REMOTE WORK
The elusive sweet spot
Just about everyone agrees the future in hybrid. But with no playbook to guide businesses, strap in for the trial-and-error phase
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FOR THE LAST year or so, hybrid work seems to have settled into some sort of agreeable state, with workers back in the office for two, maybe three, days each week. Sure, the rhetoric on both sides of return-to-office remains fierce, but the paths are remarkably parallel. Hybrid work it is.
Recently, however, there’s been a bit of a stronger push on the part of bigger organizations to get their workers back in the office a little bit more frequently.
Earlier this year, RBC CEO Dave McKay said the bank was “on a journey to make sure that we’re in half or more than half the time in the office.” The City of Toronto also updated its flexible working policies to be a bit more prescriptive. And in the U.S., major employers like Chipotle, Disney and Snapchat have all slowly ratcheted up the expected number of in-office days, leading Bloomberg to wonder whether working from home was becoming a “once-a-week perk.”
Not surprisingly, others see something else: desperation on the part of businesses to make their RTO plans stick. “It’s been three years of scattershot plans for returning to in-person work,” writes Emma Goldberg in The New York Times. “Summoning people in, not really meaning it, everybody pretty much working wherever they pleased. Now, for the umpteenth time, businesses are ready to get serious.”
She details how some companies are toying with carrots (like Salesforce making a $10 charitable donation for each in-office day worked) as well as sticks (like Google saying it will take in-office days into consideration in performance reviews).
This dynamic will be one to watch over the next year or so, as the durability of the first iteration of hybrid work is tested. If the push to up the amount of time spent in-office is going to work, though, it will need to come with clear communication and rationale. More than anything, what has rankled employees has been RTO mandates that have seemed arbitrary.
“It is okay to create an expectation on them [employees],” Gallup’s Ed O’Boyle told WorkLife. “But with that expectation should come a reason why. And I think leaders are stopping short on providing real reasons around it versus platitudes about it.” Kieran Delamont
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REMUNERATION
Commuter benefits
Should commuting to the office count as work time?
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IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO talk about the state of RTO without talking about commuting. Commute times (and generally unpleasant commuting conditions) have consistently been the biggest reason that many workers are unhappy about returning to the office.
“There’s not much office-thirsty CEOs can do to shorten those journeys,” writes Sarah Green Carmichael. “Even if companies decide to offer free transit passes to workers, they can’t make our buses, subways and trains run any faster or more reliably.”
But one idea that has kept popping up might be able to help: paying people for their commute time.
“If there is no logical reason to bring people back other than it’s a management preference to bring people back, then companies are going to have to figure out how to compensate for that,” said Ivey School of Business associate entrepreneurship professor Larry Plummer, speaking to the Financial Post.
The idea has started catching on, albeit in small, baby steps. South of the border, there’s been a 43 per cent increase in job postings that cite commuter benefits, according to one report.
In Canada, more companies are starting to get on board as well. Sandra Reder, president and founder of Vertical Bridge Corporate Consulting Inc. in Vancouver, told Benefits Canada that she knew of one law firm which allowed their employees to “begin their work day when they get on a Wi-Fi-equipped commuter train in the morning and end it when they disembark at their home station in the evening,” effectively building their commute time into their workday.
Other organizations are starting to experiment with giving workers money to spend how they see fit on transportation: the Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, for instance, offers to pay 25 per cent of an employee’s transit pass, or chip in some cash to help fund the purchase of a bike or electric vehicle.
All of this will be music to many commuters’ ears, and for sectors battling for talent, the commute conversation is trending component of compensation negotiations. “This is going to really matter because it means employee turnover,” said Dorinda So in an interview with HRReporter. “It means that employees are now accounting for commuting as part of their own out-of-pocket expenses and that is going to factor into the total compensation conversation when you’re trying to keep talent or attract new talent.” Kieran Delamont
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Terry Talks: DisrputHR is back!
| DisruptHR is an information exchange designed to energize, inform and empower executives, business leaders and savvy HR professionals. Built on the belief that how we’ve approached people and talent in the past won’t be the best way to approach it in the future, DisruptHR is centered around an evening of dynamic, thought-provoking speakers and provides the perfect environment to network with friends and colleagues from the local HR and business communities. | |
DisruptHR London 2023
Date: Wednesday, September 20
Time: 6 to 9:30 p.m.
