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The Economist November 6th 2021
Business
Bartleby Why executives like the offi ce Blame a mixture of carpets, caring and conditioning
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n offi ce is meant to bring people together. Instead, it has become a source of division. For some, the post pandemic return to the workplace is an opportunity to reestablish boundaries between home and job, and to see col leagues in the fl esh. For others it repre sents nothing but pointless travelling and heightened health risks. Many ingre dients determine these preferences. But one stands out: seniority. Slack, a messaging fi rm, conducts regular surveys of global knowledge workers on the future of work. Its latest poll, released in October, found that executives are far keener to get back to the offi ce than other employees. Of those higherups who were working remotely, 75% wanted to be in the offi ce three days a week or more; only 34% of nonexec utives felt the same way. The divide has played out publicly at some companies. Earlier this year, em ployees at Apple wrote an open letter to Tim Cook, the fi rm’s chief executive, objecting to the assumption that they were thirsting to get back to their desks: “It feels like there is a disconnect be tween how the executive team thinks about remote/locationfl exible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple’s employees.” Why are bigwigs so much keener on the offi ce? Three explanations come to mind: the cynical, the kind and the subconscious. The cynical one is that executives like the status that the offi ce confers. They sit in nicer rooms on higher fl oors with plush er carpets. Access to them is guarded, politely but ferociously. When they walk the fl oors, it is an event. When they sit in meeting rooms, they get the best chairs. On Zoom the signals of status are weaker. No one gets a bigger tile. Their biggest privilege is not muting themselves,
which isn't quite the same power rush as using the executive dining room. The kind explanation is that executives believe that inperson interactions are better for the institutions they lead. Work ing from home “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation," was the verdict of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, earlier this year. Ken Griffi n, the boss of Citadel, a hedge fund, has warned young people not to work from home: “It’s incredibly diffi cult to have the managerial experiences and interpersonal experiences that you need to have to take your career forward in a workremotely environment.” These concerns have substance. Virtual work risks entrenching silos: people are more likely to spend time with colleagues they already know. Corporate culture can be easier to absorb in three dimensions. Deep relationships are harder to form with a laggy internet connection. A study from 2010 found that physical proximity be tween coauthors was a good predictor of the impact of scientifi c papers: the greater
the distance between them, the less likely they were to be cited. Even evange lists for remote work make time for physical gatherings. "Digital fi rst does not mean never in person," says Brian Elliott, who runs Slack's research into the future of work. But the advantages of the offi ce can also be exaggerated. The Allen curve, which shows how frequency of commu nication goes down the farther away colleagues sit from each other, was for mulated in the 1970s but still rings true today. Every workplace has corners that people never visit; no gulf is greater than that between fl oors. And the disad vantages of remote working can be over come with a bit of thought. Research by a trio of professors at Harvard Business School found that lockdownera interns who got to spend time with senior man agers at a "virtual watercooler" were much likelier to receive fulltime job off ers than those who did not. If physical workspaces have draw backs, and remote working can be im proved upon, why are executives clear in their preferences? The subconscious supplies a third explanation. As Gian piero Petriglieri of insead, a French business school, observes: “people ad vising youngsters to go into the offi ce are those who made their way in that envi ronment.” Executives who have achieved success by working in an offi ce are the least likely to question its effi cacy. That is a problem, especially since a majority of executives say that they have designed returntowork policies with scant input from employees. A hybrid future beckons, in which workers divide their time between home and offi ce. Managers need to improve both environ ments, not assume that one is obviously superior to the other.
that it will off er its entire portfolio of pro ducts as a service by 2022. ibm, mainly thanks to its mainframe business, has al ways had a healthy stream of subscription revenues, but wants to grow these further. Taken at face value, the numbers are impressive. Cisco announced that it had reached its targets set in 2017: software and services now generate 53% of revenue. hpe boasted services revenues of $1.2bn and after the Kyndryl spinoff ibm’s software sales will leap to 65% of revenues. Mr Amon will hammer home the point that Qualcomm’s nonhandset businesses,
such as cars and the internet of things, al ready have revenues of $10bn, about a third of the total, and are growing 1.6 times faster than its handset ones. But so far, investors do not seem to be convinced that old it’s new clothes are a good fi t: the group’s collective market capi talisation, now amounting to about $600bn, has only barely budged from where it was before the charm off ensive aimed at Wall Street. Much will depend on whether they will be able to attract top technical talent. Without it, they will have a hard time competing with both the big
cloud providers and hot startups. Antonio Neri, hpe’s chief executive, says he recent ly moved the fi rm’s headquarters from Sil icon Valley to Houston, Texas, in part be cause recruitment is easier there. Do these fi rms still have what it takes? Most have new ranks of hungry executives but even the veterans still have fi re in the belly. Michael Dell has remained at the wheel of the fi rm he founded in 1984, ex cept for a hiatus in 200407. Asked about his future, he replies: “I love what we do: It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s exciting. I have no plans to change my involvement.” n
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