Changing Times

Written By David Macauley
Dylan Mural by weston-mackinnon-via-unsplash.jpg

Ready for things to get back to normal?  As Groupon’s popular “So @#$%in ready” ad campaign can attest, you are clearly not alone.  Unfortunately, there are a few things you may need to think about before planning that welcome-back office party or you may just find yourself partying alone.

Despite years of research showing the positive impact of remote work on productivity, employee retention, cost savings, and ability to access global talent many business leaders remain consistently suspicious of remote work and the engagement of employees that they can’t see.  In May of 2021 the new CEO of the co-working space WeWork was quoted by Business Insider saying that “the people most comfortable working from home are the ‘least engaged’ with their company.”  The Wall Street Journal articulated similar leadership sentiment in its article titled “Bosses Still Aren’t Sure Remote Workers Have ‘Hustle’” that was published in the last month as well.  These beliefs are nothing new. 

The debate over the merits and cautions of remote work has been framed almost from its inception as a struggle between CEOs and managers wanting their people in the office (e.g., The boss wants you back in the office) and workers, advocates, and futurists making their case for flexibility (e.g., When Your Boss Wants You To Return To The Office).  Leaders have an almost instinctual distrust for remote work and frequently assume that it will negatively impact many facets of organizational life from employee productivity, worker satisfaction, employee development, company culture, and employee engagement. 

However, most organizations do not see a reduction in productivity due to remote work.  On the contrary, productivity typically goes up, time on task increases as absenteeism declines, and employees discover new and more effective ways to stay productive.  In addition, when organizations structure their technology and equip their leaders to support remote work, remote employees have actually been shown to display higher levels of satisfaction with organizational communication than traditional office workers.  In short, remote work has been shown to actually IMPROVE the very things that many leaders say they worry will suffer including productivity, job satisfaction, company culture, and employee engagement.

Individual and organizational factors known to increase employee engagement:

Why the disconnect between what managers fear and what actually happens?  While the causal debate will continue for the foreseeable future, cognitive load and exhaustion are likely among the top contenders.  There have been many frustrations, trials, and errors with remote work in the last year and many CEOs are eager to put these the pandemic-driven frustrations behind them. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was recently quoted saying “the commute, you know, yes, people don’t like commuting, but so what.”  While the frustration behind the sentiment is understandable, such comments are culture killers that communicate disregard for the needs of employees and paint business leaders as unfeeling and out of touch.  As understandable as the frustrations are, it is important to note that many of the frustrations in the last year stem not from remote work itself but from remote work that was forced due to a pandemic.

In 1964, Bob Dylan sang The Times They Are A-Changin’ about the impact of rapid social change.  Seen through the lens of remote work in 2021, Dylan’s lyrics prove equally insightful to the challenges facing today’s office culture revolution as they did for those facing the popular culture revolution of the 1960’s:

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

After contending with Covid-19 for more than 15 months, leaders find themselves exhausted and worried about losing touch with their people.  Concern that losing face-to-face interactions may eventually lead to lost productivity and higher turnover is understandable. In fact, leaders are correct to be concerned about turnover, but not for the reasons they assume.

The Society for Human Resource Management is among those warning of an impending “Turnover ‘Tsunami’” in 2021.  Multiple studies and organizations like Employee Benefit News, Robert Half, and Prudential’s Pulse of the American Worker Survey report that more than 85% of workers want to continue being able to work remotely at least one or more days a week after the pandemic resolves.  Furthermore, the studies also indicate that as few as 1 in 3 workers and as many as 3 out of 5 say that they plan to quit their job if their employer requires them to work onsite full time.  These employee sentiments are no idle fancy as the CEO of the Washingtonian discovered when her staff went on strike after she published an op-ed in the Washington Post that warned workers who continued to work remotely would be seen as “less valuable and easier to ‘let go.’”

Resistance to a forced return to the office is in addition to the more than 1 in 4 (26%) workers who say they plan to look for a job with a different employer once the threat of the pandemic is over.  Employees are exhausted too, and many are looking for a fresh start that includes a new job, new employer, and even a new career to help put the social, emotional, and professional scar tissue of the pandemic behind them.  While at least a moderate increase in post-pandemic turnover seems unavoidable, the data is clear that leaders who position themselves against remote work and bring their people back the office by force are likely to create the very “Turnover Tsunami” that they feared through their efforts to avoid it.

However, not every CEO is embracing the management vs employee dichotomy when it comes to office life after the pandemic.  Some, such as General Motor’s CEO Mary Barra, are using it as an opportunity to establish a more cooperative and pragmatic workplace culture.  Barra’s post-pandemic company policy, “Work Appropriately,” empowers more than 70,000 non-manufacturing employees to work with their managers, team leads, and colleagues to determine where they will be most productive based on the nature of their work.  Barra acknowledges that this non-proscriptive policy will lead to disparate working conditions in different parts of the organization.  However, that reality is more than acceptable given that employees in different parts of the organization have different skillsets, personal situations, and are engaged in different types of work.  The goal is not a homogenized or standardized workplace.  The goal is to create an environment and culture designed to maximize productivity of the organization as a whole, optimize systems for end-to-end efficiencies, and do so in ways that honor the humanity of the people involved.

“If you can't explain, logically and sensibly, why you decided certain schedules should be different for different roles and different employees, then you haven't thought those decisions through” (Haden, 2021).

Research insights are widely available for CEOs and business leaders looking for guidance on how their organization can build employee engagement, mitigate the impending Turnover Tsunami, and successfully navigate the return to post-pandemic organizational life.  Some of the most effective levers include efforts to create authentic company cultures, set clear expectations, demonstrate corporate social responsibility, articulate job characteristics and ensure employee job fit, demonstrate consistent leadership, support self-efficacy, and maintain high levels of psychological safety in the workplace. 

Demonstrating leadership and setting clear expectations in face of tremendous uncertainty are easier said than done.  CEOs, leaders, and employees at every organizational level will continue to wrestle with questions about how the economy, public health policy, and the continuing effectiveness of the vaccines against emerging variants will impact their life, their work, and the health of their organization.  While answers to those questions will remain elusive, leaders can ensure that they wrestle with them in ways that are productive, that build company culture, strengthen employee engagement, and inoculate their firm against the turnover challenge that is likely to come. 

We are all on a journey in which the destination is currently unclear. That is understandably uncomfortable for many.  Thankfully, a final destination is not required for forward progress.  A vision, direction, and willingness to continue the journey and find the next step is all that is needed for forward progress to occur.  Just as a river wends its way through twists and turns inexorably to the sea, success is a journey that rarely takes a straight path.  We can find our way together. 

Let’s get to work!

References:

David Macauley
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