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A Friday Some Years Ago:

9:00. Phone rings.

“Hello? Oh, Hi Ken…”

12:00 noon. Phone rings.

“Hi Ken, what’s up?”

4:45 p.m. Phone rings.

“Hi Ken… Say Ken, Are you checking on me?”

“Well, actually, yeah. When I work from home I only get about two hours of work done all day. What with the kids and the dog, trying to work from the kitchen counter, and the TV, and computer games. It’s very distracting. We pay you quite a lot and I was just trying to see if you are actually working.”

“OK, Ken, I get it. But I’m in my office on the second floor of my house. It has a desk, phone, files and computer. There’s no TV. I have no games on my computer. My kids are grown and don’t live with me. The dog is old and goes out before work and after. Besides Ken, I only charge you when I’m actually working. We can review the training I wrote today if you’d like.”

“Well, I’m headed home; can you email it?”

“Sure.”

My client was new to the job and he had inherited a consulting team. To him it was easy to see us working when we were on site, but given his personal experience working from home, he couldn’t imagine us working productively on Friday, when we weren’t on site.

In fact, for certain kinds of head-down individual work, I got a great deal more done on Fridays than I did during the week, when I had to attend meetings with clients and build commitment to change. However, I understood that many managers in offices shared Ken’s experience and the concerns that arose from it.

Then Came Covid

Durin the coronavirus pandemic, workers in factories, healthcare, first responders, retail, and food service risked their lives and office workers learned to be productive “working from home.” Office productivity didn’t suffer as expected and office workers liked the flexibility, the lack of wasted commuting time, and not wearing pants on Zoom calls.

I retired in 2018, so this really didn’t affect me directly. I heard about it from my kids. One time consulting colleagues called to ask how I worked as an independent consultant. People asked about my home office and what the IRS required to deduct the set-up of a home office, (dedicated space, documented use, and expense receipts). I started to see jobs advertised as “remote,” or “hybrid.”

Some people figured out they could work from anywhere and you saw magazine articles of people working from the deck of their beach house. I was always jealous of that because I didn’t have a beach house.

Some people complained about the isolation of Covid-time. As the pandemic died down, some people reminisced about standing on balconies of city apartments banging pots in support of first responders and healthcare workers. Covid was something that affected us all, a unifier after a time of division.

Then Covid was (finally) over

Well, not really over. Covid is still around. We’re just done with it, over it; Covid is so four years ago. For the last four years, there has been a discussion building.

“OK everybody, it’s time to return to work.”

That one pissed off all those workers in factories, healthcare, first responders, retail, and food service who risked their lives.

“We never stopped working.”

So R-T-W became R-T-O, “return to office.”

Some were enthusiastic; some were less so. Sure, there would be less isolation, but more colds and flu (and Covid whispered the risk averse). And then there is wasted commute time. And then there is the flexibility of working when I want. And then there is the fact that I don’t have to stay late because Mary bent my ear about her mom, and Ted just had to relive the highlights of the big game, etc.

“OK, well, what about two days per week?”

“Maybe.”

“Three?”

“I don’t know.”

It’s been a long four years.

This conversation has been slowly accelerating. I must admit that, Boomer dinosaur that I am, I wasn’t particularly won over by the Gen X, Y, Z, Alpha whines about commuting costs and cleaning bills for the pants they would now have to wear. I also thought that some workers were being clearly unreasonable in their demands.

My nephew runs a retail food business and told me about job applicants who asked if they could “do the retail floor job remotely.” Some jobs require face time.

Culture is built by being together. Teams function best if they actually know each other. I began to hypothesize that introverts would want to work at home but extraverts would want to return to the office. It turns out there is no evidence of that.

I have had more and more conversations recently with office workers, people I respect for their intelligence and projected competence, who say, “If they insist on 5-days-in-office, I will leave.” Or “OK, I’ll come in for 9:00 and leave at 5:00, but there is no working till 7:00 and no calls on nights and weekends.”

There have been some famous CEOs who have gone public “R-T-O or else!” At a recent cookout, huddling under a canopy during an inconvenient downpour, I was engaged in conversation with the manager of administration for the board of directors at a money center bank.

“My CEO is friends with another CEO who has drawn a very public line in the sand, but my colleagues, my boss and three quarters of my staff will walk if he enforces the RTO mandate. Most of the board are off site and 90% of my work is email and phone. I have to be here for board meetings and two or three days a week is reasonable. Five is a hard “No!”

I began to think that managers, even CEOs, who insisted on a 5-day RTO mandate, might be driven by their own convenience  ̶  “I want to turn around an give someone a job directly. I don’t want to find out they’re ‘shirking from home’ and have to call them.”

Then, in today’s New York Times, I came upon an article by Adam Grant, et al, at the Wharton Business School, that quotes research, that demonstrates that:

“ One: Return-to-office mandates don’t increase profits by weeding out people who lack commitment. They motivate the most talented people to jump ship. Two: As long as people are together for half the week, remote work isn’t isolating. And three: Hybrid work isn’t bad for performance, innovation or connection. “

Grant et al go on to describe how adamant RTO mandates are most often pushed by narcissistic managers that require constant attention, as demonstrated by the size of their pay packages, offices, and their photos in the annual reports.

So where does that leave RTO?

It depends. There are clearly some jobs that require presence, just like first responders, and retail workers, if your job has a face to the public, well, you gotta face the public. If your job has more individual than team work, you might have more of an argument for remote or hybrid work.

If you are a manager, who just can’t get over the fact that, “Hey, I got up every day and went into the office. I sucked up to my manager and now its my turn,” then maybe look in a mirror. Get over yourself, and see how you can lead change three days a week or on Zoom without any pants.

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