Unbelievable! The Epic Battle That Unraveled in the Office for Five Days

Hello and welcome to Working It.

The WiFi in our neighborhood went down for two days this week 👿 (and before you ask, there is only one “fast” broadband provider in our area). It forced us to regress, or progress, to a world before the Internet. I finished a great novel* and started good kind of badthe new book by Amy Edmondson (she is the Harvard Business School professor behind the concept of psychological safety).

Amy’s new book is about failure and why it’s vital to success. It will be published next month and looks set to be the “hot book” for job watchers this fall. Consider yourself alerted.

Read on for the latest on the contentious debate over return-to-office mandates, and in Office Therapy I have some advice for a demoralized team leader dealing with rude colleagues.

*’Great Swiss’ by Jen Beagin he is very rude and very funny.

Stand-off in the office corral

It won’t be long before everyone returns from summer vacation enduring extreme heat or endless rain. And what awaits us? Bloated inboxes, obviously. And, what is more exciting, the last round of the “showdown between RTO and WFH”.

This is not referring to a mixed martial arts match 🥊 but rather the increasingly spicy battle between what Axios calls “aggressive” return-to-office policies, favored by many leaders, and flexible work-from-home practices appreciated by many workers. The most recent data shows that offices in 10 US cities are half full. Or half empty, depending on how you look at it.

More recently, Zoom (yes, the savior of remote work) asked those live within 50 miles of one of your offices come two days a week. The other way to look at this ad though, as Stanford workplace data guru Nick Bloom pointsis that it formalizes a hybrid modality giving staff three days at home.

At Google, staff must be in the office three days a week, and attendance statistics are considered. in performance reviews. That’s the Google stick. But for your Mountain View-based staff there’s supposedly a “carrot” as well: Skip the commute by staying, for $99 a night, at Google’s own hotel. (Could free or subsidized hotel stays catch on to get staff back to their desks?)

Despite the uproar and absolute resistance — a mandate to be in the office for about half the week, even without a sleepover option, doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. (Am I the only one who thinks this? 🤷‍♀️) And some tests side with Team RTO. Fully remote teams, for example, are around 10% less productive than on-site teams, though hybrid work has little or no positive effect. as Pilita Clark writes

things like career development and strengthening your network of “weak ties” —the people who will help you in your career, because close friends are not for that— can also be shot down if you are not in the office.

I think the real stumbling block will come when CEOs start requiring four or five days of in-office attendance. A new Deloitte survey of senior staff at US financial services firms found that 66 percent of those surveyedwho work remotely at least part-time, say they will likely leave their current position if required to return to the office five days a week ♂️🏃🏻.

And while some financial services firms already require three or four days in the office, only 18 percent of those surveyed said this would be “their ideal arrangement.” So compliance is, we can say, grudgingly.

If employers start making demands for full-time in the office, talented staff are likely to be headed for the door. And, as the Deloitte survey points out, these employers could face losing their source of future leaders and struggle to recruit replacements.

What’s the next move? You tell me. I reckon it’s deadlock ♟️.

Where do you think the battle to return to the office is headed? Email me: isabel.berwick@ft.com. We’ll cover this soon on the Working It podcast.

This week on the Working It podcast

We work may be tripping But co-working is here to stay, as more companies ditch expensive office leases and instead rent out flex spaces for staff, while freelancers and founders search for a table that’s not in their kitchen. This week on Working It, we look at the reality of coworking spaces and the new etiquette that is developing around how to use them.

Things have evolved from WeWork’s beer- and gaming-fueled pageantry. (Refresh your memory with this FT article, published a month before the pandemic). Coworking is now about spaces divided into zones: for tranquility, for collaboration, for calls.

