A Charged Issue
By most objective standards, Elon Musk is a genius.
But when news of a leaked email spread, in which he demands that all Tesla employees return to a physical office for a minimum of 40 hours a week or risk being fired, I thought to myself: ‘Poor move – you’ve just created a talent acquisition and retention problem.’
Because here’s the thing: the world of work has changed.
Employees want flexibility
Countless surveys point to employees wanting a high level of flexibility for a wide variety of reasons, including the ability to maintain a better work-life balance.
In a 2020 BCG report titled “What 12,000 Employees Have to Say About the Future of Remote work,” 60% of respondents indicated they wanted some flexibility in where and/or when they work in the future.
And a Pulse of the American Worker Survey found that 87% of people want to work from home at least 1 day of the week. 68% of American workers say the ability to work remotely and on-site is the perfect work model.
Crucially, a study conducted by PR Newswire shows that 80% of U.S. workers would turn down a job that didn’t offer flexible or remote work.
In other words, by offering little to no workplace flexibility, you shrink your available talent pool.
The list of these kinds of studies goes on.
But what about collaboration?
So, Elon must be wrong on this, right?
Well, not quite.
Because here’s the flipside: Remote work, by its very nature, means fewer connections between team members across the organization – and this impacts innovation.
A 2021 Microsoft study titled: “The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers,” looked at the data from more than 60,000 of its employees over a six-month period starting just before the pandemic. Its conclusion: while short-term productivity may go up with remote work, long-term productivity will likely go down.
The study highlighted that remote work causes organizational silos, which in turn means that employees do not have access to potentially important information within other areas of the company, thereby reducing innovation potential.
Flexibility as industry-dependent
The study also points out that some types of industries and associated roles are simply more suited to remote work than others. It stands to reason that the nature of the auto manufacturing industry is such, that on-site work is needed in a wide variety of functions. This is also something that Musk points out in his email, saying that 40 hours per week in an office, “is less than we ask of factory workers.”
In citing the factory workers, he is expressing that he wants the same conditions to apply for both the “blue” and “white” collar workers.
Time to re-think
Nevertheless, Musk’s view on remote work seems dated – and ultimately, not all jobs are created equal. With Musk tweeting “Pretend to work from somewhere else,” it seems that trusting employees to be working productively from home is the wider issue at play.
Musk should re-think his stance. Even allowing just one day a week working from home is a big help for many employees. And being dogmatic on this issue will likely lead to frustration and departures within the ranks, not to mention a drop in the availability of top talent wanting to join.
What’s more, a company with Tesla’s vast resources and track record for innovation could view remote and hybrid work as an opportunity to lead the way in accelerating and developing the use of digital collaboration technology.
Ultimately, all companies – including Tesla – need to decide what working model works best for them. Companies are only as good as their people. And neglecting (potential) employees’ needs and wants is a sure-fire way to run into trouble.
The win-win: How we do it at Speexx
At Speexx, we concluded that the benefits of remote and hybrid work far outweigh a mandated five-day office work week. As a company that sells a language training platform, we have an innate sense for the power of communication. As such, in reviewing our remote/hybrid policies, we concluded that we wanted to promote a culture of collaboration within the offices and requested that employees who are affiliated to an office (as opposed to our full-time remote workers) come in for a minimum of two-days a week.
But this was not done in isolation. We spoke to employees to understand their views and needs, we introduced flex-desks, added online collaboration tools to our tech stack, spent time developing online/offline meeting etiquette standards etc. to make hybrid work as seamless as possible.
The feedback from employees so far has been positive. Two days a week provides a good amount of flexibility. And, as people have returned to the offices, the uplift in energy, collaboration, and human connections has been palpable.
And by most objective standards, that’s a win-win.
