The pandemic changed office work
More employees are working from home…
…than ever before
But as the world begins to recover from covid-19…
…should things go back to how they were?
Do office workers belong in the office?
And where are they most productive?
Now, Callum and Vinjeru…
…can I just ask you how your working lives…
…have changed in the last 18 months?
And if you think ahead sort of covid-restrictions aside…
…what does your ideal, new-work model sort of looks like?
I guess, like everyone really, I’ve moved…
…pretty much to a full-time working from home
I mean, I’m in San Francisco at the moment…
…which is where I live at the moment
So in terms of what I would ideally like…
…it’s pretty much this I suppose…
…the only difference would be…
…it would be better to have more opportunities for kind of…
…the sort of back and forth of ideas…
…that was more common in the days of…
…100% office-going
And Vinjeru what’s it been like for you?
I mean, if I’m not mistaken, you changed jobs…
…in the middle of all of this
Yes, I actually interviewed for this job…
…remotely, and I’m based in the London office…
…and I think a lot has been said about the difficulty…
…of hiring and onboarding during lockdowns
But I think I’ve been pleasantly surprised…
…by the way that it’s worked out really well
If you think about your first day…
…or your first week in a new job…
…you’re nervous, you’re in a brand new building…
…with a brand new commute and you know…
…you just try to remember everyone’s names
I think for me, being able to do that…
…from a familiar setting is actually…
…I think, taken some of that pressure off
I wondered if you could just talk us through…
…how employees are feeling…
…and how employers are feeling
I think this has been a huge challenge for employers…
…and there are definitely mismatches in expectations…
…you know, what employers want…
…doesn’t always align with what employees expect
And if you look at Apple, you know, I think that’s probably been…
…the most high-profile case
Senior managers want staff to return to the office…
…at least three days a week, but you’re seeing that…
…employees are really pushing back and I believe there…
…have been two petitions that have been signed…
…by over 1,000 people
A handful of people have actually resigned…
…over this at Apple. And, you know…
…some employees are speaking out publicly
And I think that’s really striking…
…because to have Apple employees…
…speaking out so publicly against…
…their management is almost unprecedented for a company…
…that’s been so fiercely private
It’s now becoming a cultural norm that if you are working…
…in a more knowledge-intensive work, white-collar work…
…basically, that you will be allowed to spend…
…at least some of the week at home
And a company that is saying we want everyone in the office…
…five days a week will quite quickly run up…
…against a problem where good employees say…
…I don’t want to work here anymore
Today, most people envision some form of hybrid working…
…and Gartner predicts that globally half of all knowledge…
…workers will be remote at least one day a week…
…by the end of this year
You know, of course, there will be…
…differences in preference
Parents and carers, for example, are more likely…
…to want to work from home…
…a number of days a week
You’ve got disabled workers who reported…
…finding remote working more accessible
What I found most striking is how race can impact that preference…
…and this is still an under-researched area
But there was one report by Slack which showed that…
…just 3% of knowledge workers, black knowledge workers in America…
…wanted to return to the office full time
Now that’s compared to 21% of their white counterparts
A lot of workers are talking about, you know…
…not just a good work-life balance…
…but also actually a really productive time…
…whereas quite a few employers, particularly those…
…who are calling for people to come back a lot…
…seem to think that actually you do need…
…to physically be somewhere to be productive
The best mix is not everyone in the office all the time
And it’s also not everyone at home all the time
It’s sort of a bit of both
And that is because, quite simply…
…you can have a more efficient division of labour…
…of your working week, if you do it that way
So say, for instance, if I’m working from home two days a week…
…on those two days, I can do the tasks that really require me…
…to be like by myself, concentrating…
…not interrupted and so on
So I can do those on Monday and Friday…
…and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
I can do the kind of tasks that require collaboration with others
Should it just be left to workers to figure out…
…how much they individually want to come in…
…or is it actually from an employer’s point of view…
…more helpful to say everyone should come in on…
…a Tuesday and a Thursday or everyone in this team…
…should come in on Tuesday and Thursday and beyond that…
…you know, see for yourself ?
Teams choosing which days they want to come in…
…is actually quite helpful, and I think it’s something…
…that solves the issue of hybrid meetings…
…which could be a really big challenge
Already, we’re seeing that there is a lack of consensus around…
…which meetings people should hold in person…
…and which ones people should keep virtual
I mean, it’s something that I’m hearing more about over here…
…is the idea of mandating days when you’re not allowed…
…to come into the office, so you actually are, you must work from home…
…on Tuesday, for instance, and the reason for that is because…
…it’s sort of to try and overcome the biases in sort of promotion…
…and that kind of thing that you might get otherwise
So the original study on this…
…of which was done by on the Chinese call-centre workers…
…showed that even if people were equally productive…
…merely going into the office was enough to get yourself…
…a promotion, basically, which is mad really
I think the challenge now for companies…
…is to try to find a middle ground…
…that works for all of their employees
But more crucially, one that works for the companies themselves