Four years since the pandemic sent people home to work, companies have been intensifying their desire for a return to the office. Yet for many workers, flexible work arrangements are a must-have.
Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has a new book co-written with Ranya Nehmeh, a workplace strategist. “In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work” lays out the business case for employers pushing for workers to get back to the office.
Here are edited excerpts from my recent conversation with Cappelli:
Kerry Hannon: Why has the case for in-office work never been stronger?
Peter Cappelli: We’ve gone through this period where there’s been big debates about remote work and a lot of companies have persisted in various kinds of remote, but mainly hybrid. At the moment, the recognition is growing across employers that it hasn’t worked so well.
When business returned and things became a little more normal, it became easier to start to see some of the drawbacks. It wasn’t enough just to keep the wheels going.
We’re at this inflection point now where companies really have to decide if they ever want to get people back. The longer you wait, the harder it is to ever get people to come back without a big fight.
Right now, people might be saying, ‘I will quit if I have to go back to the office,’ but it turns out they don’t mean it. The reason, of course, is it’s one thing to say that you will quit; it’s another to actually walk away from a paycheck.
What’s wrong with a hybrid work arrangement?
People just don’t come in. That’s maybe the single biggest factor. There is a growing awareness that people are really never there on their anchor days. If you want that for your company, you have to manage that attendance.
That’s on the shoulders of the managers themselves. It’s not that we don’t think you could have hybrid work, but if you’re going to do it, it requires a lot of effort on the part of management.
Lots of employers trumpeted the success of remote work not that long ago. What changed?
One thing that changed is the labor market softened. It’s not the case that people are job hopping right now because there just aren’t very many jobs offered. The number of jobs that are being offered with some kind of remote possibility is declining.
At the CEO level, immediately after the pandemic they were glad things were still running at all. Expectations were really low. What’s changed is the CEOs are now thinking we’re losing something, and the employee resistance to return to the office has weakened. That’s why we’re seeing the push right now.
Until recently, it was resistance from employees and a little kicking the can down the road. Employers didn’t want to take on their employees. The labor market was tight. In reality, remote work was a short-term solution during the pandemic that ended up causing a longer-term problem.
What’s the compelling advantage of in-person work?
There’s value in human interaction, what we learn from each other, the cooperation that we can get in solving problems, and the motivation and commitment that comes from being around other people.
Our view is not that you have to be in the office all the time — but social connections matter a lot. When you first began your career, imagine what it would’ve been like if no one was in the office. You’d be completely lost.
If you think about how we learn about office work, we learn by watching. You learn what the values of the organization are. You learn it from the conversations in the office. You can see how the boss reacts to different requests and different problems.
As you advance, you’ve got your ear to the ground, and you’ve got the opportunity to raise your hand and pitch in and have some influence. You can catch the boss between meetings and pass along a little tidbit of information, and you develop relationships with people where you can solve problems.
If you’re in the office and you need help from somebody, and it’s urgent, you just go around the corner and stick your head in their door and ask them a quick question.
Those are the kind of things that we miss when we move to remote — in addition to the general fact that people are energized by working with people.
With remote work, people also spend more time in meetings that are worthless. A lot of those things could be fixed, but the problem is they’re not.
What’s one thing that working in an office can give us that most people don’t think about?
You will have friends. You build your social network. Remote workers having shrinking social networks, and that contributes to the loneliness epidemic and the lack of social connections.
Is remote work as big as it appears to be in terms of the number of people who work that way?
No. In Europe, for example, where employees have always had more power, I figured remote work would stay. It hasn’t. Most everybody’s gone back to the office. In Asia, most everybody has gone back to the office. In the US, the best data we’ve got from the government, which is now a little dated but nobody believes it’s gone up since then, is that more than 70% of US employers have no remote or hybrid workers of any kind.
“We’re at this inflection point now where companies really have to decide if they ever want to get people back,” Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said. (Photo courtesy of Peter Cappelli)
Now that sounds stunning. But remember, most employers are small. Remote work and hybrid work, in particular, is largely a big city, big company phenomenon. It isn’t everywhere, and it isn’t in all jobs. It’s only white-collar jobs.
The future of work is certainly not remote? Correct?
That’s right. Every once in a while somebody pops up a list of the employers that have fully remote work. It is almost always companies that begin as remote. By the way, the thing that struck me about those companies if you look at them, they’ve got a lot of rules about how to behave, and it’s quite different from the office. It requires a lot more management time and energy than we’ve given it.
What’s your parting thought for employers of how to approach the new world of work?
If you opt for remote or hybrid, good outcomes don’t happen by themselves. You can make it work, but it requires more time and effort for management, more rules, more practices, more leadership.
And for employees?
Be very practical. If you’re beginning your career, go to the office. Be careful about taking remote positions because I think it won’t be too long before CFOs start asking, ‘Why is Peter an employee at all? We don’t see him. Why not just make him a contractor?’ I imagine that will start happening pretty quickly.
