With the omicron surge subsiding, many business leaders are again planning to urge — and even demand — that their employees return to their pre-pandemic offices. It’s understandable: U.S. businesses are paying for countless thousands of square feet of expensive office space across the country, much of which is now vacant.
But they’d be wise not to rush the office return. Most people who worked in offices prior to the pandemic are conflicted right now. They miss their colleagues and the amenities available “at work” — the coffee bar, access to high-speed copying machines and knowledgeable IT trouble-shooters — but they don’t miss the commute and they’re loving the freedom and flexibility remote and asynchronous work offers them.
That’s why business leaders should pay close attention to the recently released Winter 2021-22 Future Forum Pulse survey, part of a series the consortium has been conducting quarterly since June 2020.
The new survey captures the views of 10,737 knowledge workers from the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom who were surveyed last November, before omicron went wild. At the time, many of those surveyed probably were contemplating or getting ready to return to their offices — planning when and how often they would.
The survey findings should give business leaders pause:
—78% of respondents said they want location flexibility — that is, the option to regularly work from home, a co-working space close to home or some other location of their own choosing.
—95% said they want schedule flexibility. This means getting rid of the rigid (9 to 5, 8 to 6, or whatever) workday schedule that existed pre-pandemic.
One of the advantages of flexible work, as we learned these last two years, is being able to set your own pace and schedule, at least on certain projects, and being able to do other things (laundry, shopping, cooking, tutoring the kids, exercising, or just chilling) in between.
The Future Forum data tell me that business leaders pushing employees to return to the office could be creating huge problems for themselves — problems few businesses are prepared to handle in today’s tight labor market, with record numbers of employee resignations in recent months.
If you don’t think things can get much worse, consider another stat from the Future Forum survey: 72% of the respondents who said they’re dissatisfied with the current level of flexibility they enjoy at work said they’ll likely be looking for a new job this year. Telling them to hightail it back to the office likely will hasten their exit.
There’s more to consider as well, especially for business leaders concerned with building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. Significant percentages of Black and Hispanic respondents said remote work has increased both their sense of belonging and their sense of being treated fairly at work. Since May 2021, Future Forum found, sense of belonging at work increased 24% for Black respondents and 32% for Hispanics, compared with only 5% for whites. Those are important gains business leaders shouldn’t want to lose.
The Future Forum survey also showed something else: that flex work enjoys its highest support among non-white workers, with 86% of Hispanics and 81% of Blacks, Asian-Americans and U.S. residents of Asian descent favoring remote and hybrid work. They’re sending the bosses a message.
There’s already a clear disconnect between executive preferences and employee desires for flexible work. Many executives want to return to “the way things were.” Among workers, remote and hybrid work is strongly preferred.
The omicron surge delayed plans for getting back together with colleagues, families and friends. The only silver lining is that it bought us more time to figure out who needs to return to the office, when and how.
There’s a lot at stake. Business leaders shouldn’t rush things or push too hard. Their employees appear ready to push back.
No single best way to work
COVID-19 might be winding down into an endemic disease like the cold and the flu — maybe. But even if the virus has more curveballs in store, it is time to start thinking ahead. A lot of people are ready to get back to normal, especially in the workplace. But that is the wrong way to look at it. There likely won’t even be a single normal model going forward. The only constant will be change. To face this new reality, workers and employers must not chain themselves to any particular labor model.
Companies that shoehorn workers back into the office, or don’t provide a workspace for employees who want one, will both have a hard time attracting talent. Industrial policy ideologues and labor unions wanting to codify their own preferences risk displacing workers, thus slowing the COVID recovery. It was all heading in this direction anyway; COVID just sped up the timeline.
Two main factors drove this shift. The first began about 20 years ago, when email and the Internet became widespread. That made it possible to do certain office jobs remotely for the first time, such as accounting and copywriting.
Upwork’s Adam Ozimek estimates that 12 percent of workers were already full-time remote when COVID-19 first hit — which rose to over 41 percent when the pandemic was at its worst. In the long run, he expects full-time remote work to remain above 22 percent, or almost double pre-COVID levels. And a new 2022 Pew Research poll finds that 59 percent of workers who can work from home are doing so — of which 61 percent are doing so by choice, not necessity.
The second factor is the rise of the sharing economy that began about a decade ago. Uber drivers set their own hours and use their own cars instead of company-provided taxis. The company was founded in 2009 and was operating in 35 cities by 2013. Taskrabbit and Fiverr, which allow office workers, journalists, translators, video editors, and musicians to market their services, were also founded around this time.
That change is deeper than just physical location. It means working as an independent contractor and not being beholden to a single boss or to the one-size-fits-all company health insurance or pension plan. That trend was emerging anyway, but it happened en masse during the pandemic, and the changes are here to stay.
Moreover, people’s needs for flexibility will outlast COVID. Someone with small children or who is caring for elderly family members might be unable to work traditional office hours. But they can do gig work on a flexible schedule if they want to.
But it’s not all upside. We found out the hard way that remote education works poorly. Many jobs can only be done on-site, from manufacturing to haircutting. For much of the economy, the traditional commuting model isn’t changing anytime soon.
What should policymakers do? Be as flexible as possible. Let workers experiment. Let employers make mistakes and learn from them, at their own expense. Loosen burdensome zoning and occupational licensing rules. Avoid policies like California’s gig worker law, which put thousands of independent contractors out of work before the major parts of the measure were repealed via ballot initiative.
Different people have different preferences. Some work better in a traditional office; some thrive working more independently. Wise employers will try to make room for both, and adapt as needed. Locking into one model or the other means losing out on promising hires and the talent they bring.
Companies can adapt quickly — they have little choice. Regulators and labor unions have ideological or financial stakes in the legacy labor model and are lobbying hard to lock it in. Yes, that can be the best model for some workers and some industries — but no single model works for everyone.
