Returning to the office
My large, multinational, pharma company has publicly announced that office staff (not scientists, production workers, etc.) will return to their respective sites in September, but will be going to a hybrid approach for the foreseeable, if not definite, future. It has announced a new flexible working model which purports to blend remote work with on-site collaboration and greater flexibility. According to the company literature, colleagues will be empowered to design their workday so as to maximize productivity, enhance work-life balance, and support a more agile way of working. Managers are being asked to work with their reports so as to allow greater flexibility in order to promote work-life balance rather than demanding on-site work. As a manager and an employee who spends a significant amount of time commuting, I'm cautiously optimistic, but I appreciate that my company is ahead of the curve on this issue and attacking it directly. I believe this will be a defining and deciding factor for office workers of all types around the country as a result of the social experiment caused by the pandemic.
Case in point, I have a NJ friend who works at a large investment/financial firm in NYC and is being required to go back to the office 4-5 days each week. She's decided that the thought of going back to train commuting so often where investment houses in other states are now allowing more flexibility does not make sense. She's now interviewing for jobs outside of the NY/NJ area and is willing to move, but is no longer willing to spend the amount or type of time necessary to commute to NYC after successfully working from home since March 2020.
Here is a Harvard Business Review article that addresses this topic and concludes that some form of in-office interaction is important even if companies go to a more flexible arrangement.
https://hbr.org/2021/03/what-a-year-...nships-at-work
In sum, a culture of kindness, fun, and cooperative collaboration is just as important to the bottom line as your daily to-do list. Organizations should understand that being nice to each other, chatting, and goofing around together is part of the work that we do. The spontaneous, informal interactions at risk in hybrid and remote work are not distractions or unproductive. They foster the employee connections that feed productivity and innovation — these interactions are the soil in which ideas grow.
I'm curious how others and their organizations are treating the "new normal" that will most assuredly come as a result of pandemic working, particularly office work. What do you think the future brings in terms of work/life balance and flexibility? On a broader scale, is this the beginning of the end of the big city and commuting in general?
Rich
"Failure is Not a Destination"
Coach K on the Dan Patrick Show, December 22, 2016