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Bartleby Back to the office
Bartleby Why executives like the office
Blame a mixture of carpets, caring and conditioning
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An office is meant to bring people together. Instead, it has become a source of division. For some, the postpandemic return to the workplace is an opportunity to reestablish boundaries between home and job, and to see colleagues in the flesh. For others it represents nothing but pointless travelling and heightened health risks. Many ingredients determine these preferences. But one stands out: seniority.
Slack, a messaging firm, 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 office than other employees. Of those higherups who were working remotely, 75% wanted to be in the office three days a week or more; only 34% of nonexecutives felt the same way.
The divide has played out publicly at some companies. Earlier this year, employees at Apple wrote an open letter to Tim Cook, the firm’s chief executive, objecting to the assumption that they were thirsting to get back to their desks: “It feels like there is a disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote/locationflexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple’s employees.” Why are bigwigs so much keener on the office?
Three explanations come to mind: the cynical, the kind and the subconscious. The cynical one is that executives like the status that the office confers. They sit in nicer rooms on higher floors with plusher carpets. Access to them is guarded, politely but ferociously. When they walk the floors, 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. Working 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 Griffin, the boss of Citadel, a hedge fund, has warned young people not to work from home: “It’s incredibly difficult 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 between coauthors was a good predictor of the impact of scientific papers: the greater the distance between them, the less likely they were to be cited. Even evangelists for remote work make time for physical gatherings. "Digital first does not mean never in person," says Brian Elliott, who runs Slack's research into the future of work.
But the advantages of the office can also be exaggerated. The Allen curve, which shows how frequency of communication goes down the farther away colleagues sit from each other, was formulated in the 1970s but still rings true today. Every workplace has corners that people never visit; no gulf is greater than that between floors. And the disadvantages of remote working can be overcome 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 managers at a "virtual watercooler" were much likelier to receive fulltime job offers than those who did not.
If physical workspaces have drawbacks, and remote working can be improved upon, why are executives clear in their preferences? The subconscious supplies a third explanation. As Gianpiero Petriglieri of insead, a French business school, observes: “people advising youngsters to go into the office are those who made their way in that environment.” Executives who have achieved success by working in an office are the least likely to question its efficacy.
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 office. Managers need to improve both environments, not assume that one is obviously superior to the other.
that it will offer its entire portfolio of products as a service by 2022. ibm, mainly thanks to its mainframe business, has always 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, already 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 fit: the group’s collective market capitalisation, now amounting to about $600bn, has only barely budged from where it was before the charm offensive 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 recently moved the firm’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Houston, Texas, in part because recruitment is easier there.
Do these firms still have what it takes? Most have new ranks of hungry executives but even the veterans still have fire in the belly. Michael Dell has remained at the wheel of the firm he founded in 1984, except 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
