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Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

nytimes.com

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Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#41

Post by namaria »

nine_zeros wrote: post #22
sharkweek wrote: post #11

Company I work for implemented more RTO recently and when someone asked in an all hands for data showing that the first RTO decision was leading to an improvement in productivity or some other key metric and the CTO responded saying (paraphrasing) “this isn’t a data based decision leadership is making. It’s because we want to build a culture where people are working next to each other more frequently. We FEEL that th…

The C-Suite is so highly paid and lives such a comfortable life that they can't even fathom how much productivity is lost by the average individual commuting for an hour and having to bounce for kids/family/home/medical issues. They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work, be at home when they themselves have ZERO chores to deal with. And they also don't understand why people are not as passionate as…

> They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work

Exactly. Leadership typically sees the workplace as a rewarding experience where they exercise control and get lots of dopamine. They truly can't understand that it's the exact opposite for everyone else.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#42

Post by LaGrange »

otikik wrote: post #25
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and it's been proven time and time again that such in-person collaboration leads to improved job satisfaction, retention, and overall employee happiness.

By what studies?

Studies by the department of Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head About It and the University of Imadeitup.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#43

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #21
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #9

I think most executives are pretty straightforward that their concern isn’t about the things most studies measure. Jassy sees the benefits as being: > we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better c…

Exactly, and it's been proven time and time again that such in-person collaboration leads to improved job satisfaction, retention, and overall employee happiness.

But they're being thrown into an office to still spend their time on video calls with teams spread out across the country?

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#44

Post by mscarborough »

lkrubner wrote: post #31

This explains everything: "It’s not practical. Hybrid work may be technically the best route, but it’s also complicated to oversee." Who cares if workers are productive, when the leadership is clearly less productive? And the leadership's time is extremely valuable. If remote work makes workers more productive, while the leadership is less productive, then remote work is bad for a company, full stop, no other convers…

If leadership cannot take advantage of, let alone adjust to remote work in 2024, they're not good leaders.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#45

Post by joshdavham »

sharkweek wrote: post #11

Company I work for implemented more RTO recently and when someone asked in an all hands for data showing that the first RTO decision was leading to an improvement in productivity or some other key metric and the CTO responded saying (paraphrasing) “this isn’t a data based decision leadership is making. It’s because we want to build a culture where people are working next to each other more frequently. We FEEL that th…

How would you propose they quantify company culture?

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#47

Post by jncfhnb »

7bit wrote: post #29
jncfhnb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the problem is that the culture story just feels like a lie

Why? That was a very honest Statement, that die especially bot hide behind some nebulous studies of productivity, but the emotion to have people in the office. What do you find dishonest about that Statement?

I’m inclined to believe factors such as headcount, shareholder / rich person pressure to raise commercial real estate value, something about foot traffic in commercial real estate issues, and personal insecurities of individuals about their roles rather than cultural aspirations are relevant.

Something as simple as the office manager being penalized for low utilization of the office.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#48

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

namaria wrote: post #41
nine_zeros wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The C-Suite is so highly paid and lives such a comfortable life that they can't even fathom how much productivity is lost by the average individual commuting for an hour and having to bounce for kids/family/home/medical issues. They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work, be at home when they themselves have ZERO chores to deal with. And they also don't understand why people are not as passionate as…

> They truly don't understand why people may want to leave work Exactly. Leadership typically sees the workplace as a rewarding experience where they exercise control and get lots of dopamine. They truly can't understand that it's the exact opposite for everyone else.

I would frame what I think is the same observation as, leadership optimizes for the experience of passionate people who find work rewarding. If you’re just putting in your 40 hours so you have money for the stuff that really matters, yeah, I don’t see how anyone could dispute that remote work is better for that.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#49

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Completely different incentives.

Executives are in those roles because their anxieties for control align with productivity for shareholders. The coercive threat is the whole point of executive management in private profit focused organizations.

Researchers on the other hand are not as interested in maintaining the power distribution bias. Rather they use “economic” factors like described in the article to describe what would seem to be a mutually beneficial situation.

So what’s so confusing? It’s because all these commenters are still stuck in the thinking that by default, incentives are aligned all the way from investors to line workers in a firm (otherwise why would they be there? They can just move in a “free market” - they are “rational actors” and other economics lies etc…)

As these studies show, coercive executives hate remote work because it reduces the frequency they can create pop-up tasks and break workflows to satisfy their desires. So productivity is up but control is down. It also makes bullying and intimidation much harder to get away with.

So the conundrum is simply executives throwing tantrums about their loss of structural methods of coercion they aren’t able to effect as easily.

Never forget, unless you are an owner of the company (eg. meaningful ownership, that has the ability to shut the org down) management, executives and investors are not only not your friends, but they are adversarial to your benefit.

Studies like these demonstrate that almost perfectly and yet everybody’s confused about why is it not the same?

It’s exceptionally simple and it’s something we’ve all known forever and it’s been captured in comic books and movies and everything else: middle management and above is incentivized to be antagonistic to non-ownership labor by function of the structure that it’s within.

Re: Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work. Why?

#50

Post by topkai22 »

choxi wrote: post #26

Has anyone looked at competitor companies and compared the ones with WFH and the ones without it? I’m curious what that data looks like

This is the study on RTO and financial performance that made waves a few months ago: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4675401

Summary is- no effect on financial performance in the observation period, but it sure made employees unhappy.

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