Future of Work Roundup: May 24th

This week’s Future of Work Roundup focuses on the challenges of returning to the office, like Google’s attempt to figure it out, experimenting with different work spaces, and realizing that we don’t really know what to do.

Google’s return to office attempt isn’t going great.

The tech giant’s effort to find the perfect balance of hybrid work, and to bring 165,000 folks back in three day a week, is being met with tons of challenges – and resistance.

Can’t say I’m surprised.

• As one can imagine, there’s many reasons why Google’s return to office policy isn’t working. The roads are inundated with traffic. Emotionally, people aren’t feeling it. And there’s also concerns over Covid still lingering around. 

The bottom line: Challenges aside, the most coveted work perk is flexibility – where, when, and how one works – so if major orgs want to hire and retain talented employees, they have to meet their needs.

Source: Fortune

Cafe-style offices may be the future.

Coffee and co-workers are a classic combination, and Twitter’s CEO seems to think that the future of returning to work will look less like going into a traditional office and more like heading into city-specific communal spaces.

Chats over cappuccinos do sound better than cubicles.

• The social media leader also mentioned the importance of not giving preferential treatment to those who show face, saying we need to equally prioritize fostering online connections, too.

The bottom line: How to get people out of the house and into a place where they can collaborate IRL is still a big question mark. But we’re realizing that whatever physical space that is, it needs to be a place people want to go to – and the offices of yesteryear just won’t cut it.

Source: Axios

Breaking news: we’re all humans trying to figure it out.

The pandemic flipped our worlds upside down, and as we navigate how to best balance a return to work policy, we have to remember that there is no playbook or algorithm for what to do.

It’d be a lot cooler if there was.

• Everyone is new to our new normal, and we all have different preferences on what an ideal remote work situation looks like – which means we’re kind of making things up as we go, and we’re learning from our trial and error. 

The bottom line: Navigating hybrid work has become so difficult that managers are starting to release their grip on rigid rules and accepting that things will look messy, at least for now.

Source: The New York Times