Tag: Hybrid Work

Flexible work is feminist–and women won’t return to a system that hasn’t served them well to spare the feelings of powerful men

For the first 15 years of my career, I commuted into an office every day. This meant that by the time I had children, my workplace contributions were invisible to them. All they noticed was my absence, not my leadership skills at work. I missed a lot, too: Some days I left the house before they woke up to make it to my first meeting, or walked in the door too late to hear the highs and lows of their days.

Now that I take fundraising, hiring, and sales calls from home a few days each week while my daughters do homework or play in the next room, they have exposure to the reality of my work. I hope the lessons they are learning about work and its place in a full life will have a positive impact on them in the years to come.

As the return-to-office movement gained steam over the past few months, bosses don’t understand why people aren’t returning to the office. They’re voicing concerns over productivity, creativity, culture, advancement, and mentoring–and even asserting that the remote and hybrid work experiment of the past few years has reinforced the critical importance of sitting in an office. Wall Street executive Steven Rattner questioned the effectiveness of remote work, relying on statements from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to further his argument. More recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called remote work “one of the tech industry’s work mistakes.”

It’s probably not a surprise that employees don’t feel similarly–new research shows that employees still aren’t permitted to work remotely as much as they’d like. And it is hardly a coincidence that the demographic which benefited most from the old system has also expressed the most anxiety about changing it. But we shouldn’t confuse the feelings of powerful men with facts.

Despite all of the efforts of the feminist movement that have spanned generations, the reality is that it still largely falls on women to challenge gender inequities in society. Women are still trying to do it all, despite CEOs preserving work arrangements that are outdated and counterproductive when it comes to modern families and changing gender roles. By reimagining when, where, and even how we work, we can make meaningful progress toward gender equality and address the dramatic underrepresentation of women and people of all genders in our companies, particularly at the most senior levels.

We’ve been stuck in the same corporate work norms since the late 1940s when many families could live comfortably on one paycheck and just a third of women worked outside of the home. While so much else has changed (women entering the labor force in record numbers in the late 1960s; the Anita Hill Senate hearing in 1991 that centered the movement around the compounding effects of race and class, the internet revolution, a pandemic that sent millions of workers home and yet didn’t crater the economy), we are being told the only way to work is to return to a schedule invented with the Model T.

The case for flexible work has a social and moral imperative. It helps retain women, reduces burnout, and makes it easier to have children and deliver on caregiving responsibilities. According to a recent survey of female hybrid workers that combine in-office and remote work, 88% believe the flexibility of hybrid work is an equalizer in the workplace, and two-thirds say it has had a positive impact on their career growth path. Flexible work provides greater opportunities for career advancement across gender lines and increases the number of women in leadership, which is good for business. Companies with more women in leadership have more engaged workers and are more profitable.

Ninety percent of women want the ability to work remotely, including fully remote or hybrid-work options, and with it have experienced an increased sense of belonging, greater psychological safety, and, thanks to less unstructured time with colleagues, fewer microaggressions. This is even more pronounced for women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities. Support for flexibility and the ability to work remotely is inextricably tied to gender equality and benefits us all: women, men, and marginalized genders.

The primary breadwinner role is disappearing, with 29% of opposite-sex couples earning the same amount of money and women out-earning their husband in 16% of marriages, and yet, women still spend two more hours on caregiving and 2.5 more hours on housework. Whether a stay-at-home mother or one that works outside the home, mothers still take on the lion’s share of caregiving and domestic responsibilities, even though that work continues to be woefully undervalued, underappreciated, and undercompensated.

For opposite-sex couples with two wage earners, remote work supports gender equality at home by increasing a mother’s paid labor and increasing a father’s domestic labor. Fathers who work from home more frequently perform a greater share of housework and childcare, and their partners are more likely to be employed and work more hours in paid labor. There’s more: Children benefit long term economically and socially when their mother works outside of the home: daughters are more likely to be employed, be supervisors, and earn more, and sons spend more time doing chores around the house and taking care of family members.

To be sure, flexibility can go wrong, especially if employers reward the people who spend more time in the office with all of the raises, promotions, and plum assignments. In such a scenario, flexibility could inadvertently contribute to a gender gap in pay and advancement. Proximity bias, the unconscious tendency to favor those that are physically closer to us, is a real pitfall and can lead to two classes of workers that break down by gender and race, with the less favored class being women and workers of color.

At the individual level, the benefits of flexibility for employees don’t always hold. When your commute only requires you to walk a few feet and open your laptop, it’s easy to extend your work day, which can have a negative impact on well-being and increase conflict between work and family, particularly for women. Anyone who has tried to work from the middle of their kitchen table knows how challenging it can be to focus when you’re not in a dedicated workplace, especially if you can’t access or afford childcare.

But these downsides are worth the tradeoffs. The real reason flexible work arrangements haven’t worked or have led to a perception among CEOs of poorer outcomes is that companies haven’t invested in the education, practices, and policies which promote gender equity and improve their workplaces, such as paid leave and mentorship programs. Flexible work certainly isn’t the only key to a more gender-equal society but it’s a hell of a lot better for the most marginalized workers.

The data on hybrid and remote work arrangements is “at best inconclusive,” which Rattner himself concedes. Flexible work isn’t an excuse for workers to do less work, but rather for them to do more life–more focused work, more family time, and a greater focus on their well-being. It’s not a rejection of work, but a renouncement of a system that hasn’t served us well.

It’s within the power of companies and CEOs to recast the “ideal” worker, value workers who shoulder domestic and caregiving responsibilities, support flexible work arrangements and policies and equip managers to lead through the multidimensional challenges of flexible work.

