I’ve been going through and editing down my business writings from the past 18 months (85,000 words to read and edit). What surprised me most is how well some thoughts on remote working trends written exactly a year ago stood the test of time. My considered position then and now is that once people taste remote working and get used to it, they won’t be willing to go back to an office full time. So, let’s see how my predictions worked out and what else have we learned since.
Spoiler alert: my predictions, explanations and recommendations around remote work, a call for a balance between remote and in-office (essentially what’s becoming well-known as hybrid), and the power shift to employees: it all happened. See the verdict and commentary in italic after each para, including the issues we still need to address in hybrid, and practical tips and solutions for redefining what “office work” looks like.
So, let’s go.
Leadership and Management in a Post-Pandemic World (from Sept 2020)
(This is not amazing as we are still in the pandemic. In the autumn of 2020, I was optimistic that by September 2021 we’ll be back to normal. By spring 2021 I figured we’ll stay in limbo sadly until the end of 2021. I just got my 3rd jab and am expecting more restrictions coming back again, so yeah. Next spring.)
Already six months into the pandemic it feels like everyone had been working remotely for much longer. To the surprise of many, a significant portion of office work migrated to people’s homes without problem and many companies reported a jump in employee productivity. While parents of younger children have had it hard when schools were closed and no physical childcare was available, overall a big proportion of employees and managers adapted very quickly to this new model and expect to largely continue working this way going forward. – Not much to argue with here, other than the subsequent burnouts that many felt by spring this year.
According to research comparing knowledge workers’ productivity in 2013 and 2020, “lockdown helped respondents focus on the work that really mattered. People spent 12% less time drawn into large meetings and 9% more time interacting with customers and external partners. They also did 50% more activities through personal choice as they saw them more important and half as many because someone else has asked them to.” (Source: ‘Research: Knowledge Workers are More Productive from Home’ by Julian Birkinshaw et al via HBR) – One can’t argue per say with percentages, but we can all agree it’s a bit more of a mixed bag after 18 months of largely remote work. We were onto something though, something that’s worth preserving in hybrid.
Remote working is here to stay. We can all use this to our advantage and build better functioning teams and companies. – I mean, I called it right, didn’t I.
We were able to switch so swiftly to remote working mostly because the minimum required technology has been available for a while. What we are going through is an inevitable structural change that the pandemic lockdowns did not cause, merely expedited. Thinking forward, beyond this year, we need to consider how to consciously build the new way of working that breaks away from 20th century practices. – Again, I stand by this.
Predictions abound, many favouring mostly remote working but there is also a drive from some corners to get office workers back into eerily empty city centres. The questions often focus on whether businesses will be operating fully remote or implementing hybrid work practices, and some believe everything will go back to ‘normal’. Some think hybrid solutions with people working from central offices part time offer the best of both worlds while others say it is the worst solution. – Hybrid, I’ll say, is the future. It is the general preference and fully office will be the minority. I think we can also do away with saying hybrid is the worst of all worlds. When planned and done well, and thoughtfully, it is quite the opposite.
When we talk about the ‘normal’ and the ‘new normal’ we must not ignore the management trends and changes we experienced over the past two decades. Last year’s ‘normal’ office practice was just an agreed set of behaviours that developed a long time ago when our lives, marriages and technological capabilities were very different. What feels revolutionary for some has been ‘normal’ for tech startups and consultants for a while. – I mean, yeah.
When I started working at one of the Big 4 (then Big 6) at the end of the 90s, we were equipped with a laptop (not desktop) from day 1. In the first month all new starters were whisked away to the European training centre for a week spent in mixed international groups, being taught how to give presentations, tackle problems and not to talk on the bus about client matters. We were told that staff around the world were just like us and we can always email or pick up the phone and talk to them if we needed to. It was efficient onboarding that made clear the rules of the game and the expected behaviours while also instilling a sense of belonging even if you were far from HQ. - This kind of onboarding is absolutely critical now in the new hybrid normal.
While I had access to laptops, emails and mobile phones all my working life, when I visited my father’s office as a child there was nothing on his desk but some paper and a phone, his secretary with a typewriter sitting outside his office. They really needed to be in a central office to get anything done.
Consultants and auditors have long worked outside their offices, being based at clients’ sites on long projects. They didn’t see their colleagues every day. Managers with international responsibilities, leading regions or multiple offices, are also used to not sitting with the same people in the same office every day. Fifteen years ago working across borders meant not only lots of travel but having to use business centres to receive faxes and to print documents, dialling into conference calls with sky high international phone rates. Yet we got things done remotely. Blackberry was a big step forward as we did not have to carry laptops everywhere, all the time, to check emails. Tools have improved exponentially since then. – It really wasn’t “the good old days”, I think we can agree. But there was no choice. Now there is. I don’t even have to spell this out after 18 months of remote life, right? Time to ditch the fixed place, fixed time mindset.
Technological changes have long made it possible to work remotely, but the average office worker’s days remained strangely the same as when sending a letter required typewriters and typists. Travel to an office in the morning, leave for home in the evening, the norms of working persisted. Even though with the ubiquity of smartphones, tablets and massaging apps staff have been expected to be available and respond all hours. So with our working practices and expectations having shifted to all hours, why haven’t we changed office hours? – Why indeed? Flexibility of working hours is just as important as flexibility of location.
For me it is clear that the success of covid induced remote work is largely due to previous technological and societal changes and in many ways was inevitable. These changes have been pushing steadily at our office doors but people tend to resist change for as long as possible. – Yep.
I said back in April (2020) that certain business meetings will still have to be conducted in person whatever happens, but a good chunk of work can and will be done from ‘anywhere’. A force majeure was needed to challenge long-standing norms that have no real reason to exist anymore. No, I don’t believe all businesses will be remote working only, but I also don’t think we need to continue limiting ourselves, our businesses and our staff with expectations of sitting in the office, every weekday, 9am-5pm, especially if some teams are expected to work all hours. – Did I called it or what...
Certain meetings must be done face to face to achieve their goal, in particular when you need to build trust with another party. Equally, many meetings have no purpose, no reason (‘this could have been an email’) and need not happen. Teams need various types of interactions, including spending time in the same room to foster cohesion, creativity and accountability. Employees also need time alone to concentrate and do the actual work. – Yep. Very strongly agree still.