Flexible future?
Companies blend pre- and postCOVID mindset for at-work policies
Ithink what I’m looking for is a compromise.” That’s Michael Johnson’s attitude toward going back to the workplace when his employer, a Chicago-based law firm, expects people to return to work next month. “They want five days a week in the office, beginning on July 1,” says Johnson, a quality control technician who didn’t want his real name used. “I’ve been working from home since March 2020 and frankly, there are some real benefits, both for me and the firm, and I find it a little callous to think we need to drop what we’ve been doing for the past 14 months and just go back to how things were.”
Johnson says his life and work have benefitted from having no commute, no daycare costs for his 4-year-old twins and more. “It’s a quality of life thing for me,” he says. “I like working with my colleagues but I’m not ready to give everything else up.”
When Johnson questioned his manager about the policy, he says the answers given barely made sense. “There was no logic involved,” he says. “It was more like “well, it’s because we say so.’”
As employees return to the workplace, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, made news earlier this month when he offered “Googles,” as he calls them, open-ended options for this year and beyond. And if the tech behemoth’s past is precedent, other companies are likely to follow their policies.
In a tweet announcing the company’s revised strategy toward its workplace policies, Pichai wrote that the company would be taking a hybrid approach to work in the future. “The future of work at Google is flexibility. The majority of our employees still want to be on campus some of the time yet many would also enjoy the flexibility of working from home a couple days a week, spending time in another city for part of the year, or even moving there permanently. Google’s future workplace will have room for all of these possibilities,” Pichai tweeted.
Reality check
On its surface, Google’s PR campaign appears to tout a policy that’s more “do-whatever-you-want” than what’s actually offered. In fact, if employees take full advantage of the policy,
Pichai still expects 60 percent of the Google workforce to come together in the office a few days a week with an additional 20 percent working from new offices and the final 20 percent working from home. Still, it’s a policy that may be more forward-thinking than initially assumed. In his early-May email to employees announcing the change, Pichai explained some of the new options:
• More global locations: Employees can apply for a transfer to another Google location, depending on their group’s infrastructure and business goals.
• More remote-work options: Employees can apply for remote work within their product area or function. Again, granting requests will depend on an individual’s team and that team’s business.
• Temporary work-from-anywhere possibilities: With their manager’s approval, employees will be able to temporarily work from a location other than their main office for up to four weeks per year.
• A hybrid workweek: Employees may work from home two days a week but will be expected to come into the office to collaborate with others on the remaining three days, again at the discretion of their manager.
“For more than 20 years, our employees have been coming to the office to solve interesting problems — in a cafe, around a whiteboard or during a pickup game of beach volleyball or cricket,” Pichai wrote. “Our campuses have been at the heart of our Google community and the majority of our employees still want to be on campus some of the time. Yet many of us would also enjoy the flexibility of working from home a couple days of week, spending time in another city for part of the year, or even
moving there permanently. Google’s future workplace will have room for all of these possibilities.”
Not for everyone
Ashley Torras, a workplace consultant based in New York, says Google’s approach may work well for companies that have a massive footprint but for smaller firms, the idea of working anywhere in the world may be a little bit of a pipe dream. “Not only do smaller firms have fewer offices and less options, they are much more dependent on the infrastructure of other systems,” Torras says. “Your boss may be tolerant of your Wi-Fi being super slow or your tech issues for now but when things are back to full speed — or close to it — are you really going to be able to get away with saying ‘I can’t turn my camera on’ when the rest of your team is clearly visible, and simply blame your Wi-Fi? That’s going to get old fast.”
Torras says some of the company’s plans, including an emphasis on “focus time,” which will create a block of time during the day to limit internal meetings so employees can work uninterrupted on projects, sounds like wishful thinking. “If it works, great. But if your boss wants to pull you in for a meeting because your biggest client wants some answers, are you going to be able to ignore that request? It’s highly doubtful,” Torras says.
Johnson says he’d be content with working from home two or three days a week, especially if he can do so on alternate days than his wife. “It’s just nice to have that flexibility,” he says. “And I’m open to coming into the office five days a week if I have to, temporarily, if there’s a reason I need to be there but I have to tell you, ‘just because’ isn’t enough of a reason.”