However, the onus is not just on CEOs. All workers, when and where possible, can support flexible work by choosing it for themselves and empowering colleagues to work when and where they need to.

We must destigmatize flexible work and prevent it from becoming another mommy track, a career path for mothers that offers flexible work at the expense of career advancement–or even worse, another version of the tired misogynist trope “women belong in the house.”

Flexible work will continue to be a win for women as long as it doesn’t come with penalties, like slower paths to promotions or relegating women to pink-collar fields. And like parental leave, men need to take it without consequence, too, in order to support gender equity and make a powerful statement about the value of caregiving.

Three years ago, flexible work was novel. Two years ago, it was normal. Today, it’s necessary. Our future workplaces–the ones my children and yours will inherit–rely on us to get this right.

Erin Grau is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Charter, a future-of-work media and research company.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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May 14, 2023
Remote Work Skeptics Are Forgetting Their Most Valuable Asset. Here’s Why. | Entrepreneur

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

While there’s a widely-held belief that three days a week in the office is the magic number, with a number of large companies adopting it, it’s a fundamentally flawed approach. Instead, what leaders need to focus on is how hybrid work arrangements will serve customer needs.

A Columbia Business School study reviews a text analysis of earnings call transcripts of S&P 500 companies to show that company executives talk about customers 10 times more often than employees – a number that has grown over the last 15 years. Additionally, when companies discuss employees, executives are more likely to correlate them to risk factors and consumers to growth opportunities.

Ironically, executives fail to put this focus into action when figuring out their return to office and hybrid work policy. For example, a survey of 1,300 knowledge workers found that only 28% said their company is making it worthwhile to commute to the office. No wonder: while there’s a widely-held belief that three days a week in the office is the magic number — with a number of large companies adopting it — it’s a fundamentally flawed approach.

Instead, what leaders need to focus on is how hybrid work arrangements will serve customer needs. It might be that three, four, five, two, one, or no days in the office works best for your customers. But the key is to prioritize customer needs in creating a successful hybrid work plan and business leaders need to build their strategies around this focus.

As a globally-renowned expert in the future of work who helped 22 organizations figure out their hybrid and remote work policies, I can tell you confidently that this is the biggest mistake companies make in hybrid work. Namely, they fail to “start with why” and don’t work from the end goal back to the policies required to make it happen for the sake of customer success.

Debunking the myth of the three-day work week

The assumption that having employees in the office for three days a week is the optimal solution for hybrid work is misguided. This one-size-fits-all approach fails to consider the unique needs of the customers.

The three-day work week emerged as a popular solution amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic. As companies experimented with hybrid work models, this arrangement appeared to strike a balance between the benefits of remote work and the need for in-person collaboration. However, the adoption of this model by numerous organizations has led to the misconception that it’s universally applicable.

The effectiveness of a three-day work week varies significantly across industries and roles. For instance, in sectors like software development or creative services, a greater degree of remote work might be feasible without any loss in productivity or sacrifice of customer needs. On the other hand, industries or functions that rely heavily on in-person interactions, such as sales, may require more on-site presence to maintain customer service quality. A tailored hybrid work strategy takes these industry and role-specific considerations into account, ensuring that the work arrangement aligns with the inherent demands of the sector.

Instead, leaders should adopt a more agile approach, one that prioritizes customer needs and adapts to the ever-evolving business landscape.

Related: A New Remote Work Trend is Helping Employers Retain Talent Amid Labor Market Pressures

Understanding your customers

The first step in crafting a customer-centric hybrid work plan is to gain a deep understanding of your customers’ expectations and preferences. This involves examining customer feedback, conducting market research and engaging in open dialogue with your clients. By understanding their needs and preferences, you can tailor your hybrid work arrangements to better serve them.

For instance, a company providing technical support services may discover that their customers highly value prompt responses to their inquiries. In this case, adopting a hybrid work model that ensures adequate staffing during peak hours, regardless of employee location, would be critical in meeting customer needs.

Indeed, one of my clients who does provide such services found that it was more helpful to have staff working remotely most of the work week. That’s because most employees were much more willing to work non-standard hours when they worked remotely. Thus, the company was better able to provide customer support during a longer time period with faster responses by having shifts during non-standard working hours. Still, customer service staff came into the office one day a week, to make sure there was someone available for the rare occasions when customers came to the office in person.

It’s not surprising, right? My own LinkedIn survey found that 80% of respondents worked more non-standard hours in remote work, compared to in the office, as staff are more willing to work longer and less standard hours if they don’t have to waste time commuting to the office.

Aligning hybrid work with customer expectations

Once you’ve identified your customers’ needs, it’s essential to align your hybrid work arrangements accordingly. This might mean rethinking your assumptions about the optimal balance of remote and in-office work for various roles.

Consider a B2B professional services organization that has long relied on face-to-face meetings and events to build relationships with clients. With the rise of remote work, many of their clients might now prefer virtual meetings, necessitating a shift in the sales team’s approach. In this case, a hybrid work model that offers greater flexibility in how and where employees work could better cater to changing customer preferences.

That was the case for one of my clients, a law firm. Their leadership initially assumed that, as the pandemic wound down, their clients would want to shift back to in-person meetings. But I strongly encouraged them to actually survey their clients rather than act on their assumptions. And what the law firm found was that plenty of clients preferred videoconference meetings for most interactions. That’s because it was quicker, more convenient, and cheaper to set those up than to have in-person meetings. Sure, in-person meetings were still king for more intense and nuanced discussions, but clients preferred most day-to-day meetings to happen by video conference.

