The great resistance

Is the 5-day commute dead?

“To start building your remote culture, establish and share some basic rules. The first and most important rule is mutual trust between the company and its workers. The rules after that? As few as possible.”
– Larry English, author of Office Optional

What we’re hearing: It’s still a thing.

Organizations everywhere are still struggling to get their employees to return to the office. The pandemic’s seismic shift affecting the way we work continues to have aftershocks that will likely keep going through 2024 and beyond.

Remote and hybrid work options are enduringly popular with employees. Back-to-office edicts are being met with resistance. Employers who remain inflexible risk losing top talent.

Some recent headlines:

• 90% of companies say they’ll return to the office by the end of 2024 – but the 5-day commute is ‘dead,’ experts say
  (Make It – CNBC, September 2023)
• Where in the world are people back to office?
  (New York Times, September 2023)
• Return to office policies for every Fortune 100 company
  (Build Remote, September 2023)
• The official list of every company’s back-to-office strategy
  (Hubble, September 2023)
• 9 in 10 companies will return to office by end of 2024, survey says
  (HR Dive, August 2023)
• Here’s a list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office
  (Business Insider, July 2023)
• The magnet, not the mandate: A new approach to hybrid work (Forbes, July 2023)

And a few more still relevant:

• To get people back in the office, make It social
  (HBR, November 2022)
• The Great Resistance: Getting employees back to the office (Stanford, July 2022)
• Why return-to-office mandates will backfire
  (Forbes, May 2022)

How is your organization managing remote and hybrid work? Are any related changes affecting your organization’s culture, issues like inclusion, trust, employee engagement and retention, or your overall business strategy? We would love to know.

Talk to your Advantage partner or contact us about how we are helping organizations meet these challenges, create strong cultures, manage change, and be more innovative for 2024.

One great thing for 10.03.23 – 8 lessons on building a company people enjoy working for – What happens when a company looks less to control and more to trust? Patty McCord, the iconic former chief talent officer at Netflix, shares the key insights that led her to toss their HR handbook out the window, ditch the jargon, embrace change, and have fun.