It doesn’t suit everyone: I speak to FT columnist Simon Kuper about his experience working in noisy teams and his perfect solo workspace. And we heard from Laura Beales of Tally Workspace and Ebbie Wisecarver of WeWork.

office therapy

The problem: I lead a team that provides internal analysis to the rest of our organization. Some of the requests are very rude and the team becomes demoralized. I have tried to deal with this through “high points”: replying with a lovely email; and “confronting”: politely asking them to be more human-friendly at the end of their demands😒.

Neither tactic has worked – repeat offenders still do it. I notice they have a low EQ [emotional quotient] – but any ideas to approach this in a better way?

Elizabeth’s advice: First of all, I hope you have rude people. on your personal grudge list. I once had a somewhat famous boss who was charming to important people and vile to the rest of us. (I still turn off if I see them on 📺).

Communications expert Matt Abrahams, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, suggests that “one way around this is to create a form that only has spaces for single words and dropdown options.” Matt also suggests a standard responsive framework that the team can implement. I have included it in its entirety, as it can be adapted by anyone in a situation that requires intervention. (Matt’s book Think faster, talk smarter has more on this).

Says Matt, “You’re unlikely to teach others to have a higher EQ, but you can work to make your employees less upset, which should be the real goal.” This is the magic format for responses to rude requests:

Information: “This is the X time you have made a request that sounded nasty to my team..”

Impact: “When we receive requests of that tone, we feel discouraged and less likely to attend in a timely manner.”

Invitation: “In the future, please follow this example (provide one or two examples of suitable requests) when you apply..”

Implication: It can be positive: “By doing so, you will likely receive faster service and help your customers faster..” Or negative: “If you continue with inappropriate requests, I will have to escalate this issue..”

Do you have a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Do you think you have better advice for our readers? send to isabel.berwick@ft.com. We anonymize everything. His boss, colleagues or his subordinates will never know.

Five outstanding stories from the world of work

1. Hybrid work put to the test as UK civil service heads north: Great story by Delphine Strauss on the effect of moving hundreds of civil servants from London to the northern city of Darlington. Can older people get the same career development they would in London? There are no answers yet, but the first signs are encouraging.

2. In praise of the ‘techies’ that make companies more productive: Sarah O’Connor delves into issues related to work and employment and presents unusual angles. Here she looks at the qualities that gave Britain leadership in the first Industrial Revolution and she asks: can 21st century technicians do the same?

3. Retiring CEOs: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Leaving the Top Job: Lots of advice here for anyone (not just CEOs) facing a transition from a high-level role that defines them. Oliver Balch interviews happy ex-leaders and the coaches who help them.

4. The uncomfortable truth about productivity: Obviously, I’m going to post an article mentioning the Working It podcast, but Tim Harford also summarizes some of the victories (and misunderstandings) around personal productivity. He reads it and feels that he has achieved something worthwhile with his day.

5. A complete guide to the yachting desk: Yes, you read it right. This article from HTSI, the FT’s luxury magazine, outlines the devices you’ll need to work effectively from a yacht. Includes a Bugatti brand pool table for downtime (€292,000).

One more thing

I can’t stop thinking about this piece in first person by Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale. It’s not just about football: Aaron talks about how it feels to be a human being at the end of endless criticism on social media, just for doing his job. There is also a personal side, including pride in his family. One of his brothers is gay and Aaron talks about the homophobia that he will no longer tolerate backstage.

Thank you for the many responses to last week’s newsletter, “Why class is still an obstacle to careers”. One came from Nick Brook, CEO of Speakers for Schools, a charity that helps public school students reach their career potential. Nick suggests that work experience is a “relatively cheap but totally critical solution” to long-term social mobility:

“There are not enough young people doing internships today, only half of high school students, according to our research. Meanwhile, you are twice as likely to have multiple interactions with the workplace than a young person who attends a private school.

“If the government embraced the provision of universal work experience in public schools and made sure it was meaningful (not making cups of tea), more young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds would gain the essential skills employers are looking for, and that ultimately instance can help them progress.”

And finally . . .

Love amy hwanThe FT Weekend cartoons. This one is especially relatable.