Sarah Rice, Chief People Officer, Skynamo
Elon Musk has reignited the conversation around hybrid and remote working in a way only he can. He reportedly issued an ultimatum telling employees to be in the office for 40 hours a week “or pretend to work elsewhere”.
The part that stuck with me? “There are of course companies that don’t require this, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while.”
Elon is always all or nothing when he takes a position on an issue. He believes that collaborative, creative and innovative projects move faster, with better results when people are working more closely together. In this, I agree with him. They do. Putting human beings into one physical space and having them work, eat, laugh, argue, and do whatever people do when they are together is where the real magic happens. And it happens fast. Certainly, faster than a Miro board or slightly glitchy teams meeting can ever achieve. Where speed and innovation are the competitive advantages, remote working won’t be able to deliver. So, I get where he is coming from and for Tesla this is probably a good strategic move.
But I think the all-or-nothing approach is alienating. For companies (and CEOs) with less brand power than Tesla and Elon Musk – and that’s most of us – a rigid return to the office policy will make it harder to attract and retain great people. Cisco’s Hybrid Work Report found over 60 percent of respondents globally saying their quality of work and productivity had improved due to a hybrid environment. In South Africa, this was even higher, with over 75 percent of people saying productivity and quality had improved.
Even people like me are not ready to come back to the office five days a week. The ultimatum feels at odds with the levels of personal autonomy and freedom most of us need to feel confident and happy at work. In addition, the report found that over 90 percent of employees want to retain this increased sense of wellbeing when they switch companies.
Hybrid working is a work in progress
Hybrid working is so new for most companies. We are all still working it out so managers’ instincts to roll back to the old way of working is understandable. We want to get back to a place where we all knew what the rules were. Businesses and managers aren’t yet clear on what they need and want, and they are bad at communicating it.
The first step is clarity – which is critical in all environments, be they in office, remote or hybrid. Unless we know what is expected of us and are clear on what we can expect from each other it gets complicated and political. Because hybrid is so new there aren’t any rules of thumb yet and there’s so much more room for confusion.
It is understandable that moving to a new way of working can be challenging. There were some aspects that worked – like knowing you could see someone tomorrow if you didn’t catch them for a conversation today. But there was a lot that didn’t – like not having space to work uninterrupted or the flexibility to work for a week from a different city because your teenager is on soccer tour.
New ways of working create opportunities and open the door for people to find a rhythm that works for them. The challenge of finding a meta-rhythm that works for the company is real, but it doesn’t mean we should roll back to the old way. We need to keep experimenting.
Hybrid work environments promise workers flexibility in scheduling work, but what people really need is autonomy, mastery and purpose to feel fulfilled. Teams need trust, alignment around a common goal and open communication to be effective. And to be honest, most of the time the working world is designed to ignore all of these things regardless of whether you are in the office or fully remote. It comes down to relationships and how we build them.
We’ve gotten bogged down with where we work, and are ignoring bigger issues
The conversation that we are trying to have is about autonomy, but the conversation we keep on having is about remote or in-office. It’s easier to say ‘let me choose where to work’ than it is to say, ‘give me the flexibility to work the way that’s best for me.’ Harvard Business School professor Leslie Purlow says that we all need quiet time, interaction time and time off.
The binary argument of remote vs in-office is saying that one kind of time is more important or better than another. But this just isn’t true. We need both. The argument is a red herring. What we need to be asking ourselves and each other is – what kind of time is best to help us reach our objectives? What does this business need more of? And what do I need to get it done? Then we can start to design a way of working that gives people the flexibility to choose how to get the work done.
The essential ingredients to make hybrid work better
Intentionally choosing how to use in office and remote days is critical. It’s not about where you work, it’s about how you work when you are there. This is a team conversation. We have to get really clear about the type of work we are doing, when and where it’s best to do it and then committing to a way of working that will get the best results – for the business and for the people.
We probably won’t get hybrid working right initially. It’s still going to feel strange for a while. But it’s worth staying the course and figuring it out, rather than going back to a previous model that, frankly, didn’t work all that well either. We want to end up with a work environment that is inspiring rather than suffocating and that sets us up to do our best work with our best teams. It will be interesting to see how Musk’s employees respond.
