Most of us probably have pondered what kind of permanent changes will remain in our society when the Coronavirus pandemic is finally considered vanquished. With variants emerging and some of them appearing to be causing a bump up in our health statistics this month, we might not be learning the answer to that question for a while yet.
Clearly, the idea of “work” has been altered by this pandemic. What will “work” look like when this finally blows over? A few days ago, National Public Radio ran a story focusing on how the pandemic has changed, is changing, or will change the workplace. Audie Cornish, the host on the afternoon news show, “All Things Considered,” interviewed three people, one in particular. NPR was good enough to provide a transcript of that interview on its webpage. We thought the discussion worthy of passing it along to those who might have missed the broadcast or who don’t listen to National Public Radio.
CORNISH: Why and how to bring employees back into the office – those are the kinds of decisions company leaders are having to make. And they’re thinking about how to give employees flexibility, how the pandemic has impacted innovation and company culture. We spoke to a variety of CEOs – Christina Seelye, CEO and founder of video game publisher Maximum Games in California, was one of them.
CHRISTINA SEELYE: Innovation’s a big one. I think that innovation – I haven’t seen the technology yet that replicates what it’s like to be in a room with people and bounce off of each other.
CORNISH: And Dan Rootenberg, CEO of SPEAR Physical Therapy Company in New York.
DAN ROOTENBERG: I do believe that people learn from each other more. There’s more collaboration. There’s Zoom fatigue. I mean, I’m on so many Zoom meetings. It’s, you know, it’s really exhausting after a while. And so there’s a totally different feeling when you get together.
CORNISH: Those at the C-suite level, they turn to experts at places like McKinsey & Company.
SUSAN LUND: So we’re getting calls from executives and chief human resource officers to say, OK, we’ve now gotten used to everybody remote. But how do we bring people back? When do we bring them back? What protocols do we need?
CORNISH: I spoke with Susan Lund, a partner at McKinsey & Company and leader of the McKinsey Global Institute. They put out a report in 2020 that was updated this year looking at the lasting impact of the pandemic on the workforce.
LUND: If you had told any business leader a year and a half ago that we were going to send the whole workforce home – at least the ones who could work from home – home for more than a year, they would say this is going to be a disaster. And, in fact, it’s worked out quite well.
CORNISH: But brass tacks, were we all more or less productive when it comes to remote work? What did your research find?
LUND: So what we find is that in the short term, people are definitely as productive, that it looks like they’re spending more time at work, in part because they don’t have the commute. They don’t have to go out necessarily to get lunch. They don’t even have the office chit-chat. So on one level, it looks like the number of hours that people are working is actually up. But long term, there are questions about innovation and new products and new ideas are going to be as forthcoming because of the remote work setup.
CORNISH: I want to dig into this data more. But first, who do we mean when we say we? Who’s been able to work from home? What portion of the workforce are we talking about?
LUND: It’s really office-based workers who are able to work from home. Overall, we found that 60% of the U.S. workforce doesn’t have any opportunity to work from home because they’re either working with people directly, like doctors and nurses or hair cutters, or they’re working with specialized machinery in a factory or in a laboratory. So it is a minority of people who even have this option. But overall, so 40% of the U.S. workforce could, in theory, work from home one day a week or more. And about a quarter of people could spend the majority of their time – three to five days a week – working from home.
CORNISH: When we talk about that 40% of people who do computer or office-based work, now a large number of them have had the experience of remote work. With that experience in mind, what are people learning about what a post-pandemic scenario could be for them?
LUND: So when you look at employee surveys, you typically find that the majority of people say, going forward, when we’re vaccinated, when it’s safe to return to the office, they still would like the flexibility to work from home a few days a week. So that’s a hybrid model. But then you do have a segment of people, maybe a quarter, who say I want to be in the office full time. Now, maybe they don’t have a good home working setup. It’s often young people in their 20s who are starting out in their careers. They want the mentorship and the camaraderie. And then you have another small portion who say I would like to work remote 100% of the time and work from anywhere.
CORNISH: There have been CEOs out there quoted here and they’re saying things like, well, we’re going to know who’s really committed to the job.
LUND: Yeah. So there is a lot of issues. So for companies going down this hybrid approach, there are a lot of pitfalls to watch out for. And one is that you end up with a two-tier workforce, that the people – it’s always the same people in the room making the decisions and other people are on Zoom or video conference, and that those on video conference end up being passed over for promotion, not considered for different opportunities because they’re not there. So companies are being thoughtful. The ones who are pursuing some kind of hybrid approach are thinking through these issues. And how do we avoid that to keep a level playing field?
CORNISH: We’ve been talking about this idea of who comes back, whose decision it is, that sort of thing. Legally, what do we know? Can employers force employees to come back? Can employers gently encourage employees to be vaccinated? What have you learned so far?
LUND: Well, it’s a complicated question. So on vaccination, it looks like it’s a bit of a gray area, but it looks like under federal law, yes, companies can require employees to be vaccinated if it impacts the health and safety of their workforce. On coming back to the office, I think it’s a little bit more clear. Companies can require people to work on site – right? – as a part of the employment contract. But what they risk, especially for talented professionals, is that people will go to other companies that do allow more flexibility on some remote work or work from home.
CORNISH: When people look back at this time, will it be considered a reset in some ways when it comes to work, or are we going to be back to where we were in 2019?
LUND: Well, my crystal ball is broken, but I think it will be a reset. I don’t think that we will go back to the same pattern of working. I think that the forced pause for everyone to spend more time at home with family and friends has really caused many people to rethink. I think that this really has been a reset.
Incidentally, Audie admitted that she was conducting this interview from a temporary studio in the attic of her house.
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