Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Amid the deluge of
Speaker 1: executive orders that President Trump signed during his first week
Speaker 1: in office, is a mandate headlined return to in person work.
Speaker 1: The order applies to the executive branch and it calls
Speaker 1: for an end to remote work arrangements for government employees.
Speaker 1: But Trump isn't alone. From Washington to Wall Street, bosses
Speaker 1: are pushing for their workers to come back to the
Speaker 1: office full time, and everyone feels differently about it.
Speaker 2: I have no problem with it whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I definitely don't think that would work for me. Just
Speaker 1: two days a week is more than enough. On a
Speaker 1: weekday afternoon, we asked people around Midtown Manhattan about the
Speaker 1: work from home policies that many Americans got used to
Speaker 1: during the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I love to cook at home and actually take a
Speaker 2: lunch break.
Speaker 1: I'm a new dad, so it's a little challenging for
Speaker 1: me to spend that much time I'm away from my daughter.
Speaker 1: I don't want to wake up earlier. You got a
Speaker 1: wake up shower to the whole thing on somebody else's timeline.
Speaker 2: That's not for me.
Speaker 1: But with COVID era restrictions becoming a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: The terrain is starting to shift again.
Speaker 2: I would have thought that the story would have died
Speaker 2: out by now, but it keeps coming out to grab people.
Speaker 1: Heather Landy overseas Bloomberg's coverage of work and management.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people were hoping to come
Speaker 2: out of the pandemic with an answer, what is the
Speaker 2: right way to do this? And there was no one
Speaker 2: right answer.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, offices in the biggest US cities
Speaker 1: were still half empty compared to pre pandemic levels. According
Speaker 1: to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, three
Speaker 1: quarters of employed adults with jobs that can be done
Speaker 1: remotely are working from home at least some of the time.
Speaker 1: But by the end of the year, many major companies
Speaker 1: had instituted return to office policies, and it's raised some questions.
Speaker 1: Is work from home slowly dying? What's behind the push
Speaker 1: to get people back to the office, and what does
Speaker 1: it mean for workers? I'm David Gera, and this is
Speaker 1: the big take from Bloomberg News today on the show.
Speaker 1: Are you listening to this episode on an office commute? Well,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, more people maybe joining you. Heather
Speaker 1: Landy says, when you look at the numbers, it's clear
Speaker 1: why there's so much uncertainty around where we've landed on
Speaker 1: remote work. Companies are still pretty solidly split.
Speaker 2: Based on an index that we follow here at Bloomberg Flexinc.
Speaker 2: They're Flex Jobs Index, about thirty two percent of companies
Speaker 2: are back in the office full time, so right, so
Speaker 2: that's about a third a little bit more than that,
Speaker 2: something like forty three percent or doing what we would
Speaker 2: call structured hybrid, and that might be back in the
Speaker 2: office two days a week, or three days a week,
Speaker 2: or four days a week, maybe it's on specific days
Speaker 2: that everybody agrees to gather, maybe not. And then twenty
Speaker 2: five percent or so are fully flexible, where people really
Speaker 2: have a choice of where they want to be, and
Speaker 2: in that grouping, only like five percent is full time remote.
Speaker 1: In the past year or so, many companies have made
Speaker 1: news with their return to office mandates, including some on
Speaker 1: Wall Street. In early January, the largest US bank, JP
Speaker 1: Morgan announced plans to bring its workforce more than three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand employees back to the office five days a week.
Speaker 2: The JP Morgan announcement was funny for me because I
Speaker 2: had almost forgotten that they weren't back in that policy already.
Speaker 2: I think, given Jamie Diamond's long standing critique of remote work,
Speaker 2: it actually took rather long for the company itself to
Speaker 2: catch up policy wise to what he's been out saying publicly.
Speaker 1: What did JP Morgan say was the rationale for making
Speaker 1: that decision pretty much.
Speaker 2: Just that they think they're better together. It was not
Speaker 2: set in hard data, Nor was the big sort of
Speaker 2: watershed decision a few months ago by Amazon dot Com
Speaker 2: just a feeling amongst executives that this is the way
Speaker 2: we want things to work out.
Speaker 1: But not all of JP Morgan's employees agree. The company
Speaker 1: disabled comments on its internal message board after backlash. In
Speaker 1: office mandates in corporate America have sometimes been clunky. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, when COVID vaccines became widespread, safety
Speaker 1: and corporate mandates collided in people.
