Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
By: Amanda Drum
A year and a half from the onset of COVID-19–or two years in, for some parts of the world–we have WFH (work-from-home, if you needed any reminder), RTO (return-to-office), and a hybrid combination, which doesn’t have an acronym yet. That can be your Thanksgiving holiday homework.
The international workforce has carved out their litany of options on the sliding scale between total remote work and total return to the in-office 9 to 5 because company leadership has one opinion, their employees have another, and they sometimes don’t agree. Further, whether or not to WFH doesn’t depend on a national standard, so policies shift from business to business and industry to industry.
Some have tried to ask which is “better”. Simply put, better for some–and some types of business–is worse for others. No postal service is going fully WFH. Plenty of roles returned to the workforce to keep society running with all its grocery, public transportation and sanitation, Amazon demands, and more, particularly this time of year. We would be in the wrong to forget.
So we gathered news opinions in one place, from sources with the luxury of asking: should able employees remain remote? Should companies demand a return to cubicle life? Or should we use this opportunity to carve out a different, more flexible, workplace environment entirely? Since we used the Internet for our research, opinions were many:
WFH is WFB (work for [the] better…we’ll workshop it)
Recruiting firms had something to say about WFH, as recently as this past summer. Apollo Technical Solutions named surprising WFH statistics for the 26% of the workforce estimated to be 100% WFH this year. They cite several studies which cumulatively state: “On average, those who work from home spend 10 minutes less a day being unproductive, work one more day a week, and are 47% more productive.”
To explain the logical discrepancy–aren’t there more distractions at home, anyway? Don’t we all have pandemic pets by now?–they refer to a study by Stanford, of 16,000 workers over nine months, “[which] found that working from home increases productivity by 13%. This increase in performance was due to more calls per minute attributed to a quieter more convenient working environment and working more minutes per shift because of fewer breaks and sick days.” In the same month, Forbes found that half of workers wanted to stay remote entirely, thanks to the freedom to flex their independence and balance work around their other life demands at any time they pleased. Generally, people like being not micromanaged, and relied on to do their jobs well. As supervisors were forced to trust, some employees thrived.
Back to the Future
We won’t pretend the majority of employees–or even employers–particularly like the idea of abandoning sweatpants for business suits and commuting to an eight-hour business day. For many, the prospect suddenly feels very retro. But some takes highlighted why it may be less of a “want”, more of a “need”. At least in some cases.
Tracy Bower writing for Forbes cited the X-factor only stimulated by engaging with colleagues and the “company environment” face-to-face, providing a momentum hard to replicate via Zoom. She writes, “It is tougher to quantify than productivity or attendance, but is critically important. It has to do with connections, engagement and being with our colleagues. It is the need we have for each other and to be united around something that matters. It is also the positive obligation to contribute to the group and the culture, and to share our talents and build relationships.” Through this fuel we improve our sense of belonging and contribution, and thereby happiness and wellbeing, when we feel a part of something.
Similarly, CNBC cites Duke University behavioral economics and psychology professor Dan Ariely, who believes we’ve forgotten how much we miss social interaction. The sooner we return to the office, however, the more it will sink in: “People don’t understand how much they miss other people,” Ariely says. “But I think when people go back to work, we will remember.”
(Having said all of that, if you’re truly opposed to returning to the office, The New Yorker has your satirical take covered.)
Hybrid, How Are You-brid?
The same Forbes article from earlier also addressed the hybrid workplace. In short, hybrid is the blanket term to refer to any combination of in-office and remote work. Or maybe, flexible schedules, changes in the days of the week a company is open, and beyond.
They cite Lynda Gratton from the Harvard Business Review and her inquisitive article “How to Do Hybrid Right,” which examines the same issue: “To design hybrid work properly, you have to think about it along two axes: place and time.” ‘Place’ earned most of the 2020-21 news bylines, but ‘time’ is just as important. She continues to cite roles that may benefit from one of a combination of hybrid systems, but above all, the consensus should come from employees themselves. They deserve to have their opinion heard.
According to Genesis Integration, a virtual integration platform, the majority of employees want their say along hybrid lines. Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research found that “55 percent of US workers want a mixture of home and office working.” Salesforce more specifically learned, “74 percent of Gen Z would prefer either working from home or splitting time at home and work,” as the eldest of the young generation are now the newest to join the workforce.
Bryan Lufkin for the BBC notes, however, that the constant switch and too much flexibility with no structure may prove too much for some. He writes, “Employees who often work from home could perceive a negative impact on their career, linked to a lack of interaction with colleagues and managers. Those who want to climb the ladder could feel compelled to spend more time in the office, so they’re visible to the powers that be. Some people, meanwhile, could experience difficulties switching seamlessly between home and office work environments.”
When it comes to the timely cultural shift on the nature of work, an executive decision shouldn’t be executive at all. With a birds-eye view of their companies, employers can rely on their employees’ individual input for the nuance of what would work best for their company, both long-term and day-to-day. Perhaps the word isn’t “flexible”, but “wide-spanning” (though that’s definitely not the word either): offering extroverted employees their much-needed social interaction while letting your as-valuable “type-B” set shine from their sofas, and providing capabilities for both to work in sync. No business has ever benefited from one type of employee, or from a lack of ability to change. But don’t worry–if you still need another perspective, just turn back to the Internet.