Why the return to work is a diversity issue

Slow­ly but sure­ly the UK econ­o­my is open­ing back up. Cin­e­mas have flung open their doors, restau­rants are wel­com­ing us back inside and we are no longer lim­it­ed to choos­ing five friends to meet (out­side at least).

Of course, this open­ing prompts ques­tions about work. For many, par­tic­u­lar­ly office-based work­ers, the past 15 months have meant a switch to work­ing from the kitchen table, the end of the bed or — for the lucky — a home office. 

Yet as thoughts turn to a return to the office of some kind, what should this return look like? And how can it be made to work for every­one?

These are ques­tions Bruce Dais­ley has been mulling over. The for­mer Twit­ter vice-pres­i­dent is now a lead­ing thinker on the future of work, hav­ing pub­lished two best-sell­ing books and run a chart-top­ping pod­cast — Eat Sleep Work Repeat — on mak­ing work bet­ter. 

He is con­cerned, how­ev­er, that not enough thought is being put into the diver­si­ty and inclu­sion aspect of the big return to the office. 

The diversity issue

The data sug­gests his con­cerns are not unfound­ed. A recent UK poll of 2,300 busi­ness lead­ers, man­agers and employ­ees by the Char­tered Man­age­ment Insti­tute found that 69% of women with chil­dren want to work from home at least one day a week after the pan­dem­ic. Among men with chil­dren, this fig­ure drops to 56%.

This pos­es a prob­lem if most of the peo­ple mak­ing the deci­sions about a return to work are men. And this is like­ly to be the case, giv­en that there were just 13 female CEOs in the FTSE 350 in 2020.

There is also data that shows male-dom­i­nat­ed com­pa­nies are more like­ly to insist on work­ers going back to the office. Data from Aus­tralia, which is ahead of the UK in terms of return­ing to nor­mal­i­ty, shows there is a cor­re­la­tion between the per­cent­age of women employed in a com­pa­ny and how flex­i­ble their work­ing poli­cies are.

For exam­ple, at con­sult­ing com­pa­ny EY, 46.3% of the work­force are female and it offers full flex­i­bil­i­ty. At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny UGL offers no remote work­ing and just 15.2% of its work­force are women. 

In the UK, the most vocal cham­pi­ons of return­ing to the office have been the likes of Gold­man Sachs, Bar­clays and JPMor­gan Chase & Co.

The busi­ness­es that do this well will have lit­tle rit­u­als, almost fam­i­ly quirks; they’ll have their own-work based ver­sion

“What you hear anec­do­tal­ly from peo­ple in bank­ing or engi­neer­ing — these big machis­mo-filled busi­ness­es — is that they’re all back to the office on 21 June [when the UK is sched­uled to move to the final stage of eas­ing coro­n­avirus restric­tions]” says Dais­ley. “This moment we are all look­ing for­ward to as a cel­e­bra­tion, they are say­ing that’s the day they are back at the office.”

“The data paints a very vivid pic­ture,” he adds. “It sug­gests this is a diver­si­ty and inclu­sion issue.”

Dais­ley recalls an old boss of his who would insist on hold­ing meet­ings at 7.30am when things were dif­fi­cult, assum­ing that because he could make the meet­ing oth­ers could too. 

“That is all about beat­ing your chest and demon­strat­ing you are the alpha. He’s say­ing, ‘I can be here at 7.30am’,” explains Dais­ley. “What you miss in that is the pan­de­mo­ni­um it cre­ates if some­one has shared child­care respon­si­bil­i­ties or a longer com­mute. It effec­tive­ly says, ‘not only are you hav­ing stress at work, you are hav­ing domes­tic stress as well.’ Hope­ful­ly we can push back a bit on those things.”

Re-examining the office

He believes the pan­dem­ic has start­ed a “pin­cer attack” on the office. On one side, there are work­ers who have found they can do their job effec­tive­ly from home and now baulk at the idea of spend­ing time and mon­ey get­ting into the office five days a week. 

On the oth­er side are busi­ness lead­ers sens­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cut costs. This was already hap­pen­ing, with research before the pan­dem­ic find­ing that 43% of busi­ness­es allowed staff to split their week between the office and home. 

