Earlier this month, an internal email from Elon Musk to his employees at Tesla was leaked, announcing that remote work will no longer acceptable. This topic was posted by Harvard Business School’s Professor, Tsedal Neeley in her linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tsedal_in-a-leaked-email-from-elon-musk-sent-on-ugcPost-6937788796876779520-OGQ_?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web), and it sparked interesting opinions in her comment section. Some of the comments agreed to Musk’s decision with several considerations such as: equality between blue collar & white collar employee, direct interaction can support collaborative and innovative culture, and experiential learning from leaders to their employees.
Other than considerations mentioned above, there are several other reasons why leaders are hesitant to keep their employee working hybrid or remote. For example, they were afraid of deteriorating company’s culture, not able to supervise their team directly, and many more. Thus, resulted in many great companies decided to return to office full time.
In an article written in Fortune by Gleb Tripursky (https://fortune.com/2021/06/08/return-remote-work-hybrid-model-surveys-covid/), he mentioned that several bias that might be experienced by company leaders regarding their decision to return to office full time. There are some biases or mental blind spots as Tripusky said, that leaders need to look out for when making decisions to work full time.
First, is Anchoring Bias, where leaders feels like they should return to initial experience and/or information. To put it simply: back to how it used to be. This bias can cause leaders to avoid changes or new approach, and the worst case is, they can make decisions that’s irrelevant to employee current need. The second is Confirmation Bias, where leaders tend to look for information that’s in favor of their beliefs. This can lead to ignorance of any information or effort that’s not in their favor. Some of the leaders even avoiding surveys, or do not address hybrid-work challenges strategically, despite the possibility.
In the previous article (https://stevlandbridge.com/2022/04/27/navigating-hybrid-working/) we have mentioned about an article form HBR that explains main challenges in hybrid working and how to overcome them. It can provide a basic hybrid framework for leaders considering hybrid work. Another good article from August (https://www.aug.co/blog/address-4-core-challenges-hybrid-work) addressing four main challenges in Hybrid Work such as building trust and connection, making effective decisions, build system and practice according to staff needs, and how to work with agility. Each of the challenges comes with an initial step to overcome them. In addition, a survey result form Gallup (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/390632/future-hybrid-work-key-questions-answered-data.aspx) and McKinsey (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/hybrid-work-making-it-fit-with-your-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-strategy#:~:text=We%20defined%20hybrid%20as%20including,to%20no%20in%2Dperson%20interactions.) can help any leaders to consider for their decisions for working arrangement.
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To sum it up, company’s leaders concern as explains earlier in this article is still a valid concern regarding the operation continuity of the business. However more thoughts and effort need to be done in order for a company to stay relevant, especially to the Talent’s Market.
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