Fortune - The return to office disconnect

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May 12, 2021

Welcome to Worksheet, a newsletter about how people are working smarter in these turbulent times.
In this week’s edition, S. Mitra Kalita writes about why the return to the office is causing so much consternation among workers.

The announcements started slowly, but then the floodgates broke with reopening plans: Blackstone, Eli Lilly, the City of Chicago, the manufacturer of Dodge, Jeep and Fiat.

What has caught some managers off guard is the emotional reaction to their edicts that it was time for employees to head back, in person. The staff of Washingtonian magazine staged a work stoppage on Friday after CEO Catherine Merrill wrote a column saying managers have “a strong incentive” to demote employees who don’t return to their offices.

According to PwC’s US Remote Work Survey, three-quarters of executives anticipate at least half their employees will be back in the office by July. But like all things in the COVID economy, this transition can’t just be rushed with an expectation of resuming business as usual. That’s especially true for caregivers, given that younger children still don’t have access to vaccinations, and many parents still don’t know what the next school year will look like. Here are some things employers need to remember about the fragile states of their workforces and why announcements about what comes next need careful crafting.

In October, Skillshare, an online learning company, decided to go fully remote. The decision was made after much deliberation and employee input, including surveys. In the end, a desire for equity and not favoring in-office staff over those working from home won. So it was decided: everyone would be distributed and could work from anywhere. Chief operating officer Sabrina Kieffer said the company made the decision early because many workers’ lives were hanging in limbo, from where they might live to childcare and schooling decisions. “We wanted to give people the clarity to make a decision early and live somewhat of a normal life again,” she said.

The reaction surprised her. “We had been watching trends. The majority of the team wanted to be remote,” she said. “But people were not cheering up and down.”

Kalita goes on to write about about the disconnect between big corporate plans, and the way employees are feeling on the ground floor.

Read her full column here.
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This week's reads

How to support women's return

Support caregivers, get honest about remote work and report more honestly (Reset)

All onboard

How to set up remote workers for success, starting on Day 1 (Harvard Business Review)

HBCUs

Black colleges are a big part of the Biden administration's American Families Plan (Watch the Yard)