Speaker 2: Were talking about needing to have better air filtration systems
Speaker 2: and plexiglass dividers between desks, having people come back to
Speaker 2: the office in stages or in small chunks so that
Speaker 2: we didn't overlap with one another and be too close
Speaker 2: for comfort. And then that quickly gave way to a
Speaker 2: more normalized take on return to office. But by that
Speaker 2: point people were so ensconced in their homes and at
Speaker 2: their dining room tables and in their living rooms it
Speaker 2: was difficult for a lot of people to imagine coming back.
Speaker 2: And in that time, too, the technology got so much
Speaker 2: better and our comfort with the technology got so much
Speaker 2: better that the purpose of coming back was lost on
Speaker 2: a lot of people. Teams got more dispersed, global time
Speaker 2: zones became of a factor, and all of these different
Speaker 2: ways to work collaboratively but asynchronously is cropped up. The
Speaker 2: idea of coming into an office to sit on a
Speaker 2: zoom all day or to leave comments on a shared
Speaker 2: doc somewhere seemed problematic to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Today, companies are still trying to figure out if work
Speaker 1: from home works for them long term.
Speaker 2: The issue is, you know, our companies actually using this
Speaker 2: freedom wisely and making considered choices about what works best
Speaker 2: for them, And it's not actually clear to me that
Speaker 2: that's the case. And I say that based on both
Speaker 2: personal experience and what the research is showing us.
Speaker 1: Heather has experienced this firsthand. At a past job. The
Speaker 1: rule was you.
Speaker 2: Could work from home six days per month. What a
Speaker 2: strange system, right, and when I was asked about why
Speaker 2: that was the policy, the answer was, well, it used
Speaker 2: to be four days a month, and people thought that
Speaker 2: was too little, so we made it six days a month.
Speaker 2: I mean, that doesn't really feel like a research backed
Speaker 2: reason for the way that things were, and yet that's
Speaker 2: the way that a lot of companies have approached This
Speaker 2: is like sort of gut feel what feels right and
Speaker 2: basically how much can we push before our employees reject
Speaker 2: the situation altogether.
Speaker 1: Since the pandemic, Heather has interviewed CEOs from many different
Speaker 1: sectors about what they've gained and lost switching to remote
Speaker 1: or hybrid work setups and almost across the board. She
Speaker 1: says work from home for business leaders has become kind
Speaker 1: of a boogeyman when it comes to how they think
Speaker 1: about productivity.
Speaker 2: In a lot of cases, the recall of workers back
Speaker 2: to the office is happening right after a slump in
Speaker 2: the share price. CEOs seem to share this sort of
Speaker 2: nagging feeling in the back of their minds that they're
Speaker 2: just not getting what they should be getting out of
Speaker 2: the people who work for them, that we've somehow become
Speaker 2: too soft as a society, Our workplaces. We've become more
Speaker 2: generous with things like parental leave, and we're not sure
Speaker 2: at the end of the day how to measure performance
Speaker 2: for many jobs, and so remote work where flexible work
Speaker 2: arrangements becomes an easy scapegoat for that.
Speaker 1: What do we know about the difference between a worker's
Speaker 1: productivity working four days in the office versus five, Say.
Speaker 2: So, the case studies that we have seen thus far,
Speaker 2: both sort of anecdotally and in terms of the academic literature,
Speaker 2: suggests that working from home makes people no less productive
Speaker 2: than they've been overall at the office.
Speaker 1: And it's not so easy to demand all your employees
Speaker 1: report back to the office overnight after the break. We
Speaker 1: look at the way different industries are handling this and
Speaker 1: what that could mean for the US economy. An announcement
Speaker 1: from a bank like JP Morgan calling its employees back
Speaker 1: to the office full time isn't just an internal message,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Heather Landy tells me, it's also a sort of
Speaker 1: broadcast to the rest of the corporate world.
Speaker 2: I think everybody still looking for Bellweathers and sort of influencers, and.
Speaker 1: We're to see what others are doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for both competitive reasons, and also because a lot
Speaker 2: of companies just haven't figured out the answer to that
Speaker 2: central question, which is what is the right arrangement for
Speaker 2: my workforce?
Speaker 1: Because it's hard to measure the benefits of in person work,
Speaker 1: and it's even harder to measure the benefits a remote
Speaker 1: setup can offer employees, Heather says business leaders often point
Speaker 1: to the value of collaboration, learning, and mentorship when touting
Speaker 1: in person work, and the importance of policies that impact
Speaker 1: everyone equally. When some workers have to be in person
Speaker 1: and others have the luxury of staying home, it can
Speaker 1: create a sense of haves and have nots. But many
Speaker 1: workers with computer jobs say they want autonomy, the ability
Speaker 1: to save time and money by eliminating a commute or
Speaker 1: multitasking chores during the day, perks like what Heather calls
Speaker 1: the roast chicken benefit.
