Future of Work Roundup: June 10th

This week’s Future of Work Roundup looks at how various companies are navigating their return to office policies – if they’re choosing to go that route at all.

Why are we still pretending like we’re going back to the office full time?

Many big companies – like Apple, McKinsey, Intuit and Google – are starting to realize that, try as they might, office incentives just aren’t cutting it for the employees who now prefer to work remote.

You don’t say.

• We’re slowly starting to lose our optimistic outlook of returning to the office and “back to normal.” A study from January 2021 showed that 50% of executives thought that most of their employees would be back in the office five days a week in the future; today, only 20% think that. 
• Another survey showed that 60% of people who can work remote would like to continue doing that, at least most of the time.

The bottom line: We all thought this would be temporary, but boy were we wrong – as Covid cases continue to spike, we’re realizing that all of this uncertainty is here to stay. And as employees have more time proving they can be just as (if not more) effective and productive while working remote, executives are losing their leverage because every RTO deadline they’ve set has shifted.

Source: The New York Times

A simple solution to the RTO vs WFH debate: listen to your employees.

Return to office plans have become so messy because executives have one idea and employees have another. But the solution may be just as simple as how one solves any relationship-adjacent problem: communicate and listen.

But there’s no excitement without all this drama!

• What is exciting, though, is having happy employees that want to stick around and work for your company. Enter: Maura Haley, Chief People Officer at a software startup called True Fit, who’s realized that her employees’ needs were vastly different than the company’s leadership team when it came to how they worked best.
• So what did True Fit do? “We listened, empowered, and enabled our employees to create the future they wanted. We want to empower our employees; they can motivate and influence their colleagues in different ways than leadership or HR can.”
• By asking questions around what remote work should look and feel like, True Fit’s leadership was able to put the power in their people, and authentically create a sustainable work model that truly works for everyone.

The bottom line: More executives need to put their egos aside and emphasize workplace empathy – and to create a workplace that encourages employees to be their very best.

Source: Forbes