National CRE News In Your Inbox.
Sign up for Connect emails to stay informed with CRE stories that are 150 words or less.
Remote Work Expert Warns That Hardline Approach to Office Presence Could Backfire
AIG this week joined the ranks of major financial services employers in announcing a concrete timetable for its global workforce to begin returning to the office after working remotely since the spring of 2020, although the return-to-office format will be rotational at some companies. Separately, the chief legal officer at one of those employers, Morgan Stanley, sent a memo to the law firms his company retains, demanding that the firms bring their lawyers back to the office or risk losing Morgan Stanley’s business.
The hardline approach could soon backfire, warned Tsedal Neeley, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the author of Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere.
“We’re in an era where people have tasted a different way of working, a different way of connecting with the people they cohabitate with, a reduced level of stress from the reduction of commutes, saving more money,” said Neeley in a Vox interview. “And because they’ve tasted this, they’re demanding it, they want it.”
Given the work-at-home scenario mandated by the COVID-19 pandemic and in place for millions of office-using employees ever since, Neeley asked, “will incumbents remain as powerful as they’ve always been in drawing and retaining top talent? With the kind of great resignation and turnover that we’re already starting to see, I would be surprised that if in the long run they won’t start seeing people leave.
“This is the era for employees,” she continued. “The power is in employees’ hands today because of the sheer scale and magnitude of the people who want to retain some kind of work-life flexibility in their professional arrangements. And if they can’t get it here, why not get it elsewhere?”
Neeley told Vox that, “We have a tendency to look at roles from a global standpoint and say, ‘Well, these jobs can’t be done remotely and these jobs can,’ and quickly start assigning people to remote or non-remote. When we start scrutinizing the tasks that people do and the work that they do, one option that many companies have been pursuing is, “Can we pool and rotate?’ ”
In the long term, said Neeley, “There will be some kind of reduction” in the amount of onsite physical presence at any one time. “But I don’t think we’re going to have these empty buildings as we imagine. I think there’s going to be a redistribution of who’s there and when, but the activities will be similar.”
- ◦People
- ◦Recruitment
