Author: Getting employees back to the office is at an 'inflection point'
Until recently, it was resistance from employees and a little kicking the can down the road. Employers didn't want to take on their employees. The labor market was tight. In reality, remote work was a short-term solution during the pandemic that ended up causing a longer-term problem.
What’s the compelling advantage of in-person work?
There’s value in human interaction, what we learn from each other, the cooperation that we can get in solving problems, and the motivation and commitment that comes from being around other people.
Our view is not that you have to be in the office all the time — but social connections matter a lot. When you first began your career, imagine what it would've been like if no one was in the office. You'd be completely lost.
If you think about how we learn about office work, we learn by watching. You learn what the values of the organization are. You learn it from the conversations in the office. You can see how the boss reacts to different requests and different problems.
As you advance, you've got your ear to the ground, and you've got the opportunity to raise your hand and pitch in and have some influence. You can catch the boss between meetings and pass along a little tidbit of information, and you develop relationships with people where you can solve problems.
If you’re in the office and you need help from somebody, and it's urgent, you just go around the corner and stick your head in their door and ask them a quick question.
Those are the kind of things that we miss when we move to remote — in addition to the general fact that people are energized by working with people.
With remote work, people also spend more time in meetings that are worthless. A lot of those things could be fixed, but the problem is they're not.
What’s one thing that working in an office can give us that most people don’t think about?
You will have friends. You build your social network. Remote workers having shrinking social networks, and that contributes to the loneliness epidemic and the lack of social connections.
Is remote work as big as it appears to be in terms of the number of people who work that way?
No. In Europe, for example, where employees have always had more power, I figured remote work would stay. It hasn't. Most everybody's gone back to the office. In Asia, most everybody has gone back to the office. In the US, the best data we've got from the government, which is now a little dated but nobody believes it's gone up since then, is that more than 70% of US employers have no remote or hybrid workers of any kind.
Now that sounds stunning. But remember, most employers are small. Remote work and hybrid work, in particular, is largely a big city, big company phenomenon. It isn't everywhere, and it isn't in all jobs. It's only white-collar jobs.
The future of work is certainly not remote? Correct?
That's right. Every once in a while somebody pops up a list of the employers that have fully remote work. It is almost always companies that begin as remote. By the way, the thing that struck me about those companies if you look at them, they've got a lot of rules about how to behave, and it's quite different from the office. It requires a lot more management time and energy than we've given it.
What's your parting thought for employers of how to approach the new world of work?
If you opt for remote or hybrid, good outcomes don't happen by themselves. You can make it work, but it requires more time and effort for management, more rules, more practices, more leadership.
And for employees?
Be very practical. If you’re beginning your career, go to the office. Be careful about taking remote positions because I think it won't be too long before CFOs start asking, ‘Why is Peter an employee at all? We don't see him. Why not just make him a contractor?’ I imagine that will start happening pretty quickly.
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky.
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