RTO Motivations Warranted?

The U.S. Career Institute reports that by 2025, up to 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely. Currently, 54% of workers want to work fully remotely, with 41% preferring a hybrid schedule, followed by 5% who would choose to work in the office full time. Despite the statistics, enterprises instituting RTO policies (e.g., a return to office in some capacity, three times per week, or permanently) argue their necessity to improve productivity, strengthen collaboration efforts, and drive deeper innovation.

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Direct sourcing began to take off as a means of nurturing talent communities and developing a near-self-sustaining source of on-demand expertise. Skills-based hiring emerged as a way to look “beyond” costs and pay rates to revolutionize how enterprises innovative and leverage next-generation skillsets.

Empathy-led leadership and emotional intelligence became crucial endeavors to separate the successful leaders from those that would eventually lose their staff to the Great Resignation. And, of course, the most famous Future of Work accelerant of all, remote and hybrid work, drew most of the spotlight and headlines.

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The COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed moment for humanity. And it was also a turning point in the business world.

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In recent years, the adoption of digital workspaces has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced many companies to adopt remote work policies. However, even before the pandemic, the trend towards digital workspaces was already on the rise, driven by factors such as the increasing availability of advanced communication and collaboration technologies, the rising costs of real estate, and the desire for greater flexibility and work-life balance.

Today, the digital workspace model is now permanent, no matter how many executives believe they can ignore the spectrum of flexibility that has become synonymous with post-pandemic working.

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What enterprises can’t lose sight of is the Future of Work progress over the previous three years. Much has been gleaned from an enterprise and employee perspective about what drives productivity, wellness, and retention. Unfortunately, some enterprises are reverting to full or near-full in-person guidelines. Disney CEO Bob Iger is the latest high-profile executive to require workers to return to the office four days per week, citing more effective collaboration and creative output.

However, some organizations are shifting their stance for other reasons.

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Four years ago at this time, many of us (well, let’s be honest: all of us) were focused on the most critical of all Future of Work accelerants: remote and hybrid work. Who could know back then that this would open the floodgates into new and exciting ways of structuring workplace environments?

The Future of Work Exchange has oft-discussed this concept of “acceleration” in that pandemic-era restrictions, and, by consequence, the forced changes of how we work, pushed enterprises across the globe into a new era of work optimization.

With our backs against the proverbial wall, we responded by innovating. And by innovating, we continued to transform how we work, when we work, and where we work.

With nearly a quarter of 2024 in the books (time flies, doesn’t it?), the landscape of Future of Work-led shifts within the workplace (and how we work) represents the true fluidity of this movement; as technology continues to progress and as businesses seek to innovate around the areas of proficiency, efficiency, and productivity, we can anticipate a continuous evolution in the workplace dynamics, such as:

• The much-vaunted four-day workweek. The Exchange’s John Yuva wrote about this strategy in 2023, finding that four-day workweeks “lead to lower stress levels as well as a happier and more loyal workforce,” as well as a major increase in productivity. The issue keeping the strategy from adoption, though? The vertical-to-vertical adherence to four days instead of five means that there’s a gap in customer- and client-facing servicing, leaving managers to struggle over another staffing issue in an era when the labor market is already volatile.
• “Chronoworking” as a potential workplace disruptor. Chronoworking is innovative as it aligns work schedules with individuals’ peak productivity times, optimizing performance and creativity. However, its adoption can be challenging due to the need for a shift in traditional work paradigms, potential resistance from established routines, and the necessity for effective communication and coordination among team members following varied schedules
• The convergence of new workforce generations and the importance of workplace culture. With Boomers mostly out of the workforce and Gen Xers approaching the last decade or so of their careers, it means that millennials and Gen Z workers represent the majority of today’s talent. Although this shift has been happening in some capacity over the past few years, the newer blend of workers means that there’s the utmost pressure on leaders to shore up workplace culture and ensure that the “work experience” meets the evolving requirements and desires of the younger generation.
• The impact of AI on the workplace. Artificial intelligence is the next great level of innovation, with generative AI as its calling card. Generative AI is poised to revolutionize the future workplace by automating complex tasks, fostering creativity, and enhancing overall efficiency. Through its ability to autonomously generate content, solutions, and insights, generative AI will free up human resources to focus on higher-level decision-making and innovation. This transformative technology holds the potential to reshape workflows, streamline processes, and create a more dynamic and adaptive work environment, ultimately driving increased productivity and competitiveness in the evolving landscape of the modern workplace.