A customer-focused hybrid work plan should include mechanisms for measuring success and adapting as needed. Regularly assess the effectiveness of your hybrid work model in meeting customer needs through customer satisfaction surveys, feedback sessions, and other metrics. Use this data to make informed decisions on adjustments to your strategy.

For instance, if customer feedback suggests that response times have increased since the implementation of your hybrid work model, consider adjusting staffing levels or redistributing tasks to better serve your clients. Consider an example shared with me by the Chief Human Resource Officer of a rural healthcare system with several hospitals in a Midwestern state. While they have many workers on a hybrid and even fully remote modality, they encountered an issue with the case management department and utilization review, who were working remotely. They had to bring them back into the office as they realized the importance of having them work alongside the hospitalists for their in-patients. It was crucial for ensuring proper discharge planning and smooth transition care, which they found couldn’t be achieved as well remotely. This is an example of how they couldn’t make hybrid work satisfy their patients and changed the location of staff to prioritize patient needs.

Cognitive biases: The hidden barrier to customer-centric hybrid work plans

Cognitive biases, which are dangerous judgment errors that cause bad decision-making in everything from our work life to our relationships, often undermine effective hybrid work arrangements. One cognitive bias that can impede the shift towards a customer-centric hybrid work plan is the status quo bias. This bias refers to the tendency to prefer the current state of affairs over any changes, even when the potential benefits of the change outweigh the risks. In the context of hybrid work, the status quo bias may lead leaders to cling to traditional in-office work arrangements or to adopt the popular three-day work week without considering whether these options genuinely serve their customers’ needs.

To overcome the status quo bias, business leaders should critically evaluate their existing work arrangements, seeking objective data and feedback to determine if the current model effectively meets customer expectations. By doing so, they can make more informed decisions about the optimal hybrid work model for their organization.

Another cognitive bias that can hinder the development of a customer-centric hybrid work plan is confirmation bias. This bias refers to the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or assumptions. In the context of hybrid work, confirmation bias may lead leaders to focus solely on evidence that supports their views about the ideal work arrangement, while ignoring or dismissing information that contradicts those beliefs about what customers actually need.

To counteract confirmation bias, business leaders should actively seek diverse perspectives and opinions, both within and outside their organization. By engaging in open dialogue with employees, customers, and industry experts, leaders can gather a more balanced and comprehensive understanding of the factors that impact hybrid work success. This enables them to design a work model that genuinely prioritizes customer needs, rather than simply conforming to their pre-existing beliefs.

By recognizing and addressing the influence of cognitive biases in shaping hybrid work decisions, business leaders can develop more customer-centric strategies that genuinely serve the needs of their clients. This awareness, combined with a commitment to continuous improvement and transparent communication, paves the way for a successful and adaptive hybrid work environment.

Conclusion

The key to a successful hybrid work plan lies in prioritizing customer needs above all else. By debunking the myth of the three-day work week and adopting a more agile approach, business leaders can create tailored strategies that truly cater to the unique needs of their industries, teams and customers.

Understanding your customers’ expectations and preferences, aligning hybrid work arrangements with those needs, and empowering your team to deliver exceptional service are vital steps in designing a customer-centric hybrid work plan. Transparent communication and a commitment to continuous improvement through measuring success and adapting as needed further solidify your organization’s ability to navigate the complexities of hybrid work.

Ultimately, by placing customer needs at the forefront of your hybrid work strategy, you can foster a thriving work environment that supports both employee satisfaction and customer success. By embracing this customer-centric approach, business leaders can ensure their organizations remain agile, adaptive, and prosperous in the ever-changing landscape of the modern workplace.

Gleb Tsipursky

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May 1, 2023
New Study Reveals Why Not Investing in the Work-From-Home Office of Hybrid Employees Has Dire Consequences

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

A new study by Logitech of 3,000 employees and 1,000 IT hardware decision-makers in large organizations found that 89% struggle with video and 85% with audio in their work-from-home office. Less than 40% received accessories other than mice and keyboards from their organizations.

While these results are concerning, I didn’t find them surprising. When working with client organizations to help them figure out the best hybrid work arrangements, I invariably get pushback when I bring up investing in hybrid worker home offices. CFOs don’t want to “waste” money on employee home offices after already paying for a set-up at the office; in turn, IT and facilities directors express reluctance to stretch their already-thin resources to support the tech and ergonomic needs of staff working from home.

After all, these leaders say, we already gave in to employee demands for flexibility and allowed them to work from home part of the time. They can pay for their own equipment and furniture.

Related: They Say Remote Work Is Bad For Employees, But Most Research Suggests Otherwise — A Behavioral Economist Explains.

The reality of work from home office setups for hybrid employees

In reality, the large majority of workers don’t pay to equip their home offices. When I ask about this issue in focus groups for my clients, employees tell me it’s the company’s job to fund their work-from-home needs. They feel it would be unfair for them to buy whatever they need for their home office just for the sake of doing work for the company. Indeed, in a survey I ran on LinkedIn with over 200 respondents, over two-thirds of respondents believe companies should cover the costs of equipment.

So they end up struggling with technology and ergonomic challenges. Doing so harms their productivity since they can’t work as effectively. It undermines their wellbeing, due to physical discomfort from lack of ergonomic furniture and mental discomfort from concerns about how they appear on camera. It undercuts retention because employees feel frustrated and resentful over not having the equipment they need to do their job well.

And it hurts their collaboration and communication: poor video and audio quality are a bigger problem for those the employee is communicating with rather than for the employee themselves. That involves other employees, but also external stakeholders, such as clients, vendors and investors.