Now many are re-exam­in­ing their office space and think­ing about how it can work bet­ter for them and staff. Dais­ley talks of a com­pa­ny he did some work with (he can’t name them) who want­ed to mod­ernise their cul­ture. It took lock­down and work­ing from home to realise it was the office build­ing hold­ing them back. 

That cul­ture ques­tion is one that has been asked repeat­ed­ly over the past few months — how to cre­ate a sense of belong­ing and shared val­ues when work­ers are not side by side, at desks, in an office every day. 

Dais­ley doesn’t think being an office all the time is nec­es­sary to cre­ate this cul­ture, though. He points to the lim­it­ed amount of time we spend with friends but the strong emo­tion­al con­nec­tion we have with them as a rea­son why busi­ness­es should be pri­ori­tis­ing qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty of time togeth­er. 

“We can have a vivid and emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with peo­ple we spend three hours with on a Sat­ur­day evening, so it’s about the strength of the con­nec­tion and the degree of authen­tic­i­ty, he says. 

When we look at the evi­dence, the one group who have missed being in the office every day is boss­es. If you allow all the boss­es in your organ­i­sa­tion to make the deci­sion you are unfor­tu­nate­ly miss­ing the fact that every­one else doesn’t agree

“If you look at the busi­ness­es that do this well, they will get peo­ple togeth­er to cre­ate moments of con­nec­tion, so that when peo­ple are sit­ting on their own in their house they can feel part of some­thing. Rather than get­ting peo­ple in an office silent­ly reply­ing to emails, they will cre­ate moments of con­nec­tion.”

He points to the work of Casper ter Kuile, who wrote a book — The Pow­er of Rit­u­al — that explores how reli­gions work through rit­u­al and get­ting peo­ple togeth­er and how that can be applied to oth­er areas of life. 

“The busi­ness­es that do this well will have lit­tle rit­u­als, almost fam­i­ly quirks; they’ll have their own-work based ver­sion,” he says.

The office return

For those busi­ness­es con­sid­er­ing now how the world will look as we reopen, Dais­ley has some advice. First, he says, there needs to be as wide a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of peo­ple in the room mak­ing the deci­sions as pos­si­ble.

“Make sure there is a wide rep­re­sen­ta­tion of peo­ple in the room. A lot of peo­ple have felt lib­er­at­ed from hav­ing to keep up this pre­tence of being able to do every­thing. Not hav­ing to com­mute in two or three days a week has allowed some peo­ple to focus on their job more,” he explains.

“When we look at the evi­dence, the one group who have missed being in the office every day is boss­es. If you allow all the boss­es in your organ­i­sa­tion to make the deci­sion you are unfor­tu­nate­ly miss­ing the fact that every­one else doesn’t agree. Make sure there is a plu­ral­i­ty of opin­ion.”

He also cau­tions against mak­ing too many deci­sions ear­ly on before new ways of work­ing have been test­ed. Hav­ing missed so much human con­tact over the past year, many peo­ple are keen to get back to the office but may find they would be hap­pi­er work­ing at home more often as this need fades, for exam­ple.

“The crit­i­cal next thing is this is a time for exper­i­ments not deci­sions. Most of us prob­a­bly feel we know what it would be like to work in a bal­anced hybrid envi­ron­ment but we don’t ful­ly know,” he sug­gests.

“Don’t jump in, it’s time for exper­i­men­ta­tion and we’ll learn a lot through that. There might be dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties – dif­fer­ent groups who want to work in dif­fer­ent ways.  

Final­ly he rec­om­mends learn­ing from oth­er com­pa­nies. Most have been so focused on get­ting through the pan­dem­ic they have not had time to speak to oth­er busi­ness lead­ers and learn what is work­ing (or not) else­where.

“I hear so many peo­ple say to me, ‘I’m in back to back video calls’ but once we start meet­ing up with friends again you might hear ‘oh it’s not like that at my work, we have whole days with­out video calls’. And peo­ple might want to change to that. At the moment busi­ness has not even had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pare what works and what doesn’t. We need that.”

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