While hybrid work is taking root among educated, well-paid employees, less than half the workforce has that option, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. In the U.K. just 36% of people did some work from home during 2020, even during lockdowns.
Still, as more work happens away from traditional offices, workers will infuse a wider range of communities with their wealth and business knowledge, distributing economic gains more equitably, according to Abigail Adams-Prassl, an economist at the University of Oxford.
That will have some painful consequences. City center cafes, shops and hairdressers catering to professionals are most exposed, with Bloom, Davis and Barrero calculating that a shift to partial working from home will hit annual spending in major U.S. city centers relative to pre-pandemic levels. Manhattan alone would see a drop of 13%, they projected.
Wilkes concedes that “a lot of people” will be hurt by the process of change. Nevertheless, he says that “the changes that we’ve been forced into are going to be beneficial on the whole.”
Hybrid working also has the potential to encourage a more diverse range of people into the workforce, Davis believes, reducing longstanding productivity issues “by making use of the skills of people who were otherwise not working or not working very much.” That includes mothers and people living outside major cities.
The U.S. arm of consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP began ramping up some aspects of hybrid work—including flexibility on where and when to work and training on remote-work technology—back in 2017, says Chief People Officer Michael Fenlon. In 2018 the University of Southern California found that teams worked better and retention improved. The focus has sharpened since Covid-19 hit.
“Pre-pandemic we learned that a culture of trust was essential for well-being and flexibility. Teams that adopted this were reporting stronger relationships, stronger collaboration, better teamwork and stronger relationships with clients,” Fenlon said. “We’ve used the pandemic to become even more intentional and explicit.”
Employers the world over are now grappling with that shift as they try to balance productivity growth with keeping staff creative and happy.
It’s a conundrum that comes 199 years late for Charles Lamb. “My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it,” he wrote to Wordsworth in 1822, lamenting his years spent in smoke-filled offices.
Lamb’s desk-bound successors—and their managers—will soon find out whether they can put their own theories into practice.
—With assistance from Marc Daniel Davies and Jeff Green.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.