Speaker 2: Working from home. As a busy working parent, we're able
Speaker 2: to take a break from the laptop for ten minutes,
Speaker 2: prep a roast chicken, throw it in the oven, and
Speaker 2: while it was cooking, get right back to their laptops
Speaker 2: and finish off whatever projects they needed to finish off
Speaker 2: before they signed off for the day.
Speaker 1: Heather what are these decisions tell us about the health
Speaker 1: of the economy. More broadly, I'm thinking of the labor market.
Speaker 1: There has to be a degree of confidence that a
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond has that if he imposes a rule like
Speaker 1: this on the company, there's a tightness to the labor
Speaker 1: market that's going to keep people who don't want to
Speaker 1: work five days a week of the office are going
Speaker 1: to keep doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think all along we've seen this
Speaker 2: sort of flip flopping in the power balance between workers andmployers.
Speaker 2: You know, we've had sort of mixed signals from our
Speaker 2: labor market here in the US. So unemployment is not
Speaker 2: terribly high, but job searches among job seekers are lengthening
Speaker 2: and lengthening. And because of that, I think employers do feel,
Speaker 2: you know, if I issue at a blanket five day
Speaker 2: a week back in the office rule on the margins,
Speaker 2: if there are people who can't do that or refuse
Speaker 2: to comply with that, I will be able to replace them.
Speaker 1: Returning to the office full time isn't just an adjustment
Speaker 1: for employees. Companies themselves have to adapt their infrastructure and
Speaker 1: their procedures so that they can once again have people
Speaker 1: in the office that's not always seamless. In December of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, Amazon delayed its return to office mandate
Speaker 1: and told personnel in at least seven cities that there
Speaker 1: wasn't enough physical space for everyone.
Speaker 2: And a lot of the edicts that we've seen, if
Speaker 2: you read the memos that are going out to their staffers,
Speaker 2: which often become public in part because employees are making
Speaker 2: them public because of their dissatisfaction with the rules, a
Speaker 2: lot of them read a little bit like Swiss cheese.
Speaker 2: They're always sort of leaving the door open to exceptions,
Speaker 2: in part because the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring companies
Speaker 2: to make accommodations.
Speaker 1: You're hinting at a level of dialogue. I mentioned some
Speaker 1: companies that can go from kind of dialogue to protestation.
Speaker 1: Have we seen anything like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. There was a sort of infamous zoom call
Speaker 2: last summer summer of twenty twenty four amongst corporate employees
Speaker 2: at Walmart after they were recalled to the office, and
Speaker 2: actually we saw one of their executives stepping down announcing
Speaker 2: her departure relatively recently, tied in part to that policy.
Speaker 1: We've focused on companies that have brought workers back five
Speaker 1: days a week. Are there any marquee examples of a
Speaker 1: company that's gone in a different direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So all State, the big insurance company. They have
Speaker 2: massively reduced their square footage and brought down their annual
Speaker 2: spend on corporate offices by over two hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: a year. So they have moved lots of people to
Speaker 2: flexible arrangements. They've sold their headquarters campus in the Chicago area,
Speaker 2: and they are allowing people to work from home and
Speaker 2: encouraging it, but also giving them ultimate flexibility by working
Speaker 2: with a company that's helping them arrange for flex spaces
Speaker 2: in various cities all over the country. But they have
Speaker 2: said that they're committed to this flexible environment for a
Speaker 2: really sizable workforce.
Speaker 1: Where do you think we are in this kind of
Speaker 1: indefinite evolution of what we're from home and return to
Speaker 1: office is like? And then picking up off of that,
Speaker 1: where do you think we're going to be in a
Speaker 1: year's time.
Speaker 2: I think we are where we're going to be, which
Speaker 2: is to say, I think we're going to be sort
Speaker 2: of evenly split amongst companies that are fully flexible have
Speaker 2: structured hybrid and are in the office five days a week.
Speaker 2: By and large, there doesn't seem to me to be
Speaker 2: a compelling reason yet in terms of the research to
Speaker 2: say more companies should be doing.
Speaker 1: It this way or that way.
Speaker 2: So my guess is that they'll continue to sort of
Speaker 2: cast around a bit for what feels right, and that
Speaker 2: they'll end up in very different places.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Tracy Samuelson and Aaron Edwards. It was mixed and
Speaker 1: sound designed by Alex Sekura and fact checked by Audreana Tapia.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage
Speaker 1: Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you liked this episode,
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.