新湖畔网 （随信APP) | 在疫情后的职场，如何平衡自主权与办公室规定

由DALL-E，OpenAI生成的图像

Kamales是Digital Journal洞见论坛的思想领袖（成为会员）。她将在2024年10月24日在多伦多举行的网格会议上探讨这个主题以及更多内容。

九月底，亚马逊加入了众多其他企业巨头，在积极推动员工全职回到实体工作场所。

在2023年底，超过90%的公司计划实施返工政策。然而，这些计划被证明是徒劳的，因为许多公司仍在努力吸引员工全职回到实体工作场所。

因此，公司现在采取更严厉的措施，包括取消远程工作政策，将员工的实体出勤情况纳入绩效评估中，跟踪实际出席情况，以及发出对不服从的最后通牒。

传统的工作模式——每周40个小时，五天实体工作——可以追溯到上世纪20年代，最初由福特汽车公司建立。

尽管技能需求、工作地点和技术增强等方面发生了快速变化（对于感兴趣的人，我在我的书《数字商业转型的人本侧面》中谈到了这一点），这种模式奇迹般地延续到现代时代。

COVID-19大流行和随后的封锁引发了工作模式的全球革命性转变，迫使公司采纳远程工作模式以实现业务连续性。

令人意外的是，大流行还在打破长期以来关于公司运营方式及有效工作模式的信念。这是一个重大启示，全球劳动力集体接受了远程工作，以及引发了后大流行时代的大规模辞职潮等其他趋势。

为了吸引和留住人才，公司接受了远程和混合模式，甚至将这些选项纳入工作政策和聘用协议中。随着公司接受了后大流行商业环境的现实，员工相信混合和远程工作政策会长期存在，甚至经常远离实体工作场所。

然而，公司现在在收回行动，通过强硬的立场要求员工全职回到办公室。

员工现在面临更长的通勤时间或不得不匆忙搬迁以满足在场要求。

领导团队也支持这些政策，认为面对面的互动在促进创造力、增强协作以及加强企业文化方面比远程互动更有效。

最近的人工智能（AI）热潮为全球劳动力趋势增添了另一层复杂性。

根据高盛公司的一份报告，到2030年，AI可能取代相当于3亿全职工作岗位，影响美国和欧洲约四分之一的工作任务。这份报告强调了AI的转变潜力以及组织机构主动应对其对劳动力的影响的必要性。受AI自动化影响较大的重复性和任务密集型角色可能易受影响，可能导致这些角色的员工被替换。

例如，戴尔科技公司于8月宣布在过去15个月中第二轮裁员，裁员10%的员工，约1.25万名员工。这些裁员与公司的战略一致，旨在简化运营并优先考虑AI和现代IT解决方案以推动未来增长。

公司可能考虑用AI和自动化替代员工的现实前景令人忧虑，这形成了关于是否遵守返工政策的考虑。

尽管包括摩根大通、谷歌、戴尔、波音和高盛等许多大公司采取了强硬的“棒”方法，但一些公司选择探索“胡萝卜”方法来吸引员工回到实体办公场所。

例如，一些公司正在探索各种办公室福利和便利设施，如免费餐食、交通补贴、团队建设基金以及专门的团队为分散的员工找到有趣的联系方式。

作为数字业务转型的专家，我经常与有远见的公司合作，重新设计和实施脑健康的工作场所，让人、技术和物理环境融为一体，激发和让员工愉悦。

脑健康设计理解人类的认知能力对环境的反应，并着重于基于任务类型或工作方式创建一系列空间，以提高工作中持续幸福感的条件。

脑健康的工作环境旨在满足各种需求和目的，包括深度关注、探索和构思、协作和共创、休息和反思以及社交联系。

能够创造出能够在一天中平衡这些目的和任务的工作空间，实际上是提高福祉感、归属感、参与度和生产力产出最有效的方法。

为了实施脑健康工作空间，公司必须了解员工需要完成的工作，并设计在物理环境中对齐并促成这些任务的空间，以及允许员工在一天中实现平衡过渡的工作时间表——从专注到休息和反思再到协作和共创。

根据致力于推进脑健康科学的非营利研究机构BrainHealth中心的一项研究，根据任务类型或工作方式创建一系列空间，可以释放创新力，并增加协作行为和加强对团队的感知联系。

公司现在正在寻求新的技术解决方案，以深入了解员工的需求和愿望。

例如，诸如英国公司Myndplay开发的MyndBand EEG Brainwave头戴设备等无创脑电图（EEG）技术，正越来越多地应用于探索和理解重新设计工作场所以促进协作和参与的真正影响。

为了确保工作空间的认购和共同所有权，公司必须在这些新举措开始时以透明和合作的方式与员工合作。

成功吸引员工回到实体工作场所的关键将取决于创造归属感和共享目标。没有这些，公司只会解决问题的表面，而非根本原因。

通过理解员工的真正动机，超越工资和福利，公司将能够实施可行的解决方案，轻松吸引人们回到实体办公室。

然而，值得认识到，全职实体工作模式的时代可能已经结束，提供平衡的混合解决方案将是许多行业成功的路径。

这也意味着赋予员工选择在何处和如何工作的自主权，以及控制其工作环境的权利。

Image generated by DALL-E, OpenAI

Kamales is a thought leader in Digital Journal’s Insight Forum (become a member). She will explore this subject and more at the mesh conference, taking place October 24, 2024 in Toronto.