Location: Bellamere Winery and Event Centre, 1260 Gainsborough Road
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WORKSPACES
The next frontier in office space? The outdoors
More and more companies are finding ways to incorporate the outdoors into the workday
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MAYBE YOUR BOSS is making you come back to the office, and maybe the commute sucks, but on the plus side, more offices are warming up to the idea of outdoor workspaces these days ― and they are getting a thumbs-up from employees.
Commenting on trends in office design and furnishings, Rodney Lover of London’s Lovers atWork Office Furniture noted, “One area of substantial growth for us is outdoor furniture. If you can get a wi-fi signal, sit out with your laptop, why not? We enjoy such a beautiful country ― everybody likes to get out to the grass or hear some birds.”
The outdoor office had an obvious appeal during the height of the pandemic, when it represented an easy way to improve the air quality. But post-pandemic, will the outdoor workspace trend carry on?
“Just because the outdoor office is relatively new on the scene doesn’t mean it’s not here to stay,” reads a piece by the commercial real estate firm NAI Significa. “The sudden burst in popularity and interest is likely in response to a need felt by many office tenants and commercial real estate developers ― especially those working in temperate climates. The industry has been steadily moving closer to nature and the outdoor office boom represents the next big step.”
It’s not quite as simple as throwing a table down on a patio, though. Outdoor workspaces, like indoor ones, need to be designed smartly. One primary box to check is to make sure it’s in a cooler, shady area. “Direct sunlight on your laptop screen causes glare, which makes it maddeningly difficult to see your display. In turn, that can cause eyestrain, leading to headaches and reduced productivity,” reads a guide from Wirecutter. “Sunlight can also make your laptop overheat, which reduces its battery life and throttles performance.”
When done right, there can be a big payoff for your mental wellbeing. Even a short outdoor work session can boost your mood (and productivity), get your day back on track or just put a nicer shine on returning to the office.
“It’s invigorating,” said Mike Piispanen, an executive at Validity. “I think back to the time when I was a little kid and in the spring the teacher would say let’s have class outside today and it would be the best day ever. It gives you the boost you need.” Kieran Delamont
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EDUCATION
The cursive comeback
Cursive writing seemed to go the way of quills and parchment. Now the loop de loops and curlicues are back
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WAY BACK IN 2006, Ontario dropped cursive writing from its elementary school curriculum. “Good riddance,” you might’ve thought. Indeed, with personal computers on the rise, curriculum designers figured kids would be better off learning keyboard skills than a mostly out-of-use handwriting script.
And for the better part of two decades, it didn’t seem like anyone really noticed its absence.
But cursive has started mounting a comeback of late, and last month Ontario’s education minister, Stephen Lecce, announced that starting this fall Ontario students will learn how to write in longhand beginning in grade 3 — much to the delight of many parents who felt their children should at least know how to sign their names.
“The research has been very clear that cursive writing is a critical life skill in helping young people to express more substantively, to think more critically and ultimately, to express more authentically," he told the CBC. Several U.S. states have also introduced bills that would reinstate cursive writing instruction in schools.
It’s more than just a conservative yearning for traditions, too. Experts say that learning cursive writing is especially valuable for younger students. “There’s a myth that in the era of computers we don’t need handwriting. That’s not what our research is showing,” University of Washington professor Virginia Berninger told the Washington Post. “What we found was that children until about grade six were writing more words, writing faster and expressing more ideas if they could use handwriting ― printing or cursive ― than if they used the keyboard.”
So, cursive will be back on the agenda come September in Ontario schools, even if some teachers are unhappy about it. (Their complaints are mainly about the end-of-the-school-year timing of the announcement, leaving limited time to develop new lesson plans and perhaps a little miffed about having to spend a bit of their summer re-learning cursive themselves.) But education experts say the move is a smart one, even if it ruffles a few feathers.
“For note taking, for being literate, for engaging with the demands of school and civil society, your hands matter and you need to be able to write,” said University of Calgary professor emeritus Hetty Roessingh. “The computer will not take that over.” Kieran Delamont
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