This post is part of "Periscopio", the Linkedin newsletter which every week delves into Futuro Prossimo themes, and is published in advance on the LinkedIn platform. If you want to subscribe and preview it, find it all here.
Managers from all over the world are increasingly resembling Carlo Verdone in 'Un Sacco Bello', when he desperately searches for a traveling companion to take on an unlikely summer adventure in Krakow. It's not easy to ask employees "but how are you?" if it is a question of reorganizing an office presence in the times of hybrid work.
If this request (and the consequent answers, mostly negative) also concerns salaries, profits and leasesbecomes something very stressful.
In recent weeks all plans to return to the office have faltered, for different reasons, almost everywhere. In the USA, Covid cases are growing and are slowing down the "Great Return": in Europe the uncertainties are perhaps linked more to expenses and the war situation in Ukraine. In all cases, however, the new awareness of workers weighs heavily. And the desire for a more "asymmetrical", but "bright" job.
Already in 2021 the in-person plans were based on arithmetic: roughly, the trend was 3 days in attendance and two more days at home. Today? The division already appears to be outdated, or complex. And executives try to abandon rigid rules to more easily adapt to life (there is only one) of employees.
The manual of hybrid work has not yet been written
At the two extremes we find giants like Goldman Sachs who have resumed with 5 days of work in attendance, and tech companies such as airbnb who told employees “stay working from home forever”. In the middle, the purgatory of a world without rules. Unlike fully remote or fully in-person work models, hybrid work models are developing differently in every office.
The key word is Chaos.
A Robin survey of 10.000 companies around the world reveals that 20% of workers return to attendance only one day a week. About 10% return for two days, only 5% return for 3 days and gradually even fewer return for 4 or 5 days. More than 50% of workers interviewed do not use the office consistently, i.e. on the same days week after week.
How will inertia change? Many companies just don't know this. Who should decide is weighing actions and reactions well, because the relationships of employees with each other and with company leadership are at stake.
When you come back to go out, but not to go to work
A trend to be noted (for now with data coming only from the USA) also shows us another phenomenon: the total or partial reopening of many sectors has not affected the desire of workers to review their balance between home and office.
Attendance at NBA basketball games, for example, is 95% of what it was pre-Covid. Meals consumed outdoors are 87%. Many entertainment activities are returning to their usual rhythms, but in-person work is not growing at the same speed.
This is why we are also trying the path of incentives: those who run a company are realizing that among the important factors there is also that of making people understand the benefits of working together, when they are superior to the boredom of a (sometimes long) daily commute . Why work is "obligatory" is increasingly perceived as a "choice".
jeffries, an investment bank, posts invitations to employees on Instagram for team dinners, or “motivational” requests to older employees: come back, it tells them, to help younger colleagues build community. Already. Because there is also a community, if you had forgotten it.
The magic of working together
There is no denying the enormous convenience of being able to work, when in the right sector, even mainly from home. And many workers experience it so vividly that they have become resistant to all the abstract "benefits" of teamwork.
Yet, this does not detract from teamwork, which also has incredible pluses.
What can be the solution? Why a solution is needed: 40% of workers have already decided for their future that they want to work in a hybrid way. And, since hybrid work is the future, it should be written together in the best way.
Once again a practical example: Relay Payments, a US online payment platform. He wanted happier employees (and therefore more productive) and tried to encourage them without controlling them.
Two days a week, free meals, work plans that take advantage of your presence to collaborate together. In other words? It doesn't simply say "be in the office at least two days a week", but it says what's different.
They say what can be done in the office that cannot be done from home.
Here, the whole difference in the world between the Great Resignation and the Great Return depends on the answer to this question. Indeed, it depends on the overcoming of this scheme of hybrid work, to reach the final goal.
To the manual that doesn't exist today: the one for a Great Job.