Related: Avoid These 3 Tempting Habits For Remote Work Productivity

All of that harms a company’s bottom lines: as I tell leaders with whom I work, do they really want to lose a sale because they didn’t get a good microphone for their sales staff? That’s not an exaggeration: the Logitech study found that 37% of respondents hold video calls with clients.

With 79% of companies switching to a hybrid work modality, according to the EY Work Reimagined Employer Survey, a large portion of the work employees do for a company will be done from home offices going forward. Given that, I tell my clients that it’s imperative to invest in equipping staff for work from home.

Logitech insights on challenges and opportunities for the work-from-home office

To find out more about the challenges and opportunities of equipping hybrid workers, I interviewed Simon Dudley, Head of Analyst Relations at Logitech, about the release of their study. He told me that Logitech discovered a common experience among most survey respondents.

At the start of the pandemic, companies told staff to grab whatever they could from the office in the transition to remote work. And that’s what staff mostly ended up using for their home office, along with whatever additional equipment more tech-savvy staff had at home or, in some instances, chose to buy online. IT departments adopted a reactive posture: as Dudley stated, “IT departments sit there and basically wait for the phone to ring for someone to complain, at which point they go and try and fix that problem.” The problem with that posture? Most staff members “don’t even know what they could do to make their life better. But they do know what they’ve got today isn’t great.”

The Logitech study confirms employee concerns: 64% struggle with poor or inadequate light in their homes; 60% have poor sound quality through computer speakers; and 58% need to sit in an uncomfortable position to be on camera. They waste valuable work time figuring out technology: 53% check if their speakers and microphone are working, 41% fiddle with the viewing angle of their camera, and so on.

Yet staff don’t feel it’s right or fair for them to purchase better equipment and furniture themselves, and don’t feel empowered to reach out to IT or facilities to fix these problems. As Dudley said “the users are like, well, I assume this is the best that’s available. I mean, they’ve given me a laptop. I’ve got all the things, how can I say to the IT department, I want better when they don’t even know better exists?”

Of course, it’s not only IT and facilities that need to step up. Dudley pointed out that HR needs to get involved. After all, they are responsible for talent management. Optimizing employee productivity, wellbeing and collaboration through support for worker home offices should be a major concern for them. Dudley told me that it’s simple: just go to HR and ask them “how much does it cost you when your workers are off sick with RSI issues or with eye strain or with migraines.” By comparison, the cost of equipping a home office is small, and this wellbeing benefit doesn’t account for boosted productivity and collaboration.

Related: Malcolm Gladwell’s Fears About Remote Work Are Real. It’s Your Brain That’s Telling You Lies — Here’s Why.

Work from home office funding: A case study

Then, I asked Dudley to give feedback on how I helped my consulting clients determine how to support the home offices of their workers, using the example of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute.

First, we surveyed staff to determine their needs and concerns regarding technology and furniture, focusing on how we can help them be more productive and have better ergonomics and wellbeing. We encouraged employees to volunteer any suggestions on specific technology and furniture solutions they found to be a good fit for their needs. We also had the Institute’s IT and facilities staff conduct in-depth research on market options based on survey results.

Then, we determined an initial list of standardized equipment that IT and facilities felt comfortable they could support in employee home offices. We shared the list with staff members in another survey and revised it based on their responses.

Next, we purchased equipment for staff members and shipped it to their homes. For anyone who needed help with the equipment, we arranged for home visits by IT and facilities staff. To address tax concerns, we developed a policy asking staff members leaving the organization to donate any bulky furniture that was impractical to return to facilities. Finally, we covered the costs of fast broadband for staff.

Dudley applauded this approach as exemplary. He did highlight that sometimes staff don’t know what they need because they may not be aware of relevant capabilities, and thus encouraged providing more hands-on guidance and expertise. I integrated that approach into my work with future clients.

Conclusion

In short, failing to invest in hybrid worker home offices is penny-wise, but pound-foolish. We know that much if not most of the work done by staff members for the large majority of companies going forward will be from home offices. And most employees won’t buy quality tech and furniture: they feel it’s not fair to ask them to do so. Companies that fail to invest in home offices will lose out on productivity, wellbeing, retention, collaboration and communication, all of which will reflect poorly on their bottom lines.

Gleb Tsipursky

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February 3, 2023
Resistance, attrition, quiet quitting, and a drop in diversity: Meet the Four Horsemen of the forced return to the office

As increasing numbers of companies are requiring employees to return to the office for at least several days per week, they’re running into challenges with resistance, attrition, quiet quitting, and diversity–what one of my clients called the “Four Horsemen of the return to the office.”

These issues all stem from the fact that workers who are able to work remotely prefer to do so most or all of the time. An August Gallup survey of remote-capable workers shows that 34% of respondents want to work remotely full time, 60% want to work a flexible hybrid schedule, and only 6% want to work in a traditional office-centric setting. A June McKinsey survey of all workers, remote-capable and not, found that over half of all respondents want to work less than half the time in the office. And a September survey from the School of Politics and Economics at King’s College reported that 25% of respondents would quit if forced to return to the office full time.

Resistance

No wonder that workers facing return-to-office mandates show resistance, the first of the Four Horsemen. For example, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has demanded that all employees return to the office at least four days a week The leadership of Apple has required its employees to come to the office three days a week. While Apple employees are not known for stirring trouble, in this case, 1,000 employees signed a petition requesting more flexibility. In September, GM announced that all salaried employees would have to return to the office three days a week. The message sparked intense employee backlash, leading to GM walking back its requirements and delaying any required return to the office to the following year.

