- Jan Rose
- Business Reporter, BBC News
December 20, 2022
Credit, Portal
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Elon Musk doesn’t believe in remote work
In June, Elon Musk told his Tesla employees that he wanted them back to work in the company’s office.
Musk isn’t the only employer telling employees to return to work. And in many cases, there were professionals who preferred to quit their jobs rather than return to the office fiveday week.
LinkedIn staffing platform has found that a third of UK companies are planning to phase out flexible working in the coming months. But nearly twothirds of professionals say they’re more productive when working in a hybrid or remote environment.
Other research confirms that this is a gap opening up that separates business leaders from their employees.
Microsoft surveyed more than 20,000 professionals in 11 countries. She concluded that 85% of executives think the shift to hybrid working has made it harder for them to rely on employee productivity, while 73% of employees say they need better reasons to come back , than just the company’s expectations.
Credit, Christian Hansel
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Christian Hänsel did not feel valued by his employer
One who has decided to step down rather than return to the office is Christian Hansel, a search optimization manager living in Bonn, Germany.
“I didn’t feel valued as a team member. As an employee, I didn’t feel valued and I certainly didn’t feel cared for,” he says of his boss’s request to return to the office.
It took Hansel only two days to find another job and hand in his resignation. He says many of his colleagues left soon after.
“You have to stand your ground, you have to talk about it, you have to speak up, but you also have to weigh the pros and cons of remote work and working in the office,” he advises. “And you have to find what’s right for you.”
The move to the backtotheoffice comes at a time when there is a shortage of skilled workers in many countries.
Credit, Chantelle Brown
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For recruiter Chantelle Brown, companies that expect employees to work in the office five days a week risk losing talent.
Chantelle Brown works for the British staffing company Latte. “We always discourage clients from posting vacancies that require employees to appear five days a week,” she says.
“We had a client who asked for four days, and we had to tell them that they needed to improve their offer so they didn’t lose applicants to companies that only ask for two or three days in the office,” says Brown.
Credit, Coursera
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As boss, Jeff Maggioncalda of online teaching platform Coursera says the pandemic has changed his views on remote work
“It’s a better way of running a business,” said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of US online learning platform Coursera. The platform employs more than 1,000 people, all of whom work “remote first”, meaning they choose to work from home or from the office.
“Before the pandemic, I was a traditional CEO,” he says. “I’ve advocated going into the office every day and we’ve allowed some people to work from home on Wednesdays. And frankly, I hated this policy. I was like, you know, if you don’t come, you’re not doing your job. I am working.”
But during the pandemic, he was surprised to find that while it was possible to get the job done and maintain flexibility, a new way of managing was needed. “It starts with recruitment,” says Maggioncalda.
Among other things, he personally greets new employees and educates them about the company so that whether they work from home or in the office, they “align the purpose of the company with their purpose in life.”
Now the company is also more focused on results than activities, according to him. “A manager who keeps track of the results achieved and doesn’t worry about whether someone comes into the office or not that’s the most important change that managers need to make,” says Maggioncalda.
He adds that offering more flexible work hours has allowed Coursera to have more women in leadership roles and in the technology sector.
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Why not trust people who work from home “and see what happens as part of a big experiment?” asks Grace Landon of the London School of Economics
But technology isn’t the only sector where women are more likely to choose a company that enables remote work.
Grace Landon, from the London School of Economics, spoke to 100 finance professionals and concluded that women are overwhelmingly much more willing to work remotely for a significant portion of the week.
“Women obviously still do most of the household chores,” she says. “They have always valued independence far more than men.”
Landon says that along with ethnic minorities, people with special needs are also more likely to appreciate remote work. And more generally, she says workers and employers need to listen and compromise.
“We are in Britain, [onde] Productivity is at an alltime low,” she says. “There are people who say, ‘We’re inherently more productive with a remote facility.’ Why not trust them and see what happens as part of a larger experiment?”
People have been working in offices for generations without even questioning whether it is necessary. The pandemic brought with it the need for a rapid shift to a different way of working.
In industries where competition for talent is greater than ever, employers are realizing that offering remote work is a costeffective way to expand their offerings.
But if we enter a prolonged recession, as many are predicting, and competition for talent weakens, companies might find it easier to demand a return to the office.