No, that's putting the cart before the horse. We've both dragged ourselves into offices every day where we barely speak to people. Proximity does not automatically mean engagement these days because there are no rituals for bringing people together. The opposite is true, everyone's too busy to talk, or in front of their screens with headphones on studiously ignoring everyone around them.
We need to design around human needs and to create space, time and opportunity for interactions to occur, for conversations to be struck up. In the Nick Bloom piece I refer to, the first part of the chat is Nick explaining how remote teams that bring people together on a regular basis (one day a month) see a productivity gain and reduced quit rate. So the connection is important but you have to design for it, not just plonk people in an office and hope for the best.
I wasn't necessarily meaning 100% RTO, but enough to enable productive human interractions. Also you say we've "both" dragged ourselves in - are you talking about yourself and somebody else or are you assuming I have done that (which I haven't). I watched the Nick Bloom clip - I wonder if his study will compare productivity and "fun" levels of employees across hybrid/fully remote and full RTO organisations. For what it's worth, organisations like JPM and Goldmans have been operating largely hybrid models for donkeys years, albeit not necessarily embedded in employee contracts, so I don't buy it that they are any different in reality to those that profess to be more flexible it's just presented differently and with a degree of optics to please certain political and investor audiences.
Apologies for my presumption, I mistook you for an ex colleague with the same name.
The main point is that proximity doesn’t confer connection. Maybe it did in the past but not in today’s work environment. You can’t leave it to happenstance, you have to design it in. RTO on its own doesn’t do that.
What Bloom’s research says to me is that you don’t need that much in person time at all if it is intentional.
I agree that Goldmans and JPM have a more nuanced approach than the one painted in primary colours that they present to the market. I also think they are atypical of most organisations in many ways, not least the market environment they operate in. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from them for organisations in other spheres and cultures.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, conversation helps to clarify and I appreciate the dialogue.
A long time ago now, when I was an RAF Officer, we’d be summoned for a ‘meeting without biscuits” if we’re about to be chastised. Very British. But I think there might be another, emerging angle. When the power of the organisation becomes more technically systemic than politically manipulative, managers start to lose their power to dispassionate intelligence. We get algorithms who cannot sneer versus managers who do. At the same time, clients will start to find, and appreciate, the provision of personal attention. As the dust settles, which will be a while, corporate brands will start to become less powerful than portable personal relationships. This will not end the way those touting the technology without taking the timer to understand it think it will.
Well, they might understand the technology but they sure as hell don't understand people. Like you, I think this will end rather differently to the future being sold to us - as the last point about recruitment reverting to face-to-face interviews suggests.
The framing I’d push back on slightly is “taken away.” The coffee was never a gesture of goodwill. It was a retention calculation that made sense until it didn’t. When the numbers changed, the coffee went. That’s not a war on fun. That’s the system doing exactly what it was always built to do.
The harder question isn’t why the perks disappeared. It’s why so many people were surprised when they did. The finance guy isn’t grieving the golf days. He’s grieving the assumption that the organisation was ever oriented toward his enjoyment in the first place. It wasn’t. And once you see that clearly, the real problem shifts: it’s not that work has become joyless, it’s that most people are still waiting for the organisation to fix something it was never trying to build.
I think you are ignoring the way the social contract has been skewed away from the employee and in favour of the employer over the past few decades, all whilst the employers have been telling a different story about 'people being our biggest asset' and generally obfuscating their real intent.
So I'm not denying your analysis (employers clearly don't value employees and have stopped pretending so over the past year) but the perception of employees has been manipulated to believe differently.
So Dell were 'looking after their people' during the pandemic, a pretence of empathy but one that employees bought. So the coffee was seen as gesture of good will, of caring, of valuing the people. Taking it away has exposed Dell for the rapacious, exploitative organisation it is (and I'm not singling it out, that's the moral and operational framework that holds today).
I also disagree with your second point. Organisations used to be (and some still are) oriented to making work enjoyable and having happy employees. They used to be more paternal, particularly in the UK, and saw it as part of their responsibilties. That's all been blown away since the Friedman doctrine got picked up Wall Street as cover for moving to what have today, capitalism 'red in tooth and claw', as it is sometimes described. A system that works for the richest and subjects the rest of us to tedium and exploitation.
So do you think return to office policies are the start point for getting people to talk to each other again?
