By Roberta Sydney, a seasoned independent Board Member who has been a CEO, founder-entrepreneur, corporate executive and experienced Chair of Compensation and Nominating/Governance committees. As an entrepreneur, she founded a real estate firm in 1999 and developed and managed 9 Million square feet before a successful exit and earn out. During her tenure, she developed deep relationships and negotiated leases with prestigious clients such as Bank of America, Trader Joe’s, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, AT&T, and CVS. She has been a member of C200 since 2010.
Before COVID-19, when people discussed the future of work, the primary concern was about whether we were in danger of robots stealing our jobs. As workers now make their way back to the office from pandemic-forced lockdowns, we find ourselves at a massive transition point. If our only goal is to return to operations exactly as they were pre-COVID, we are missing a great opportunity.
Companies must rethink their workplaces and prioritize worker well-being to thrive long term. While telecommuting has been possible for many years, only 4% of the workforce worked remotely pre-pandemic—a positive for real estate developers and office landlords like me. That has all changed over the past 15 months.
Working remotely was once considered a perk, but the COVID-forced remote “experiment” created a new dynamic in workplace preferences—both in terms of when and where one worked—as organizations untethered their workforce to maintain health and safety. Companies that dabbled with time and location flexibility for their workforce pre-pandemic will now need to deliver meaningfully on these dimensions as table-stakes to attract and retain talent.
The remote work environment allows employees to work from anywhere.
"We're not going to back to what once was," according to Steve Hatfield, Global Future of Work Leader at Deloitte. "Most organizations have recognized that virtual and distributed work can happen…we will not go back to having everyone in the office in the same way."
As employees return to offices, the female presence in the physical workplace will likely be unbalanced, as a disproportionate number of women left the workforce during the pandemic. In the United States, we now have the lowest rate of women in the workplace in over 30 years—which is sidelining valuable human capital.
Although it’s too early to measure long-term impacts, the effects of the pandemic could be a threat to the strides working women have made over the years. I’ve heard this concern repeatedly from my peers in women’s leadership organizations such as C200 and Women Corporate Directors. Companies previously struggled to find qualified women to fill board seats and executive roles; the pandemic’s effects won’t make it easier, if workplace flexibility isn’t mainstream.
Flexibility of time and place is critical, especially for women who are often the family’s primary caregivers. Firms should consider adopting a flexible, personalized approach to help women pivot back to work (not necessarily to the “office”) to avoid derailing their path to leadership roles.
My personal career journey has been comprised of pivots: after my success as a Fortune 500 executive, I changed course and entered real estate to establish flexibility and advancement on my own terms. Serving now in executive and board leadership positions ranging from traditional organizations to young entrepreneurial companies, I recognize the importance of a diverse leadership team.
Flexibility is key in cultivating and developing the next generation of female leaders. Companies should determine how they can provide ‘freedom within a framework’ to retain and attract top talent, as a survey from Deloitte shows that 61% of millennials and 57% of Gen Z would prefer video conferencing instead of traveling for work. Forward-thinking employers are already reconfiguring the workday, creating both synchronous and asynchronous standards for work deliverables.
A partially remote or hybrid workforce will require leaders to think differently about creating cohesion, spreading culture, and inculcating values. It will also require innovation in conducting hybrid meetings and employee development without overlooking remote and less visible employees for in-meeting contributions, plum assignments, and promotion opportunities.
It has never been clearer that the workplace for knowledge workers is not a single designated physical environment, but rather it is any place where work gets done. Social engineering and technical engineering will allow simulating some of the creative energy of ‘being in the room’ - which is hard to replace with ‘being on the call’ says Pam Hamlin, President of the York Creative Collective. To be truly relevant, the physical office will need to become a hub of learning, mentoring, socialization, collaboration, and innovation, which will yield more impressive results than remote working alone.
New and different models are emerging to reduce or reconfigure the office space and time equation. Companies like Salesforce and Spotify will provide their employees with the Option to Choose remote, hybrid, or office-based work. Others like Fujitsu, Ford and Siemens will be Remote First, where employees will be primarily remote. Companies such as JP Morgan Chase and Google have announced that they will use a Rotational Model, with a flexible workweek where employees rotate days they are in the office.
Changes in the physical workplace will vary by company, but leadership also needs to focus on the worker’s perception of whether it's safe to return to the building. As a result, building safety will be a new key metric for real estate managers and tenants when they evaluate leasing opportunities. Landlords like me will need to adapt for contact-free building and elevator access. In addition, we’ll see measuring, monitoring, and ameliorating indoor air quality become standard.
However, companies who focus solely on safety-driven physical changes in the office without embracing the human element of flexibility are missing an opportunity to retain and attract the most diverse and talented workforce.
