“The least interesting part about the future of work will be where it happens”
When planning for a future we know nothing about, our best return-to-office, hybrid, and work-from-home plans are set up to fail. The solution isn’t to worry about where we should be working, but to build a better teamwork model that can adapt to whatever “where” we choose to be.
Early in the pandemic, I was a fan of making full-time remote work a permanent solution. Last month, however, having shifted onto team hybrid, I took my first business trips since March 2020 to see some of my favorite clients. Together, we worked on return-to-office plans and began rebuilding morale, trust, and collaboration skills in a world that none of us understood yet. I was surprised, but not shocked, by how much easier it was for my clients to rebuild in person—and how much more I got done too.
I’m now unapologetically in the “I have no idea what the future of work is going to look like and neither does anyone else” camp. That said, how do we stay afloat in the I-don’t-know-zone long enough to design a future of work that best serves our teams? Prepare for a future you can’t plan for in 3 steps:
Let people leave
Don’t prioritize retention in your back-to-work strategy. Unpopular opinion, I know. You’re bringing back a burnt out and traumatized workforce. 52% of respondents to a January 2021 Indeed survey reported being burnt out, up from 43% in January 2020. 31% of respondents to a CDC study in late June 2020 reported symptoms of anxiety or depression—that’s nearly double what they would have been pre-pandemic with no signs of improvement over the past 12 months.
You’re going to lose people and money in this transition, no matter what return-to-work looks like. 1 in 4 employees is planning on quitting once the pandemic recedes—according to a survey conducted by Prudential in March 2021. De-prioritize retention as both a goal and a KPI for the next 6 months to a year. Instead, focus on giving your people the tools and permission to invent the future of work as they go.
Uncover your future of work by setting up tiny experiments
Many offices are set on a hybrid working style—a big, permanent, expensive decision based on data that has been asking the wrong questions. Before you sign that five-year lease for an office that only fits 30% of your employees, pause. Instead of planning for the entire future of your business, focus on what you need for the next 3 months to feel safe, confident, and in control.
Run tiny experiments that let you test different ideas of what you think your version of return-to-work is going to look like. The goal, for now, is to see how individuals and teams respond to different return-to-work scenarios in real time—and use that data to mold the future. I’ve decided to move my team to a 3-day work week this summer. Have I totally lost it? We’ll see!
Don’t ask your people where they want to work. Ask them how they want to work
I reached the 3-day week conclusion not by asking my team where we should be working post-pandemic. Instead, I asked, “How can we work differently in a way that supports our employees, our customers, and our stakeholders?”
First, since my team is entirely remote, I had to accept that I couldn’t run our business the same way that I would if we were meeting face-to-face. I realized that in order for my team to function at their best, we’d have to get selective about what projects we work on and when.
I questioned the assumption that the length of a work week was set in stone. At first I considered a 4-day work week. But as soon as I went that far, I thought, “Why stop now?” As a consultant who trains people on how to recover from burnout, I didn’t believe there was any other way to recharge my team without extra days off.
Similarly, I asked my team what they needed to create consistency and synchronicity in work schedules, something remote work had taken away from us. It became clear that three focused days of collaborative work per week may work better than asking my team to try and mold their entire week around “priorities” we created for the sole purpose of filling 5 days with priorities. I’ve accepted the fact that there will be aspects of this model that won’t work. But I wanted to do something drastically different than anything I’ve experienced—not just another safe iteration of a standard FAANG perk.
The least interesting part about the future of work will be where it happens. Let’s stop reducing our conversations to debates about what the future of work should look like. Instead, as the world and possibilities continue to shift, ask braver questions to cultivate a future that works better for all of us.
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P.S. This article was written and edited remotely by three teammates—in three time zones using—Google Docs, Slack, and Zoom.
KD Hurlbutt
santa fe, nm, USA
After experiencing her own case of burnout, KD, a Stanford engineer, left her role as a brand director and sustainability manager for a Fortune 500 company to become a workplace burnout consultant, coach, and TEDx speaker. Committed to weaving accessible science, storytelling, and tools to shift the way people experience workplace burnout, KD founded Bask + Being. Offering workshops and coaching for teams and leaders, Bask + Being works with businesses to pinpoint and relieve the stressors that contribute to problems like employee burnout, poor communication, retention issues, and decreased morale. Using interactive techniques—taken from modalities like positive psychology and breathwork—teams and leaders will leave with a toolkit to continue improving their mental health, and the state of their business, for years to come.