No, that's putting the cart before the horse. We've both dragged ourselves into offices every day where we barely speak to people. Proximity does not automatically mean engagement these days because there are no rituals for bringing people together. The opposite is true, everyone's too busy to talk, or in front of their screens with headphones on studiously ignoring everyone around them.
We need to design around human needs and to create space, time and opportunity for interactions to occur, for conversations to be struck up. In the Nick Bloom piece I refer to, the first part of the chat is Nick explaining how remote teams that bring people together on a regular basis (one day a month) see a productivity gain and reduced quit rate. So the connection is important but you have to design for it, not just plonk people in an office and hope for the best.
I wasn't necessarily meaning 100% RTO, but enough to enable productive human interractions. Also you say we've "both" dragged ourselves in - are you talking about yourself and somebody else or are you assuming I have done that (which I haven't). I watched the Nick Bloom clip - I wonder if his study will compare productivity and "fun" levels of employees across hybrid/fully remote and full RTO organisations. For what it's worth, organisations like JPM and Goldmans have been operating largely hybrid models for donkeys years, albeit not necessarily embedded in employee contracts, so I don't buy it that they are any different in reality to those that profess to be more flexible it's just presented differently and with a degree of optics to please certain political and investor audiences.
Apologies for my presumption, I mistook you for an ex colleague with the same name.
The main point is that proximity doesn’t confer connection. Maybe it did in the past but not in today’s work environment. You can’t leave it to happenstance, you have to design it in. RTO on its own doesn’t do that.
What Bloom’s research says to me is that you don’t need that much in person time at all if it is intentional.
I agree that Goldmans and JPM have a more nuanced approach than the one painted in primary colours that they present to the market. I also think they are atypical of most organisations in many ways, not least the market environment they operate in. I don’t think there’s much to be learnt from them for organisations in other spheres and cultures.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, conversation helps to clarify and I appreciate the dialogue.
A long time ago now, when I was an RAF Officer, we’d be summoned for a ‘meeting without biscuits” if we’re about to be chastised. Very British. But I think there might be another, emerging angle. When the power of the organisation becomes more technically systemic than politically manipulative, managers start to lose their power to dispassionate intelligence. We get algorithms who cannot sneer versus managers who do. At the same time, clients will start to find, and appreciate, the provision of personal attention. As the dust settles, which will be a while, corporate brands will start to become less powerful than portable personal relationships. This will not end the way those touting the technology without taking the timer to understand it think it will.
Well, they might understand the technology but they sure as hell don't understand people. Like you, I think this will end rather differently to the future being sold to us - as the last point about recruitment reverting to face-to-face interviews suggests.
The article you cited at the top of your post is from the Wall Street Journal not the New York Times.
Thanks, Stowe. I’ve corrected it.
The framing I’d push back on slightly is “taken away.” The coffee was never a gesture of goodwill. It was a retention calculation that made sense until it didn’t. When the numbers changed, the coffee went. That’s not a war on fun. That’s the system doing exactly what it was always built to do.
The harder question isn’t why the perks disappeared. It’s why so many people were surprised when they did. The finance guy isn’t grieving the golf days. He’s grieving the assumption that the organisation was ever oriented toward his enjoyment in the first place. It wasn’t. And once you see that clearly, the real problem shifts: it’s not that work has become joyless, it’s that most people are still waiting for the organisation to fix something it was never trying to build.
I think you are ignoring the way the social contract has been skewed away from the employee and in favour of the employer over the past few decades, all whilst the employers have been telling a different story about 'people being our biggest asset' and generally obfuscating their real intent.
So I'm not denying your analysis (employers clearly don't value employees and have stopped pretending so over the past year) but the perception of employees has been manipulated to believe differently.
So Dell were 'looking after their people' during the pandemic, a pretence of empathy but one that employees bought. So the coffee was seen as gesture of good will, of caring, of valuing the people. Taking it away has exposed Dell for the rapacious, exploitative organisation it is (and I'm not singling it out, that's the moral and operational framework that holds today).
I also disagree with your second point. Organisations used to be (and some still are) oriented to making work enjoyable and having happy employees. They used to be more paternal, particularly in the UK, and saw it as part of their responsibilties. That's all been blown away since the Friedman doctrine got picked up Wall Street as cover for moving to what have today, capitalism 'red in tooth and claw', as it is sometimes described. A system that works for the richest and subjects the rest of us to tedium and exploitation.