In a September survey, Gartner found that only 3% of companies would fire noncompliant employees, and only 30% would have HR talk to those who don’t show up. No wonder that large U.S. banks trying to force employees back to the office are meeting with high rates of noncompliance of up to 50%. Many other employees are showing up for a part of the workday, from 10 a.m. to two p.m.

The Labor Day return-to-office mandates resulted in a rise in office occupancy in early September, reaching 47.5% during the week ending September 14 in 10 major cities tracked by Kastle Systems, a security access card provider. Yet office occupancy never rose higher than 50% for the rest of 2022–and ended the year at 48.2%.

Attrition

Given this resistance, some workers simply quit, joining the Great Resignation and making attrition the second of the Four Horsemen. That includes rank-and-file employees, as well as top executives such as Ian Goodfellow, who led machine learning at Apple. He quit in protest over Apple’s mandated return to office of three days a week.

A National Bureau of Economic Research paper about a study at Trip.com, one of the largest travel agencies in the world, is a case in point. It randomly assigned some engineers, marketing workers, and finance workers to work some of their time remotely and others in the same roles to full-time in-office work. Those who worked on a hybrid schedule had 35% better retention.

Even finance, the industry that is leading the charge for returning to the office, has suffered significant churn. European banks, which offer more flexible hybrid work policies, are using these to hire talented staff from the less-flexible U.S. banks. Smaller and more flexible financial planning firms are headhunting financial planners at larger and less flexible companies. Even bankers at the top banks, like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, are leaving due to the return-to-office requirements.

Quiet quitting

Perhaps even more dangerous than resistance and attrition, the third of the Four Horsemen, quiet quitting (employees psychologically disengaging from their work and doing just enough to get by without getting in trouble) rots a company’s culture from within.

A September 2022 survey by Gallup found that these quiet quitters make up about half of the U.S. workforce. Forcing employees to come to the office under the threat of discipline leads to disengagement, fear, and distrust, according to Ben Wigert, director of research and strategy for workplace management at Gallup. Indeed, Gallup found that if people are required to come to the office for more time than they prefer, “employees experience significantly lower engagement, significantly lower well-being, significantly higher intent to leave [and] significantly higher levels of burnout.” By contrast, employees feel gratitude to companies that give them more flexibility and show trust: as one such employee said, “if my company is going to come in and give me this flexibility, then I’m going to be the first to give them 100%.”

Indeed, research by Stanford University even before the pandemic found that workers who spent four days a week working remotely were 9% more engaged than in-office staff. Gallup finds that “the optimal engagement boost occurs when employees spend 60% to 80% of their time—or three to four days in a five-day workweek—working off site.” No wonder, then, that mandates forcing employees to come to the office result in quiet quitting.

Drop in diversity

The final of the Four Horsemen relates to the serious loss of diversity associated with the mandated office return. A Future Forum survey found that 21% of all white knowledge workers wanted a return to full-time in-office work, but only 3% of all Black knowledge workers wanted the same. Another Future Forum survey found that 38% of Black men wanted a fully flexible schedule, but only 26% of white men did. The Society for Human Resource Management found that half of all Black office workers wanted to work from home permanently, while only 39% of white workers did so.

Why do we see this difference? It’s because Black professionals still suffer from discrimination and microaggressions in the office, and are less vulnerable to harassment in remote work. Similar findings apply to other underrepresented groups.

Evidence shows that underrepresented groups are leaving employers who mandate a return to the office and are fleeing to more flexible companies. For example, Meta Platforms offers permanent fully remote work options. By doing so, they found that “embracing remote work and being distributed-first has allowed Meta to become a more diverse company,” according to Sandra Altiné, Meta’s VP of workforce diversity and inclusion. In 2019, Meta committed to a five-year goal of doubling the number of Black and Hispanic workers in the U.S. and the number of women in its global workforce. Thanks to remote work, Meta’s 2022 Diversity Report shows that it attained and even outperformed its 2019 five-year goals for diversity two years ahead of its original plans.

Companies that offer less flexibility have DEI staff ringing alarm bells about how the desire for remote work among underrepresented groups threatens diversity goals. Underrepresented groups are joining the Great Resignation in greater numbers in the context of the mandated office returns.

Solutions

In working with my clients who wish to bring their employees back to the office and slay the Four Horsemen, I find a combination of strategies to be crucial. Before launching an office return, we consider compensation policies. A June 2022 survey by the Society for Human Resources reports that 48% of survey respondents will “definitely” look for a full-time work-from-home job in their next search. To get them to stay at a full-time job with a 30-minute commute, they would need a 20% pay raise. For a hybrid job with the same commute, they would need a pay raise of 10%.

A September 2022 survey by Goodhire found that 73% of workers believe companies should pay in-office workers more than remote workers. Indeed, research by Owl Labs suggests that it costs an average of $863/month for the average office worker to commute to work versus staying at home, which is about $432/month for utilities, office supplies, and so on.

That data helped my clients develop a fair compensation plan that paid staff a higher salary if they spent more time in the office. Doing so helped address the first two Horsemen, resistance and attrition. Some of my clients even used that policy as a simple yet effective incentive to nudge most of their staff to return to the office in a way that minimized resistance and attrition, while saving significantly on payroll for the small minority who chose to work remotely.

Addressing quiet quitting required a range of techniques. One involved working on improving culture and belonging, such as retreats with fun team-building exercises. Another is centered on helping staff address burnout, such as by providing mental health benefits. Finally, it helps if employees feel you care about their professional development: upskilling pays off.

