The Future Of Work From Home: The Data CEOs And Workers Need To Know

CEOs love data. It drives decisions about pricing, calls about strategy and pivots into new markets. But when it comes to remote work, the chatter in the C-Suite often sounds more like opinion than fact. And many of those execs want to get butts back into seats.

Last September, for instance, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, in an interview about reducing inflation, said “I think if we magically had more and more people coming back to the office, I think we would see rising productivity.” Disney CEO Bob Iger, in an email earlier this year calling employees back to the office four days a week, said “nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been unwavering in his distaste for fully remote work, saying in 2021 that “it does not work for younger people, it doesn’t work for those who want to hustle, it doesn’t work in terms spontaneous idea generation” and “it doesn’t work for culture.”

Are they right? The truth is it’s still hard to really know. Workplace norms are rapidly shifting. Collaborative software tools are constantly being updated and improved.

And while fully remote work might be a no-brainer in some jobs and for some employees, it may handicap the work of others. Productivity is notoriously tough to measure for white-collar workers. A lot of existing data hails from self-reported employee surveys or academic research that studies niche worker categories.

In that absence, says Brian Elliott, who previously led Slack’s Future Forum research consortium and now advises executive teams on flexible work arrangements, many CEOs still have “executive nostalgia” about a model that worked for them years ago. “There’s still this big CEO echo chamber aspect of it,” he says.

00:00 Intro
00:24 Is Work From Home Here To Stay?
01:07 How Does Work From Home Affect Productivity?
02:50 Business Leaders vs. Work From Home
03:44 Who Is Still Working From Home?
04:52 WFH And Company Culture
06:32 WFH and Mentorship

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgr...

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