OFF-MUTE 🔈
🔮 What does the future of work look like?
🆒🆕 Nobody really knows yet because we’re in the midst of figuring it out, but there’s one thing for certain:
💯 Work is not a one size fits all kind of thing.
😷 The pandemic has changed the business world in potentially permanent ways. That’s for sure.
🎙️ Last week we hosted a media panel event with the following workplace reporters to learn how companies, business leaders and employees are rethinking the office:
👀 Here’s what they’re seeing:
☑️ Trust is at stake. Bosses and workers aren’t seeing eye to eye. “It's like this massive fault line running through most organizations right now creating all sorts of instability and distrust,” said Matthew. He went on to cite a recent report that shows less than half of HR professionals know where their employees are working at any given time.
☑️ Everything is experimental. “We've had this gargantuan change that happened…in the blink of an eye. This is not something that's going to be sorted out overnight,” said Tara. She calls this period of time “the messy middle” because every company is experimenting right now, and described it as throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks and what doesn’t.
☑️ Local hubs are on the rise. “Even here in New York, people don't want to commute,” said Trey. One company he recently chatted with is considering having different offices in different neighborhoods to give their employees a local option. Tara is seeing this trend too. She said, “People are developing regional hubs as opposed to the huge headquarters.” And Matthew joked, “I'd love to know what their real estate bill is when they're opening up six offices around it.”
☑️ People want more than perks. Companies are offering creative, new incentives to get people in the office like professional headshots or providing meditation rooms, but Tara made a good point, “You might get people in the door from some of these things, but that doesn't necessarily keep them around.” Matthew added, “Everybody wants flexibility, not only in where we work, but when we work.”
☑️ Remote work isn’t all rainbows. “Most people actually have a preference against full time remote work. People want social interaction in the office at least one day a week,” said Aki.
☑️ [Dis]connection. “I think it's much less about returning to the physical office, or who wants to be in the office, and more just about culture. A lot of younger and newer employees are missing mentorship. They're missing that connection…you know, the early career friends that we all hold onto throughout our career. There’s an opportunity for companies to find new ways to help build and cultivate culture that doesn’t necessarily require you to be in the office,” said Trey.
☑️ Change is the only constant. “Schedules and policies over the past year have been proposed, shifted, canceled and reimposed. It’s sort of creating this whiplash effect for employees,” said Matthew.
☑️ Hustle culture is over. “Pretty early in the pandemic, I noticed a lot of people were really rethinking the role of work in their lives…They realized that they were just working so much before, and they don't want to live that way anymore,” said Aki. She decided to write an article about it, and it inspired the “quiet quitting” trend.
☑️ Demographic differences (and similarities) matter. “The remote first technology companies are gonna have mostly workers in their 30s and 40s…If you don't have a generationally diverse workforce, what does that mean? Maybe that's fine for your company if you're small and you have a very targeted mission. But if you're a large corporation, and you have a very skewed demographic, that could be a big problem ahead,” said Aki. Tara agreed: “You can wind up having a very homogenized workforce if you gather the same people who all want to be in person or who all don't want to be in person.”
▶️ ICYMI: Watch the recorded media panel event here.