To help prevent diversity losses, as well as facilitate underrepresented groups getting promoted, it’s valuable to create a formal mentoring program with a special focus on underprivileged staff. That means providing minority staff with two mentors, one from the same minority group and one representing the majority population. Doing so offers the minority mentee a diverse network of connections with the specific knowledge and relationships they will need to advance, while the fact that each mentee has two mentors makes the workload manageable for mentors.

So, if you are committed to returning to a mostly or fully in-person workforce, remember that you need to watch out for–and defeat–the Four Horsemen before they threaten the success of your return-to-office plan.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., helps executives use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the best-selling author of seven books, including Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and over 15 years in academia as a cognitive scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and Ohio State.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

More must-read commentary published by Fortune:

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January 10, 2023
‘I see more of moonlighting as people look to expand their skills,’ says top Oracle exec

The past few years and the dynamic work environment have led to changes in the way the workforce of an organisation functions. But have businesses kept up with the changing expectations of their workforce? Have they been able to upgrade their recruitment strategy with the changing environment? Has human capital management (HCM) become more important than ever? Yvette Cameron, Senior Vice President of Global HCM Product Strategy at Oracle, in an exclusive interaction with Business Today from Denver, Colorado, talks about the challenges companies are facing in attracting and retaining talent, the opportunity moonlighting presents for organisations and how AI can help in the hiring process. Edited excerpts:

Business Today: How are employees and corporates catching up with the concept of hybrid work and hybrid employees? What are the changing priorities of hybrid employees when it comes to experience and how do you see employee experience emerging in 2023?

Yvette Cameron: The hybrid workforce caused a lot of disruption. Many organisations were not digitally savvy, they weren’t ready to support a remote workforce, with all the digital technologies that they needed. Managers of these employees struggled [with questions like] ‘how do I manage individuals that I’m not seeing anymore? And how do I ensure that my team feels connected, that I am treating them equally… as I do those who are still in the workplace? And so ultimately, the hybrid workforce has shone a light on the need to react and support individuals in all the many ways that they need to engage with the organisation. So when we talk about employee experience… experience is really about all the ways individuals interact with your company. And so understanding who they are… leveraging the data that we know about an individual to make sure that communications are highly tailored to them… that individuals are able to communicate in the form that’s appropriate for them through mobile, chat bot, on a desktop, etc.

The need for technology and for organisations to become digitally savvy has been accelerated by the pandemic. And as we move forward, embracing technology to ensure personalised experiences is more important than ever before. And as we move into 2023, that focus on empowering the individual will just become more magnified.

BT: What are the factors that are driving the shift and how long is this going to stay? Do you think the priorities of a hybrid employee are changing and how are organisations dealing with this transition?

YC: This hybrid model was starting to manifest even before the pandemic hit. Organisations and individuals were exploring new ways of work and working. And we were seeing the rise of remote workers. But after the pandemic hit, and as we were a year or so into it and organisations started the return to work, the hybrid workforce became more popular out of necessity. We couldn’t bring our entire workforce back in a safe manner; we brought only essential workers back. But during the last three years, the expectations of individuals have changed. They had a lot of time to think about what they were experiencing—the challenges of being isolated were compared against the joy of flexibility, of being with family, having resources close, not having long commutes, etc. And the definition for individuals of what success means in the workplace changed, and fundamentally, they stopped focussing on just a high paycheque, and were looking for more flexibility, and for more work-life balance, more focus on their well-being. So individuals are bringing those expectations to work. And that is going to accelerate.

From an employer’s perspective, many are not ready for this. They haven’t given up the hierarchical mindset. They haven’t given up this idea that they control the lives and all aspects of their employees’ work and those organisations are going to suffer. Many others, though, have started embracing new work models. And we’ll see more of this… So new models, new ways of working, it’s just going to continue and accelerate in the next three-four years.

BT: Do you think one of the new models could be moonlighting?

YC: Moonlighting is such an old concept; it was the secret job that I held to bring additional pay or build out some new skills. Now we refer to it as my side gig. And I do think that will continue to grow, because people are looking for experiences and to expand their skills. We know that the skills we have today—40-50 per cent of them won’t be the primary skills we need for our jobs in five years… And sometimes if my current employer doesn’t have the opportunity for me to explore new skills and grow my capabilities, then I will take a side gig to do just that. So moonlighting, side gig, I do definitely see more of that coming as people are looking to expand their skills.

The opportunity for organisations here, though, is that organisations embrace more projects [and] opportunity marketplaces internally for skills development and exploring different parts of the business so that individuals don’t have to engage outside… they can get that growth potentially within their own organisation. This improves the brand of the employer, [and] it improves the satisfaction of the individual employees. And it’s a win-win for both sides.

BT: How has the hiring process changed in recent times?

YC: There has been a tremendous change over the last few years in how the labour market is shaping up. Individuals have different expectations from the organisations that they’re going to work with. And candidates, especially top candidates, have higher expectations with the way that initial engagement goes. They’re expecting more personalised experiences, they’re expecting to interact with technology in a highly intelligent and streamlined and efficient way. They don’t have the patience any more for long drawn-out processes.

And so the job of recruiters needs to change. They need to embrace new ways of finding and sourcing and engaging with candidates; they need to use technology in ways that are highly personalised to attract the talent that they need.

