Covid upended the world and pretty much shook everything with it, office politics not the least of it. In 2023 C-Suites everywhere want people back at their desks. Elon Musk demands that employees get back to the office or get fired. Even Mickey Mouse is making cartoonists surrender working from the kitchen table. Last August Apple CEO Tim Cook mandated the highest levels of management spend at least three days a week in the office, no neogiations. Goldman Sachs has told everybody – come back – or else.
That’s kind of a 360 from where things stood in 2022, executives lounging in sweatpants and stained shirts on the couch pounding out ven diagrams and excel spreadsheets demonstrating improvement to the bottom line on a laptop keyboard, loving that they didn’t have that hour bumper-to-bumper daily commute to work and back, having to spend the time and cost of eating out, and missing the baby’s first steps and the first day “I wuv you” was spoken along with a hug. No paycheck is worth missing that, and employees had discovered a life/work balance that suddenly had balance with enhanced meaning and significance. Giving that up was not going to happen without a fight.
And that’s the power struggle of 2023.
“In 2022 the power in the workplace was with the employee: there was a job shortage, there was the great resignation, and employers were really searching out to retain and attract good talent. But we’ve seen, across every sector in North America, in just the last few months, that there have been huge layoffs, there is an oversupply of resources. We’re seeing some of those people who demanded really high salaries back in 2022 are being let go for cheaper resources. I very much feel the power is moving back to the employer, who are going to be able to demand whatever they want from their employee,” Spencer O’Leary, an expert on managing remote workers, explains. O’Leary is CEO of ActiveOps, North America, a global organization that captures and processes every level of workforce productivity and management as data.
One of the things they have found in tracking the data is that worker productivity is higher when employees work from home. That’s a good thing for employees. They have fewer distractions; they get more work done. It’s a good thing for employers. The cost of their services and producing their products is less. The problem with having people work from home all the time is that some of the key things that need to be measured, managed and improved as a business have deteriorated: people’s well-bring, people’s creativity, people’s collaboration and ability to work together as a team – all of those things measurably decrease when employees work from home full time.
The magic silver bullet that everyone, that every employer and every employee, is trying to find right now, is the right mix of hybrid work in which everyone benefits. The company that can get the right recipe is going to have highly productive employees who are well-looked after, highly motivated, work well with their associates, thrive on creativity and innovation, and drive the business forward. O’Leary suggests it is not going to be a one size fits all approach. Every business is going to have to find their unique needs and balance. There is something of a tug of war going on between management and staff now that if worked out properly is going to make everyone’s life better.
We’re just not there yet.
photo: Getty Images