From a great article at Business Insider:
Despite doing “everything” to get employees to return to the office, Starbucks’ CEO said, they’re not returning “at the level” he wants. Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook policy forum in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Howard Schultz — who returned as interim CEO in April after Kevin Johnson stepped down from the role — said swaying staffers away from remote work and back to the office hasn’t been productive.
“I have been unsuccessful, despite everything I’ve tried to do, to get our people back to work,” Schultz, 69, said. “I’ve pleaded with them. I said I’ll get on my knees. I’ll do push-ups. Whatever you want. Come back.”
He continued: “No, they are not coming back at the level I want them to. And, you know, we’re a very collaborative, creative group. I realize I’m an old-school person, and this is a different generation.”
So, they’re not coming back at the level he wants them to. Re-read that sentence again above: “…they are not coming back at the level I want them to.” There is no need for every employee to return to an office setting full-time ever again, Howard, and not when the only reasons are 1) misguided conceptions regarding creativity, 2) your age and generational perspectives, and 3) the fact that you want them to, but don’t need them to.
We’re not going down the road of “let’s read why the Future of Work Exchange believes remote work has so many benefits.” We’ve done it before…many times. By now, we know the deal. Flexibility, agility, and scalability are all valuable components of remote and hybrid work, as well as the very concept of talent acquisition now requiring to offer hybrid options for new positions to truly attract candidates (h/t to last week’s FOWX Live panel on remote work and the great insights of JLL’s Caitlin Klezmer and WorkLLama’s Kevin Leete, and a wonderful phrase from the audience: “The office should be a magnet, not a mandate.”).
We chat so much about the “next normal” and the “new world of work” that the very innerworkings of remote and hybrid work are just a formally-accepted reality for the vast, vast majority of workers today. “Working from home” is no longer a foreign concept, nor is the idea that millions upon millions of workers now require flexibility in how they address their roles. It’s worth mentioning that remote and hybrid work aren’t just “safety reactions” to a pandemic, but rather types of working that finally became commonplace and are now driving the biggest exodus of workers from traditional roles.
When the Exchange writes about the “Talent Revolution,” we discuss the reasons why the “Great Resignation” is happening: workers want flexibility and control over their schedules and work structures whilst also desiring purposeful worker and better working conditions. We just wrote recently that if businesses are truly on the fence regarding how to deal with “return-to-office” plans, they should use this time to experiment with various models to see what works…and what doesn’t.
Decisions regarding how workers work should not be based on archaic thinking, nor should they follow a very outdated mindset that professionals cannot be creative unless they are face-to-face with their peers. Elon Musk believes that Tesla will benefit from a return-to-office mandate. Howard Shultz claims he’s “pleaded” with his workers to come back. These types of executives should just realize that:
Remote and hybrid work are the foundation of the Future of Work. The businesses that cannot adopt or adapt to new work models are the ones that will fail to thrive in these dynamic times.