And that’s the crux of why we have introduced Oracle Recruiting Booster. It’s an additional capability that expands on our current Oracle recruiting cloud. And it’s focussed on streamlining processes, not just for recruiters, but also for candidates to make it a much more efficient and effective process. There are four major components of the Recruiting Booster. First is the ability for organisations to effectively create hiring events. [Organisations can] create those events and use our existing candidate relationship management to promote and market those events; it also allows candidates to pre-register and manage all of their pre-screening, requisitions, etc… Another part is two-way messaging. So candidates and recruiters are able to not just have conversations, but candidates can track their applications [and] manage questionnaires and surveys. They can also be proactively notified of events and activities and new jobs and capabilities through this two-way SMS messaging. Likewise, chat bots are very common… So through our Oracle Digital Assistant, we’ve tremendously expanded the capabilities across all of our recruiting [processes]… so that candidates can register for events through a chat bot and be notified of information. And finally, interview management. The challenge of ultimately getting to the ability to talk to somebody is a challenge on coordinating calendars. So with our integration with Microsoft Outlook, we find the best schedules for the recruiter or the interviewing team and present those to the candidate so that they can quickly get their schedules managed. And of course, there’s a dashboard for recruiters to manage all the interview, activity and feedback.

[Coming to healthcare]… the pandemic has changed the landscape [and] burnout of employees is at an all-time high. There is pressure on healthcare organisations to find and retain the skills that they need for their healthcare providers. There is high turnover, and so we’re focussed on supporting the ways that organizations can really attract and retain and create better experiences for their healthcare workers, so that ultimately, they can focus on better patient care. So there are three major areas of investment we’re making to further establish our leadership position in the healthcare industry. The first is leveraging our dynamic skills, and this is an AI-driven skills taxonomy that is leveraged throughout all of our HCM processes from recruiting through succession planning, through development, etc. And specifically for healthcare, it enables organisations to better detect and uncover and leverage and develop the unique skills that they need within their environment. We are also leveraging AI in the way that we are engaging and helping improve the experiences of healthcare workers in our new Oracle ME platform. It is a comprehensive employee experience platform that brings together capabilities for communications, journey workflows, manager and individual employee touch points, the digital assistant, and help desk—all of these capabilities are brought together and AI is leveraged to tailor to the needs of nurses. And when you think about travelling nurses, you think about healthcare workers who are burdened by administrative processes, and they can’t focus on patient care. We’re trying to streamline and remove friction from all of those processes, to improve the experience and help reduce burnout and improve the well-being of the healthcare workers. And then scheduling is probably the biggest innovation. Today we support workforce scheduling across many complex industries. But the way you schedule in hospitals and healthcare situations is much different than how you schedule in, say, retail. So by integrating with Cerner, the solution that we acquired earlier, for understanding the demand and the acuity of patients the level of care that they need, we’re able to bring that insight and connect those hospital systems to our HR scheduling, so that we can ensure the right people, and the right staffing are available for the level of patient care that’s needed at any given time.

BT: With technology taking a centre stage, how do you see the HR tech space shaping up?

YC: I would say for the first time CEOs say that the HR organisation is as critical to them as their finance or operations organisations. The impact the pandemic had on the global labour market, the burnout, the turnover, people expecting just certain experiences… if they’re not met by HR technology, will cause you to not only lose talent, but struggle to attract talent, and certainly keep them for any length of time. So the HR tech market is hotter than ever. And the focus is all around—how are individuals supported to bring their best selves to work? And it’s not just in work; it’s important in personal and in work activities, so that together they are able to focus and provide the services that they need to do for their employer. So the HR tech market is seeing, I believe, tremendous investment. And as I said, from a CEO-level perspective, it’s more important than ever before.

BT: The tough global economic conditions have led to some companies freezing/going slow on recruitment, with some even reportedly not on-boarding employees who had been recruited earlier. Will it be possible to avoid such situations by using AI to predict personnel requirements of an organisation?

YC: It’s an interesting situation we find ourselves in. Globally, fill rates are lower than they’ve ever been. And yet, to your point, we do hear about these scenarios of offers being withdrawn. And I think that a lot of that has to do with first, an organisation’s lack of insight into the skills and the resources they need to run their business. Businesses are changing incredibly fast. Many organisations shifted from a product focus to a services focus, and the skills of their workforce, as a result needed to change. And at the start of the pandemic, many organisations laid off people without fully understanding the skills and what they were losing in that workforce. So today, more than ever, we need to understand the plans and the requirements of the business and AI can help us understand what are the skills we have today? Where are the gaps? What are the skills we’re going to need in the future? And how do we fill those, whether it’s through rescaling our current people or a combination of that and acquiring [new talent].

But I think what we’re seeing is because there’s that fundamental lack of skills [and] insight, companies are putting out offers and then realising, ‘Oh, we don’t need it,’ or they’re putting out offers to individuals where the skills and the capabilities, and the expectations are mismatched. And this is why they’ll pull a job offer back or why individuals will decline those job offers. So a combination of understanding the needs of the organisation coupled with an understanding of individual employees and candidates [is needed]. We can use technology to match people and jobs in a much more efficient way. If we’re not using technology to do that, it’s not a sustainable model.

BT: What are some of the recent innovations in HR functions? And which technologies do you think have the potential to support hybrid work models? Do you think HR leaders and CHROs have been able to reinvent the way recruitment is done with AI and other advanced technologies?

YC: I think there are two major things that are going to improve and support not only the hybrid workforce, but the work models of the coming years. And one to your point is recruiting, which is why we invested in the Recruiting Booster. We need to rethink how we are sourcing and engaging with people; we have to use AI, not only to better tailor the way that we are engaging with those candidates, but how we are creating the opportunities and communicating, etc. So everything from streamlining and making our processes more efficient through like interview management and scheduling automation, to again, event management and personalised marketing around hiring events. That’s super important. But the other fundamental piece, and this spans the HR suite, is driving additional insight. So talent insights and people analytics are probably the hottest and most important areas across the HCM market today. If you don’t understand, the people in your organisation… if you’re not embracing very robust talent insights, you will not be able to keep pace with the many changes of the workforce and changing economy that’s driving changes in our business. So we’re spending a lot of time with customers, helping them understand and embrace our own talent insights and continuing to develop capabilities in that area.

