Whitepapers

TASA ID: 22108

As increasing numbers of companies are requiring employees to return to the office for 3-5 days per week this fall, they’re running into the buzzsaw of what one of my clients called the “Four Horsemen of the Required Return to Office” - challenges with resistance, attrition, quiet quitting, and diversity.

The Four Horsemen stem from the fact that workers who are capable of working remotely prefer to do so for most or all of the time. For example, an August 2022 Gallup survey of remote-capable workers shows that 34% of respondents want to work full-time remotely, 60% want to work a flexible hybrid schedule, and only 6% want to work in a traditional office-centric setting. A June 2022 McKinsey survey of all workers, remote-capable and not, provides further context on preferences for hybrid work. It found that 32% of respondents want to work full-time remotely, 10% want to work remotely four days a week, 16% three days a week, 18% two days a week, 13% one day a week, and 13% prefer full-time in-office work. Thus over half of all respondents want to work less than half the time in the office. And a September 2022 survey from the School of Politics and Economics at King’s College reported that 25% of respondents would quit if forced to return to the office full time.

TASA ID: 22108

With a triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV hitting the US hard this winter and resulting in an explosion of cases, business executives need to take the lead on promoting the newly-updated, Omicron-specific boosters. Doing so will help reduce the number of sick days taken by their workers, minimize COVID outbreaks and superspreader events in their companies, reduce employee fears about returning to the office, and position executives as trustworthy participants in stakeholder capitalism.

TASA ID: 22108

Imagine you put on an old coat that you have not worn in a while, and to your surprise find a crumpled $20 bill in your pocket. How good does it feel? Do you go up half a notch on a one to 10 mood scale, or maybe a full notch?

Let’s imagine a different scenario. You’re buying ice cream from an ice cream cart and take out a $20 bill to pay. Suddenly, a gust of wind sweeps it from your hand and into a nearby sewer grate. What does that do to your mood on the one-to-10 scale?

TASA ID: 22108

"Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech… the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately," according to its October 25 news release. That statement conveys a principled and admirable stance against the antisemitism shown by the rapper formerly known as Kanye West after his anti-Semitic tweet on October 10 that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

Yet Adidas waited much, much longer than other companies that cut ties with Ye. Even Ye’s own talent agency dropped him before Adidas. In fact, Adidas delayed so long that Ye taunted them on his October 16 appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, saying, "I can say anti-Semitic things, and Adidas can't drop me. Now what? Now what?"

TASA ID: 22108

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claimed in a recent interview with Fox that “we have to get our employees back in the office.” According to him, doing so would result in “rising productivity that will offset some of the inflationary pressures.”

Fink did not provide any data in the form of statistics, surveys, or studies to support his claims. He simply insisted, without evidence, that in-office work would reduce inflation. So what does the data say?