After several years of rapid change and dramatic disruption in the workplace, the dust is finally beginning to settle to reveal the new frontier of work.
What was once a trend on the edge of standard workplace practices, work-from-home (WFH) has entered the mainstream. We witnessed 15 years of behavior change in just 30 days. The workplace seemingly power-shifted into a hybrid environment for knowledge workers overnight, and now 50 percent of small and midsize businesses across industries have adopted the hybrid model.
Remote work has become a regular practice for many desk workers, enabled by an increased ability to "go digital" and validated by the fact productivity sustained the shutdowns of the pandemic. Even the four-day work week is picking up speed--a global trial program studying this adjusted schedule has proved so successful that all participating companies intend to adopt the model long-term.
Flexibility has shifted from a unique differentiator to a baseline standard.
The job market may be easing after a white-hot period of extreme growth and volatility, but available positions continue to outpace available workers and unemployment remains low. As long as workers still have the ability to "upgrade" their current role to one that pays more, provides better benefits, and/or offers a more suitable employee experience, they will have the power to find a job that better matches their expectations and needs. At one time, the CEO dictated a set of rules, and employees followed suit without question. Those days are long over.
Still, there is a gap between what employees desire and what CEOs expect. For example, employees who are able to work from home report wanting more full-time remote work (and less full-time in-person work) than their employer is currently offering. They have a point: data from the 2022 American Time Use Survey shows that for those without a commute, workers have been able to work less and focus more on their holistic well-being. But while Vistage data backs up the idea that remote work doesn't have a negative impact on productivity, it also highlights leadership's overwhelming belief there are benefits to in-person work that still can't be duplicated online, such as collaboration, culture, and communication.
Hybrid work is the happy middle ground many have landed on.
Five days in the office feels increasingly archaic, but being fully remote has its own set of hurdles and challenges that can easily be combated in person. That said, hybrid work is not prescriptive. Subsequently, leaders across the U.S. are tasked to define flexibility for their organizations and set clear expectations accordingly. For hybrid work to serve its purpose and be truly successful requires experimentation, trial and error, and open lines of honest communication up and down the chain.
The workforce's change of behavior was seemingly instantaneous. Now leadership and management must catch up. The world of work is steadying from a state of dramatic transformation during the height of the pandemic into a more thoughtful, sustained period of negotiation and refinement. Leaders must seek common ground with empowered employees and establish best practices--from reimagining the physical workspace to better foster collaboration to having the right technology for successful hybrid meetings and establishing best practices for how meetings are run, determining what mix of in-person and WFH best fits each individual contributor and how to maximize each employee experience accordingly. The future of work has arrived and it is ripe for the picking- now leaders must lean in and start taking action to find their best path forward.
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