Hello and welcome to Working It.
The WiFi in our neighbourhood went off for two days this week 👿 (and before you ask, there’s only one “fast” broadband provider serving our area). It forced us to regress, or progress, to a pre-internet world. I finished a great novel* and started Right Kind of Wrong, Amy Edmondson’s new book (she’s the Harvard Business School prof behind the concept of psychological safety).
Amy’s new book is about failure and why it’s vital for success. It’s published next month and looks set to be the “it book” for work-watchers this autumn. Consider yourselves alerted.
Read on for the latest on the fractious debate around return to office mandates, and in Office Therapy I have some advice for a demoralised team leader who has to put up with rude colleagues.
*‘Big Swiss’ by Jen Beagin is very rude and very funny.
Stand-off at the office corral
It won’t be long before everyone returns from summer breaks spent enduring either extreme heat or endless rain. And what awaits us? Bloated inboxes, obviously. And, more excitingly, the latest round of the “RTO vs WFH stand-off”.
This does not refer to a mixed martial arts bout 🥊 but, rather, to the increasingly spicy battle between what Axios calls “aggressive” return to office policies, as favoured by many leaders, and the flexible work from home practices cherished by many workers. Latest data shows offices in 10 US cities are half full. Or half empty, depending on your viewpoint.
Most recently, Zoom (yes, the remote work saviour) asked those living within 50 miles of one of its offices to come in two days a week. Although the other way to look at this announcement, as workplace data guru Nick Bloom of Stanford points out, is that it formalises a hybrid arrangement giving staff three days at home.
Over at Google, staff are meant to be in the office three days a week — and attendance stats are considered in performance reviews. That’s Google’s stick. But for its Mountain View-based staff there is reportedly a “carrot” as well: dodge the commute by staying — for $99 a night — at Google’s own hotel. (Might free or subsidised hotel stays catch on to get staff back at their desks?)
Despite the fuss — and outright resistance — a mandate to be in the office for about half the week, even without a sleepover option, doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. (Am I alone in thinking this? 🤷♀️) And some evidence sides with Team RTO. Fully remote teams, for example, are about 10 per cent less productive than in-person ones, although hybrid work has a zero or slightly positive effect, as Pilita Clark writes.
Things such as career development and boosting your network of “weak ties” — the people who are going to help your career, because close friends are useless at that — may also be knocked back if you aren’t in the office.
The real sticking point, I think, will come if/when chief executives start to demand four or five days of in-office attendance. A new Deloitte survey of senior staff at US financial services companies found that 66 per cent of respondents, who work remotely at least part-time, say they will probably leave their current role if mandated to return to the office five days a week 🏃🏻♂️.
And while some financial services companies already demand three or four days in the office, just 18 per cent of respondents said this would be “their ideal arrangement”. So compliance is, we can say, grudging.
If employers start to make full-time in-office demands, talented staff are likely to head for the door. And, as the Deloitte survey points out, these employers could face losing their pipeline of future leaders — and have difficulty recruiting replacements.
What’s the next move? You tell me. I reckon it’s stalemate ♟️.
Where do you think the return to office battle is headed? Email me: isabel.berwick@ft.com. We will be covering this soon on the Working It podcast.
This week on the Working It podcast
WeWork may be stumbling but co-working is here to stay, as more companies exit expensive office leases and instead rent flexible spaces for staff, while freelancers and founders seek a table that isn’t in their kitchen. This week on Working It, we look into the reality of co-work spaces — and the new etiquette that’s developing around how to use them.
Things have evolved since WeWork’s beer-and-games fuelled pomp. (Refresh your memory with this FT article, published a month before the pandemic hit). Co-working is now about zoned spaces: for quiet, for collaboration, for calls.
It doesn’t suit everyone: I talk to FT columnist Simon Kuper about his experience of noisy co-work and about his perfect solo workspace. And we hear from Laura Beales of Tally Workspace and WeWork’s Ebbie Wisecarver.