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November 25, 2022
New Study Confirms Parent Confidence on the Rebound as Parents Look to the Future of Child Care and Work
KinderCare’s latest Parent Confidence Report shows that both parent confidence and stress levels are at an all-time high. Parents of all political beliefs agree that child care is at a crisis point in this country as they reimagine the future of work.

Press Release
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Apr 7, 2022
PORTLAND, Ore., April 7, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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Despite all the setbacks that parents have faced during these past two years, parenting confidence is on the upswing, as revealed in the 2022 Parent Confidence Report, a national study from KinderCare Learning Companies^®, conducted by The Harris Poll. After two years of lagging confidence levels, 86 percent of parents now report they feel confident on a typical day. At the same time, stress levels have reached an all-time high at 59 percent, making the state of parenting more complex than ever.

Many parents made career changes, navigated school closures, and juggled the social, emotional, physical and academic needs of their children these past two years. The study shows that parents now expect even more support from employers and the government when it comes to child care. In fact, working parents prefer child care assistance more than established “off hours” from their employers and, more than ever, parents agree that government should help offset the cost of child care.

“While this year’s Parent Confidence Report shows the true cost the pandemic has had on parents across the nation, it also shows that parents – like children – are resilient,” said Dr. Elanna Yalow, Chief Academic Officer of KinderCare. “Our report underscores what we hear every day from families in our centers and from our employer partners: child care is the most pressing need for parents today. In fact, parents across the political spectrum agree that child care is at a crisis point and that employers and the government need to provide more support.”

Key findings from this year’s report include:
- Child care needs are driving the future of work. Parents are at the forefront of reimagining work and are making career modifications to be more available for their children. Forty percent of parents are open to or actively seeking new jobs right now, and roughly 60 percent have or have considered taking a career break due to child care needs. Working parents prefer employer-provided child care assistance, either through subsidized tuition or in a center, over employers setting “off hours” where parents are unplugged and unreachable.
- Hybrid work could shape the future of child care. Sixty-nine percent of parents believe that “hybrid work has or will change my child care needs.” Working parents are looking for flexible, employer-sponsored care to support them. Outside of family and friends who can help, the biggest needs for hybrid workers are co-working and play centers (39 percent), multiple locations for child care (37 percent) and on-demand care options (36 percent).
- Parent confidence is at an all-time high, yet so are stress levels. Eighty-six percent of parents report that they “feel confident in their parenting on a typical day,” rising from its 2020 and 2019 low of 77 percent. Despite growing confidence, parents’ stress levels are also at an all-time high – 59 percent of parents feel that “parenting during Covid-19 has been the most stressful time of my life,” up from 55% in November 2020.
- Uncertainty around child care is a key factor in parents’ stress. Many parents have spent more time with their children these past two years than ever before, likely contributing to parenting confidence. In fact, more working parents are leveraging work flexibility to be present in their children’s lives (69 percent), an increase of 10 percentage points from February 2020. At the same time, many of the reasons for this increased time together are also some of the main causes of stress: Nearly half of parents said the uncertainty around the safety of sending their children to school and child care has complicated their ability to confidently navigate parenting (44 percent), followed by uncertainty around school/child care closures (36 percent).
- Parents expect more from child care providers, with mental health & inclusion taking a front seat. With increasing reporting on mental health challenges among children, roughly 80 percent of parents think that mental health needs to be part of the school curriculum moving forward. Eighty-three percent of parents also feel that all types of families should be celebrated in classrooms, and 81 percent note the importance of their child(ren) seeing themselves reflected in these spaces, such as in books, activities, or cultural celebrations.
- Where do we go from here? Insights show a turning point for America. Americans of all political beliefs agree that child care in this country is at a crisis point in terms of accessibility and affordability (77 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans). More than ever, they’re looking to the government for assistance. Seventy-two percent of all parents believe that the government should help offset the cost of childcare, a 10 percent increase from November 2020.
More information about this year’s Parent Confidence Report is available here. The full report is available here.

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About the Parent Confidence Report 2022

The Parent Confidence Report examines confidence levels of parents and the factors that impact them. The first study was conducted in 2019, and this year’s survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of KinderCare from Jan. 14, 2022, to Jan. 22, 2022, among 2,023 parents with children aged 12 and younger representing a national sample. Within the sample, 992 parents with children ages 5 and under and 1,031 parents with children aged 6-12 were also surveyed.

About KinderCare Learning Companies^®

KinderCare Learning Companies is one of America’s largest providers of early childhood and school-age education and child care. KinderCare supports hardworking families with differentiated flexible child care solutions to meet today’s dynamic work environment in 40 states and the District of Columbia:
- In neighborhoods, with KinderCare^® Learning Centers that offer early childhood education and child care for children six weeks to 12 years old;
- At work, through KinderCare Education at Work™, providing customized family benefits for employers across the country, including on-site and near-site early learning centers and backup care for last-minute child care, and
- In local schools, with Champions^® before and after-school programs.
Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, KinderCare operates more than 2,000 early learning centers and sites. In 2021, KinderCare earned its fifth Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award – one of only four companies worldwide to win this award for five consecutive years. To learn more, visit KC-Learning.com.

PR Contact:
media@kc-education.com
503-872-1300, option 3

Source: KinderCare
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April 7, 2022