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It was a dark time in our lifetimes, a period in which everyday routines were altered as lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing became a frustrating (and frightening) norm. While we are three-and-a-half years removed from those scary early days of the pandemic, the ramifications will always be apparent…especially in the business arena. In fact, Future of Work acceleration is now perceived as one aspect that was a positive result of the incredible change brought about by the crisis.

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The second annual edition of our exclusive executive roundtable series returns on June 13 in Boston at the historic Harvard Club venue. Join us for an engaging and exciting event in the heart of Boston as we discuss the topics that are driving change in the world of work and talent.

This event will bring together thought leaders and industry experts to explore key topics such as the impact of technology, the changing nature of work, and strategies for attracting and retaining top talent. Whether you’re looking to optimize your procurement processes, revamp your talent acquisition strategy, or improve your HR practices, this event is for you.

Don’t miss this opportunity to network with like-minded professionals and gain valuable insights that will help you drive success in your organization. Register now to secure your spot at the Future of Work Exchange LIVE executive roundtable event in Boston on June 13. We look forward to seeing you there!

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One of the defining characteristics of the Future of Work is digitization. Enterprises are now operating with more remote and hybrid workplaces. Thus, technology is imperative to a cohesive and efficient workforce. What this means for the individual employee is more daily immersion in various technological platforms and solutions. Upskilling will be a critical aspect for workers as they harness more advanced technologies to communicate, collaborate, and execute their roles.

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Disney’s executives followed a similar path, only much earlier in January, and, with four mandated days-in-office rather than the three dictated by Amazon. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff mandated three days in office in the midst of the company sunsetting its Future Forum consortium, which, SOMETHING enough, found that flexible working environment were incredibly conducive to productivity and employee engagement.

And, yeah, we all know Elon Musk’s feelings on remote work during his tumultuous time thus far at Twitter. There’s also this nugget from a recent Fortune article:

“But the latest data suggests that partially empty office towers — a feature of city-centers with the rise of remote work — may remain that way. Data from security firm Kastle Systems show that office occupancy in major US cities is only about half of the pre-Covid level.”

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has discovered that 82% of businesses relied more on remote and hybrid workplace models in 2022 than they did in 2021, a statistic that proves flexibility is a continued pandemic-era accelerant that has become a permanent fixture of the world of work.

So, in the face of more intrusive RTO mandates, where does this leave the most critical component of the modern enterprise, it workforce?

Well, it’s a complicated quandary, for sure. As the tail end of 2022 swayed more and more towards a likely economic downturn, workers became more focused on keeping their jobs in lieu of the continual quest for flexibility and other benefits. However, that specific focus has seemed to settled a bit; while layoffs are regular news across most industries, the backlash to household CEOs’ RTO mandates proves one major thing: remote work and employee engagement are inherently linked, and more importantly, shouldn’t be separated.

The modicum of control here, the very level of pervasive oversight…it’s all archaic. While it is easily understood that every executive leader desires some semblance of authority over their workforce (which leader wouldn’t?), there is a major difference between control-for-the-sake-of-control and a balance between control and trust. If anything at all, the past three years have proved that remote and hybrid work models are effective in maintaining (and boosting!) productivity,

There is an ongoing war for talent and there will always be a war for talent, no matter the economic, social, or political background of any business era. Simply put: a company’s talent is what propels it into innovation and success. So, then, doesn’t it make sense that every business leader do all that they can to actively engage their workers and ensure a positive, consistent workforce experience?

“When it comes to our talent acquisition strategy, we’re not completely opening the doors for every request from every candidate,” one SVP of Talent Acquisition told me last week. She added, “However, our executive team realizes that we’re not going to compete without the right talent across our many global locations, so, we do what we can to prioritize the candidate experience and ensure that flexibility is embedded into as many roles as possible. We value interoffice collaboration and understand that it’s vital to who we are as an organization…it’s just that we know how much the world has changed and how critical attributes like remote work are for the engagement of our workforce.”

Many leaders and professionals alike typically equate “employee engagement” with growth opportunities and enhanced communication; while these are indeed cornerstones of the overall worker experience, in a talent-driven world as such we live in today, businesses have traverse beyond these aspects to attract and maintain high-quality talent. Workers crave autonomy and flexibility, two pillars of the remote or hybrid workplace model. Professionals want to be trusted in their environments to be productive and to have the flexibility required for better work-life integration. These two attributes together? They are, in essence, the foundation of worker happiness.

And, as we know, happy workers are the ones that are satisfied with their roles and careers and feel much more engaged with their leaders, peers, colleagues, and organization. The link between remote/hybrid work and employee engagement is one that cannot, and will not, be broken.

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