Home office or in-person work? Companies seek truce – 09/10/2023 – Market

When videoconferencing leader Zoom called the team back to the office last month, it was widely interpreted as the disintegration of the remote work experience. The pro-office message, four years after the pandemic triggered a white-collar retreat, was seized upon by Elon Musk, who described it as morally wrong for “laptop gangs who live in fantasyland” to work from home.

Amazon is monitoring attendance and sending emails to employees who don’t show up three days a week, while Google says absence will affect staff performance reviews. In the UK, banks including Lloyds Banking Group, Citi and HSBC took the September cue to strengthen their mandates.

But even as some employers take a more aggressive approach to forcing staff back into the office, the latest data show that the picture of work patterns is more complex. Even after the crackdown, Zoom only requires two days in the office, while most other companies with face-to-face staff expect to keep some of their work remote.

“What doesn’t make the headlines is that there is a higher percentage of companies moving from full-time in the office to much greater flexibility,” says Brian Elliott, co-founder of Future Forum, a consortium on the future of work launched in 2020. .

As the northern hemisphere exits the summer vacation season – traditionally the time when companies seek to reinforce their return to office policies – tensions with employees are far from resolved. But the debate over working standards is entering a new phase, as companies examine how to improve productivity and performance through hybrid policies — rather than seeing them simply as a perk for employees. New insights into how employers can manage hybrid work are emerging, including democratizing decision-making and increasing leadership training.

Finding the middle ground

In the US, 33% of companies are fully flexible – meaning employees work entirely from home or have freedom of choice when going to the office, according to the Flex Index, which collects data on work policies from 6,500 companies.

The proportion of North American companies requiring a full-time office presence fell from 49% in January to 39% in July. However, the “Goldilocks” hybrid model, which requires a minimum number of days in the office, was adopted by 28% of companies by July, against 20% at the beginning of this year.

On average, North American companies spend 2.56 days in the office per week, according to the new Flex Index report, halfway between what employers expect (2.75 days) and the 2.21 days they expect. employees would like.

“I consider two to three days a week [no escritório] like a truce,” says Rob Sadow of Scoop, which provides hybrid work technology and oversees the Flex Index. “Employers may not get exactly what they want; employees may not get exactly what they want.

Globally, the Leesman Index, which measures employee engagement, reports that about a third of companies have mandated office hours, while nearly half allow employees to choose, with the majority selecting Friday as the day they are more likely to work remotely.

Give employees a voice

Who decides companies’ workplace policies helps determine how well they are received. Mandatory policies are popular with employers, in part because they are simple to enforce — but employees prefer them when they have a say in the decision. Syreeta Brown, director of people and communications director at British retail bank Virgin Money, says the group carried out a lot of research at all levels before deciding that most staff could work anywhere in the UK. The standard, however, was set in consultation with the coach and team. “It’s a lot of work. That’s why companies find it a challenge.”

According to a Boston Consulting Group survey of 1,500 office workers, mostly North American and European, in the spring of 2023, nearly two-thirds (62 percent) had no say in their company’s politics. Employees were less satisfied when their work standard was set from the top of the company; when their direct manager dictated policy, the proportion of dissatisfied respondents fell and fell again if the team decided.

Payments company Mastercard, which had a five-day office policy before the pandemic, is asking for a two-day office minimum. It allows teams to decide when and why to work remotely or in the office, encouraging them to come together for “moments that matter,” says Michael Fraccaro, chief people officer.

Some employers require far fewer meetings. Sydney-based Atlassian lets staff decide where to work and only recommends teams hold in-person “meetings” once a quarter. Annie Dean, head of the software group’s “Team Anywhere”, says monthly employee surveys show that such events, which can last a week, are enough to reinforce the feeling of connection between team members by almost 30%. The effect lasts four or five months, she says, and the bonds are stronger than between team members permanently located in offices.

Tasks, not days

Differences in work styles between executives and employees partially explain the mismatch in expectations regarding office work.

BCG says that managers spend almost half their time on tasks that require face-to-face meetings (like giving feedback or inducting new recruits), compared to their employees, who spend more time on “focus work” like writing reports, which is more suitable for remote control.

JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, an avowed skeptic of working from home, recently told The Economist that he believed the remote model was less effective for management teams and younger employees, adding that the decisions would not be “employee-pleasing” shots. He further stated: “It has to work for the company and, more importantly, for the customers.”

Some employers are moving beyond blunt policies that dictate days in the office to align tasks and locations. Virgin Money’s Brown says this requires planning. “You sit down with your manager and your team and say, ‘What do we need to do for the next quarter? What’s our pace?'” Finance, investor relations and communications teams work on quarterly results, for example. Typically, in the days before the results were published, the teams worked together in the same location.

Work patterns can also be organized by experience. RSM, an accounting firm, expects junior workers to be more present than senior management. John Taylor, the company’s UK operations director, says the company explains to young people that it’s not about presenteeism, it’s about investing in their careers.

But BCG’s Debbie Lovich says most executives are just monitoring “‘butts in seats’ and card swiping [de entrada]rather than managing joy and productivity.”

Productivity

Lloyds chief executive Charlie Nunn told staff in July that the bank “can only [ser competitivo] if we collaborate effectively, which is difficult, if a team [está] below strength on certain days of the week.”

But whether hybrid work is more productive than a fully remote or fully in-person workforce remains inconclusive.

A working paper published in July by academics Jose Maria Barrero, Nick Bloom and Steven Davis suggests that fully remote work has reduced productivity by 10 to 20 percent compared to working full-time in the office, due to obstacles such as challenges communication and domestic distractions.

Although the article suggests that the productivity of hybrid workers was only stable or slightly higher than that of office workers, academics believe that a hybrid model is attractive because it reduces recruitment and retention costs. Bloom of Stanford University has estimated that offering flexible work equates to a wage increase of about 8%, based on surveys of workers, who seem to value greater freedom and the reduced cost of, for example, commuting. less frequently.

Cooper, an American mortgage servicing company, has adopted a flexible model built around a framework, avoiding a top-down mandate and allowing teams to establish working norms. Most employees carry out their daily work from home. “The turnover [de pessoal] last year it was around 25%. This year it is around 16%. I attribute this to flexible working arrangements,” says Kelly Ann Doherty, the group’s managing director.

Management and feedback

Changing work habits are already showing up in office usage data, which will ultimately dictate ownership decisions when long leases come to an end. A study of a sample of organizations by workplace consultant AWA found that average office attendance increased to 35% worldwide, up from 26% in July last year. Desk utilization increased more sharply, from 33% to 48%, reflecting a reduction in available office space as companies consolidate their real estate.

But many companies are starting to realize that successful flexible working is not the result of a simple calculation about office space and time spent in it. It also requires training leaders to manage hybrid and distributed teams.

“We doubled down on training managers,” says Fraccaro, from Mastercard. “The biggest success factor in this is investing in people.”

Cooper’s Doherty says the company has focused on areas such as coaching and how to provide effective feedback. “When you’re in person in the office, a leader might walk around and think they’ve checked that box,” she says. “When you’re a hybrid, you have to be intentional.”

“Organizational leaders expect the office to solve their management problems,” says Despina Katsikakis, president of the British Council for Offices. “You need to start with why – what are the behaviors we want to drive? Unfortunately, we often start with ‘My space is underutilized, so we need 20% less space.’ You might want to understand why it’s underutilized.”