the question is normal, but let's say, are we
ever going to go back to where we were two years ago? I think
the answer is we'll go, we'll go very much in that direction. And
it will be quicker than you imagine. And the reason for that
is that mostly we make decisions as the function of the
environment that we're in. You know, we think that we make
decisions. I decide what to eat and what to wear and what what
what the reality is that we make decisions as the function of the
environment that we're in. And in a large degree our
environment has not change. We have the same cities and we have
the same cars and we have the same restaurants, and so on. And
the moment, things would open up the pressure to come back, you
know an office has been designed for a long time with all kinds
of evolutionary forces to sustain a certain kind of
behavior. And, you know, whenever we'll go back to the
office, very quickly, we'll go back to that.
You probably have seen friends from first grade and you go back
to being closer to your first grade self, the moment you meet
them. You go back to the environment we're in. The moment
we'll go back to these environments, I think we'll
we'll go back. And it could be quicker than we than we
anticipate. Now it will be exactly the same? No, but for
most of us, we would cherish things we removed toward them to
a higher degree than we anticipate and the environment
will take control and things will be closer. Now, that
saddens me because I think there are things I want people to
keep. Right? I learned to cook not really good, but I learned
to cook, I would like to keep some of that. Lots of families
had a game night. I mean, people did all kinds of things that I
would like them to keep. And I think that before COVID is over,
I think people should kind of say what are the things that we
had during this time that we want to keep and to try and make
a conscious effort to keep those because unless we make a
conscious effort to keep those they will, they would fade away.