August 2022 Volume 4

OPERATIONS & MANAGEMENT

Among employees who are currently working remotely or in a hybrid arrangement: • 75 percent say their expectations for working flexibly have increased. • Only 4 percent say they would prefer to go work on-site full time. Not surprisingly, other surveys show similar findings. If we dig a little deeper into changed employee attitudes, we find even more to which an employer should be attuned. In a June 2022 Gartner Article, there were some compelling findings as shown in the accompanying graphic. Finally, data from the June 2021 article previously indicates opportunities as well. The benefits of these newwork dynamics are equally evident in performance and other key drivers of success, such as innovation and risk-taking: • 62 percent of knowledge workers are high performers when afforded significant work flexibility versus 27 percent of those provided with little flexibility. • Employees are three times more likely to be high performers when given flexibility over where, when and how they work. • Among knowledge workers, high levels of enterprise contribution are most common among those who are fully remote. • Hybrid teams are most likely to show high levels of inclusion (fully on-site teams are least likely). And despite widely voiced concerns about “culture”and innovation, Gartner data shows that fully on-site teams are least likely to show high levels of engagement, trust or discretionary effort, are least comfortable taking risks and least likely to provide opportunities to innovate “outside of meetings”.

Employer concerns that employees need to come to the office to work with other employees and collaborate to achieve goals is unsupported by the data. From our experience, knowing how to manage remote workers and focus on deliverables versus “watching them work” is the bigger challenge. So many managers have had little, if any, formal management training. As a result they don’t have the skills to effectively manage a remote workforce. Time spent upgrading a manager’s skills will pay handsome dividends. In the March-April 2022 Harvard Business Review, there is an article by Roger Martin, The Real Secret to Retaining Talent. One bigmessage from this piece was that talented people don’t take kindly to being dismissed out of hand. They always have options that can be highly damaging to you. The author lists two other important lessons: never block your employee’s development, and never pass up a chance to praise them. These are the kind of skills our managers need to be really successful. They are not skills that you learn from a video, it requires practice, receiving feedback, followed by more practice. The shop/office dilemma is a challenge, but it should be addressed head on. For example, shop employees know that the equipment, materials, etc. are at the shop. Office workers only need a computer to be productive. Talking about it directly is the only way to avoid confusion and conflict. One of the big questions employers ask is how frequently should remote workers come to the workplace? My response is not how frequently should they come to the office, but what should they be doing when they come to the office? Office time should be for things they can’t do when working from home.These situations include, for example, For one-on-one’s with their manager, staff meetings, all employee meetings, team

building activities such as team lunches, and sessions in which two or more workers need to be involved in ideation or planning sessions. What other benefits can an employer gain by maintaining a flexible workforce? First, the pool of potential candidates can be greater considering how many people can’t commute to work and take care of kids or older parents. Second, there is a large population of disabled workers who already have their disability accommodated in their home. There are many former military personnel with good skills and work ethic who can join your work force. Third, there may be potential savings by leasing less space or leasing a portion of your office space, thereby producing income. The key take-away from all the current literature is flexibility.

Mark Ernst J.D., Principal Ernst Enterprises, LLC Phone: 714-329-2228 Email: mark@ernstenterprisesllc.com www.ernstenterprisesllc.com

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