Radically Human by Paul Daugherty & H. James Wilson

Author:Paul Daugherty & H. James Wilson [Paul Daugherty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2022-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

Productivity Anywhere

The year 2020 saw the biggest workforce and workplace transformation in living memory. To keep employees safe during the pandemic, companies allowed legions of their people to work from home. To keep the business functioning and employees productive, companies doubled down on technology solutions. Almost overnight, billions of people around the world changed their mode of working. As of 2019, only 5.4 percent of employees in the twenty-seven member countries of the EU usually worked from home—a share that had remained roughly constant for a decade. At the outbreak of the pandemic, the figure jumped to 40 percent.29 Research conducted by Stanford University in May 2020 found nearly twice as many people, in the United States alone, working from home than working on-site—accounting for more than two-thirds of economic activity.30

Initially, many companies regarded this massive shift as a short-term solution to a temporary problem. But employees soon came to like working at home. Consider Fujitsu.31 Just prior to the onset of the pandemic, 74 percent of the company’s workers indicated in a survey that they thought the office was the best place to work. By March, 80,000 of the company’s Japan-based workers were working from home; in May, only 15 percent of Fujitsu employees preferred the office.

Nearly one year after the Stanford study, 90 percent of office workers in midtown and lower Manhattan, the two largest central business districts in the United States, were continuing to work remotely.32 Another national survey of commercial landlords conducted at the same time by a real-estate technology platform found that only 18 percent of respondents envisioned a return to the traditional five-days-a-week, on-site model of work.33 Meanwhile, the appearance of the more contagious Delta variant of the Covid virus prolonged the necessity of remote work. Many companies in the tech, finance, and media sectors have indicated that they will continue to have employees work remotely some or all of the time, but so have companies like Novartis, Ford, and Siemens.34

While many workers enjoy the freedom of remote working, research shows that finding the optimal balance between what works well on site and what works well remotely is what people really want. They want the environment that’s best suited for them. For some, that means going back to the office; for some, it means going 100 percent remote; still others prefer a mix.

When people can work from anywhere, they can do their jobs in different or even brand-new ways that will outlast the pandemic. For instance, at the University of Liverpool, scientists worked with a robot chemist to continue their research during lockdowns.35 The robot found ways to speed up reactions inside solar cells and could run experiments autonomously, even when no one was present. The researchers won’t stop using these robots just because they can go back into the lab themselves. They’ll expand what they can do, like running experiments 24/7 or having robots handle toxic substances.

Businesses must accommodate rather than fight this new reality. They need to toss out convention and reimagine

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