Office Therapy
The problem: I lead a team providing internal analytics to the rest of our organisation. Some of the requests are very rude and the team gets demoralised. I’ve tried to deal with this via “high ground”: answering with a charming email; and by “confronting”: politely asking them to be more accommodating of the humans on the end of their demands😒.
Neither tactic has yielded results — repeat offenders are still doing it. I realise they have low EQ [emotional quotient] — but any ideas on tackling this in a better way?
Isabel’s advice: First off, I hope you have the rude people on your personal grudge list. I once had a slightly famous boss who was charming to important people and vile to the rest of us. (I still switch off if I see them on 📺.)
Communications expert Matt Abrahams, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, suggests that “one way around is to create a form that just has spaces for single words and drop-down choices”. Matt also suggests a standard response framework that the team can roll out. I’ve included it in full as it can be adapted by anyone in a situation requiring intervention. (Matt’s book Think Faster, Talk Smarter has more on this).
Matt says: “It is unlikely that you will teach the others to have a higher EQ, but you can work to make your employees less upset, which should be the real goal.” Here’s the magic format for replies to rude requests:
Information: “This is the Xth time you have made a request that had a tone that was off-putting to my team.”
Impact: “When we receive requests of that tone, we feel demotivated and less likely to assist in a timely manner.”
Invitation: “In the future, please follow this example (provide one or two samples of appropriate requests) when you make your request.”
Implication: Can be positive: “In so doing, you will probably receive faster service and help your customers quicker.” Or negative: “If you continue with inappropriate requests, I will need to escalate this issue.”
Got a question, problem, or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.
Five top stories from the world of work
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Hybrid work put to the test as UK civil service heads north: Great story by Delphine Strauss about the effect of moving hundreds of civil servants from London to the northern town of Darlington. Can senior people get the same career development as they would in London? No answers yet, but the early signs are encouraging.
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In praise of the ‘techies’ who make companies more productive: Sarah O’Connor digs into subjects around work and employment and comes up with unusual angles. Here she looks at the qualities that gave Britain the lead in the first Industrial Revolution and asks: can 21st century techies do the same?
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Retiring CEOs: how to avoid the pitfalls of leaving the top job: Lots of tips in here for anyone (not just CEOs) facing a transition out of a high-status role that defines them. Oliver Balch interviews happy former leaders — and the coaches who help them.
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The inconvenient truth about productivity: Obviously I am going to plug an article that mentions the Working It podcast, but Tim Harford also summarises some of the wins (and misunderstandings) around personal productivity. Read it and feel you’ve achieved something worthwhile with your day.
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A complete guide to yacht-desking: Yes, you read right. This article in HTSI, the FT’s luxury magazine, outlines the gadgets you’ll need to work effectively from a yacht. Including a Bugatti-branded pool table for downtime (€292,000).
One More Thing
I can’t stop thinking about this first-person piece by Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale. It’s not just about football: Aaron’s talking about how it feels to be a human being on the end of endless social media criticism — just for doing his job. There’s a personal side, too, including his pride in his family. One of his brothers is gay, and Aaron speaks about the homophobia he’ll no longer tolerate in dressing rooms.
A Word from the Working It community
Thank you for the many responses to last week’s newsletter, “Why class still proves an obstacle to careers”. One came from Nick Brook, chief executive of Speakers for Schools, a charity helping students from state schools reach their career potential. Nick suggests that work experience is a “relatively inexpensive yet totally critical fix” for long-term social mobility:
“Not enough young people are doing work experience currently, only half of secondary school students, according to our research. Meanwhile, you are twice as likely to have multiple interactions with the workplace as a young person attending private school.
“If the government were to adopt universal work experience provision in state schools, and ensure it was meaningful (not making cups of tea), more young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds would gain the essential skills employers look for, and that can ultimately help them progress.”
And finally . . .
I love Amy Hwang’s cartoons in FT Weekend. This one is especially relatable.