Return to the Office?

The workplace has undergone significant change at incredible speed over the last three years.

According to Nick Bloom, Professor of Economics at Stanford University, we've seen 30 years of change to our working from home habits in the post pandemic era. This working from home leap is consistent across developed, English speaking, economies.

His research also shows that hybrid work is here to stay, despite noisy news stories, including Amazon's decision to have everyone back to the office full-time.

The government's tightening up working from home arrangements for all public servants buck the trend.

The benefits from hybrid work are many and varied. For our workforce and communities it creates access to quality employment, particularly for people managing a disability and those with caring responsibilities. Without a daily commute and more flexibility for when work is done, those juggling several demands on their time and energy are better able to contribute their skills and time to an employer and the broader economy.

From an employer perspective, hybrid work is valued on average at 8% of pay. In the wake of our cost of living crisis and upward pressure on wages, employers want to take the heat out of salary inflation by any means possible.

When it comes to productivity, it’s less conclusive. There is research to show that people are both more and less productive when they are hybrid working . The point is that hybrid can be done well, or it can be done badly. I’ve seen both.

The government announcement has some validity. Why wouldn’t they seek assurance that hybrid work isn’t harming delivery and performance? It's been a gap I've tried to get traction on with many executive teams, from all sectors.

When I’ve offered help to measure whether or not the change is backed up by their own data, the uptake has been virtually zero.

A couple of years ago I was concerned that as soon as labour market dynamics shifted and the heat came out of the employment market, flexible and hybrid work was incredibly vulnerable. It’s not that there isn’t evidence of the benefits. But what we haven’t done is assure ourselves, inside our organisations and teams, that we are delivering on those possibilities.

Monitoring the benefits and testing for where it falls short, we can pinpoint where to put our effort. Typical downfalls to watch out for include effective mentoring for people early-in-career, promotions going to those most visible, not necessarily those who are most ready and backwards steps in gender and ethnic pay gaps.

Following the evidence gives us an opportunity to develop a consensus about how to do hybrid well. We came into these new ways of working at breakneck speed, so it's inevitable that we need time to learn about best practice and shed what isn’t working.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater when there is so much to gain. By moving back to 2019 workplace norms, our relative standing in the OECD productivity rankings will suffer as the rest of the world steps forward and we leap back.

Two important arguments persist in the return to office debate that aren’t about hybrid per se. One is that half our workforce can’t work from home. The other is that our CBD cafes need our cash.

On the first, we can do so much more to create flexibility at the frontline too. We don’t have to artificially hold back hybrid work, but instead move forward with flexibility for site-based work. I am already working with companies, including in construction, to bring this to life.

On the second, hybrid work is not the only factor impacting CBD cashflow. During the same timeframe that hybrid work has exploded, we have also experienced a cost of living crisis.

Laying the blame for a downturn in hospitality and retail solely at the feet of hybrid work seems to leave behind economic realities of individuals’ tightening budgets.

Why do we ignore the potential benefits to local neighbourhoods gaining from coffee sales, distributing the vibrancy of our cafe culture across the cities and suburbs? Would that really be such a bad thing?

This article was first published as an opinion piece for The Post