The pandemic made remote work the norm and set a new standard for employees. And for a while at least, it seemed like it might be here to stay.

But with the economy cooling and a less-robust jobs market giving employers the upper hand, more and more companies are now requiring their workers to come in to the office - something that has created tension between managers and employees.

But it's about much more than just sleeping later or spending quality time with Fido. Remote work is particularly beneficial to women and those in caregiving roles, argues Lindsay Kaplan Co-Founder of Chief. This sentiment is echoed by Ravin Jesuthasan, Mercer (MERC) Global Leader for Transformation Services, who emphasizes the need for equitable opportunities and flexibility in work arrangements.

Instead of enforcing rigid policies, it’s important for companies to highlight the benefits and purpose for returning to the office, says Stephen Bailey, ExecOnline Co-Founder and CEO. The current global shift in work culture has left organizations grappling with the question of how to best accommodate employees’ needs and maintain productivity and innovation.

For more from this episode of Lead This Way:

Battling ageism in the workplace

Video Transcript

- Managers want you to be in the office, workers want to be at home.

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STEPHEN BAILEY: Leaders need to develop the right set of skills to understand when do I bring my teams into the office.

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RAVIN JESUTHASAN: It's not equal, right, it's about equitable.

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LINDSAY KAPLAN: We need to figure out how we, as a business, adjust to our workers who want to be at home, rather than saying we need to go back to the old way of working and bringing people back to the office 9:00 to 5:00.

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JULIE HYMAN: Why this seeming conflict? Managers want you to be in the office. Workers want to be at home. I don't think it's quite that clear cut, but what are of the conflicting motivations here?

LINDSAY KAPLAN: Well look, remote work is better for caregivers and women. Even women who are breadwinners do the lion's share of caregiving in America. And therefore remote work is better for women. Women are 25% more likely to take a job if it's remote, and 85% of hybrid workers say that they want to stay hybrid.

So the numbers speak really for the importance of hybrid work. And we know that it's more helpful for women and for people with intersectional identities who feel like when they're in the office they have to be code switching, they have to look the part, they have to speak in certain coded ways.

And so being at home, having that flexibility, being safe in somebody's surroundings, is better for the average worker, and that should be more incentive for a leader to say, we need to figure out how we as a business adjust to our workers who want to be at home, rather than saying we need to go back to the old way of working and bringing people back to the office 9:00 to 5:00.

RAVIN JESUTHASAN: I think you're absolutely right, Lindsay. I think we're betwixt in between.

LINDSAY KAPLAN: Yeah.

RAVIN JESUTHASAN: In the sense that, the old model, which is largely predicated on control, right Julie. I mean, if you think about what culture was pre-2020, we all came to the office between 9:00 to 5:00, it extended to the walls of the organization. And now, as we've transitioned, there is this palpable sense of a loss of control.

I find the productivity argument really interesting though, because for about three years we told people we were incredibly productive working remotely but that narrative seems to have switched. And I'm not sure leaders have actually built the case compelling, in a compelling way. There's good evidence of the loss of innovation in certain industries that didn't come about because of perhaps some of the serendipitous connections.

It's there for us to collaborate, to innovate, to build teams, to mentor that person for whom it's his or her first job and she doesn't have a network. And they're also quite explicit about how this is actually going to work. We're going to be in the office on Wednesday, we're going to innovate together. You're not coming in to do the heads down Excel spreadsheet because you can do that at home.

JULIE HYMAN: Coming out of this like, what does work look like? Where does work happen? What's the what's the new equilibrium, do you think?

STEPHEN BAILEY: I think employees don't want to be in the office when there is no understood purpose to being in the office. And so the kick back against three days a week, one day a week, four days a week, has less to do with the number of days, it has more to do with the fact that there's a breakdown in trust, and it feels like control for control sake. And then when you layer in the other questions of equity, and inclusion, and real reasons, and cost associated with coming into the office in a high inflation environment, driving people in without that sense of purpose, I think, is really where the divide sits.

So in our organization, we're very flexible. We allow people to work from home. That being said, if there's a need to be in the office-- we're having an offsite, we're doing in days for our sales team, we're doing a collaboration session to drive innovation on a product, we expect people to come in.

And we've never had anyone say, I feel like I shouldn't have to come into the office to engage with my team in a way that's productive. The office is a new channel for collaboration that needs to be leveraged when appropriate, and leaders need to develop the right set of skills to understand when do I bring my teams into the office and for what purpose as opposed to just relying on blank policy.

JULIE HYMAN: Elon Musk made a comment about this where he said it fosters inequality. Like the people building Teslas, they don't have a choice. You can't build a Tesla remotely. Do you think that that's a valid point to be made?

RAVIN JESUTHASAN: I really don't think it is, because it's not equal, right, it's about equitable. And so we've got a number of clients who have been very intentional about recognizing that it's the work that needs to drive the opportunity for flexibility. So they've actually said, there are opportunities for flexibility in all types of work.

Now, if you're at the retail store or the distribution plant, we've got schedules. But the real thing to the point about choice, it's about control. Do I have control? And so for someone on the shop floor, we're going to introduce short shifts. We're going to introduce shift swapping, shift sharing, and putting it in your control. So that if, you can't come in because you've got a sick child, great. You just swap shifts with someone who can actually operate your piece of equipment.

JULIE HYMAN: Let me ask you this, does this balance persist when the job market tightens?

RAVIN JESUTHASAN: I think you'll see a little bit of the return of the empire, [CHUCKLES] if you will. But I suspect the genie is out of the bottle, Julie. I think employees are really going to be hard pressed to, and mass mandate that we go back to being in the office.

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