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The global bank JPMorgan asked senior managers to return to work five days a week this week and threatened sanctions for those who refuse to do so. The former British cabinet minister Jacob Rees Mogg ran around the empty desks in his office, leaving curt "where-are-you" notes whilst in his role, and Elon Musk has told people to turn up to work at the office or quit. Is this the end of hybrid working and working from home? Working from home and hybrid working, where employees either do not come into the office at all or only on specific days of the week, received a massive boost during the recent pandemic. It is something that large numbers of employees desire and expect. In the UK, surveys from the CBI and PwC etc all indicated that almost 3/4 of all employees would see this as positive and part of their overall work satisfaction. Many organisations fear that not only a return to a five-day week would lose the cost savings of hybrid working, but an even more severe impact would be felt on recruiting and retaining talent when employees see this flexibility as a priority. So why are some organisations seeking to go against this trend? For several, it will be old-fashioned thinking of the type "if I can't see them, I can't control them" and "I can't tell them what to do." But for others, this desire to return to the old ways will be a response to what is seen as the five challenges of hybrid working: communication, coordination, connection, creativity, and culture. Hybrid working raises new issues around communication. On the face of it, modern technology makes it much easier through videoconferencing, chat rooms etc. but how do you create a level playing field between those in work who are privy to informal, accidental conversations and those remote to those conversations? Moreover, being in the same room as someone else is a very different experience to those "dialling in" from outside. These issues also play out in the challenge of achieving effective coordination. Remote workers are left out of the continuous stream of small conversations, Micro decisions, and on-the-spot problem-solving in the workplace. Thirdly, remote working makes it much harder to develop the social capital of connection that binds a workforce together regarding trust, reciprocity, and support - making it more resilient and responsive. (and organisations like the World Bank would say, more productive). Hybrid working may also create issues for creativity, particularly the sort of creativity that arises from an uninhibited conversation, impromptu exchange of ideas and accidental breakthroughs in the hothouse environment of behind-doors dialogue. Finally, senior leaders can be rightly concerned about how organisational culture is transmitted and embedded within a more remote workforce. Culture
captures the values, beliefs and notion of "how we do things around here
that determines an organisation's relationships with its stakeholders and
customers. So while it is very difficult to see how a return to office work can retake hold, significant leadership challenges will be found in this new zeitgeist.
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