At the end of September, Amazon joined a myriad of other corporate giants in aggressively pushing for employees to return to the physical workplace full-time.

More than 90% of companies surveyed at the end of 2023 had plans to implement return-to-office policies. However, these plans have proven futile, as many companies are still struggling to entice employees back to full-time in-person presence.

As a result, companies are now resorting to harsher measures, including reversing remote work policies, factoring employees’ in-office attendance into their performance reviews, tracking in-person attendance, as well as issuing ultimatums for non-compliance.

The traditional working model – 40-hour weeks with five on-site working days — dates back to the 1920s, initially established by Ford Motor Company.

The model has miraculously sustained into modern times, although developments in skill sets, physical locations of work and enhancements of technology have rapidly shifted (for those who are interested, I talk about this in my book, The Human Side of Digital Business Transformation).

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns triggered a revolutionary global shift in working models, forcing companies to embrace remote working models to enable business continuity.

Unexpectedly, the pandemic also played a role in disproving long-standing beliefs of how companies should operate and what constitutes effective working models.

This was a major revelation as the global workforce collectively embraced remote work, along with other trends that triggered the Great Resignation in the post-pandemic era.

In a bid to attract and retain talent, companies accepted remote and hybrid models, even incorporating these options into working policies and hiring agreements. As companies embraced the realities of the post-pandemic business landscape, employees believed that hybrid and remote work policies were here to stay, often even moving further away from the physical workplaces.

However, companies are now backtracking, and taking a hard stance on return-to-office mandates by calling employees back to the office full time.

Employees are now grappling with longer commutes or moving at short notice to meet on-site requirements.

Leadership teams are also standing behind these policies, arguing that in-person interactions are more effective in fostering creativity, enhancing collaboration, and strengthening corporate culture in ways remote interactions are not able to replicate.

The recent artificial intelligence (AI) boom has added another layer of complexity to the global workforce trends.

According to a report by Goldman Sachs, AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs by 2030, affecting about a quarter of work tasks in the U.S. and Europe.

This report highlights the transformative potential of AI and the need for organizations to proactively address the implications for their workforce. Redundant and task-intensive roles will be particularly vulnerable to AI-based automation, potentially displacing workers in these roles.

For example, in August, Dell Technologies announced a second round of layoffs in the past 15 months and fired 10% of its workforce, approximately 12,500 employees. The layoffs align with the company’s strategy to streamline operations and prioritize focus on AI and modern IT solutions to drive future growth.

The very real prospect that companies may consider replacing employees with AI and automation looms over considerations of whether to comply with back to office policies.

While many large corporations, including JP Morgan Chase, Google, Dell, Boeing, and Goldman Sachs, are taking a hard stance with the “stick” approach, some companies have opted to explore the “carrot”’” approach to entice employees back to the physical workplace.

For example, some companies are exploring a variety of in-office perks and amenities, such free meals, subsidized transportation, team bonding funds, and dedicated teams to find fun ways to connect the dispersed workforce.

As an expert in digital business transformation, I often work with forward-thinking companies in redesigning and implementing brain-healthy workplaces where people, technology, and the physical environment converge to motivate and delight employees.

Brain-healthy designs understand that human cognitive capabilities respond to their environment, and focus on creating a range of spaces based on the task type or working modality to enhance conditions for sustained well-being at work.

Brain-healthy working environments are designed to align with various needs and purposes, including deep focus, exploration and ideation, collaboration and co-creation, rest and reflection, and social connection.

Being able to create working spaces that afford employees a balance of these purposes and tasks throughout the day has proven most effective in increasing wellness, sense of belonging, engagement and productive output.

In order to implement brain-healthy workspaces, companies must understand the work that employees need to accomplish, and design spaces in the physical environment that align and enable these tasks, along with working schedules that allow for a balanced transition throughout the day — from focus, to rest and reflection, to collaboration and co-creation.

In a study by the Center for BrainHealth, a non-profit research institute dedicated to advancing the science of brain health, creating a range of spaces based on task type or working modality unlocks innovation, as well as increases collaborative behaviors and perceived connections to one’s team.

Companies are now looking to new technology solutions to deepen their understanding of employees’ needs and desires.

For example, non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) technologies, such as the MyndBand EEG Brainwave headset developed by UK-based company Myndplay, are increasingly being applied to explore and understand the true impact of redesigning the workplace for collaboration and engagement.

To ensure buy-in and shared ownership of the workspaces, companies must engage with employees in a transparent and collaborative way at the very beginning of these initiatives.

The key to success in enticing employees back to the physical workplace will depend on creating a sense of belonging and shared purpose. Without these, companies will only be addressing the symptoms, not the root cause of the problems.

By understanding what really motivates employees, beyond paychecks and perks, companies will be able to implement workable solutions that easily entice people back to the physical office.

However, it is worth recognizing that the era of full-time on-site working model may have come to an end, and a hybrid solution that offers a balance would be the path to success for many industries.

This also means equipping employees with the autonomy to choose where and how they work, as well as the authority to have control over their working environments.