Why USA Retailers are Embracing Flexible Work Policies

On a September day in 1994, 32,000 AT&T employees telecommuted from home in an alternative work experiment that was generally regarded as the trend of the future. Nearly 30 years later, in June, AT&T ordered 60,000 remote managers to return to the office, causing 9,000 of them to relocate or resign. Flexible work arrangements can increase employee happiness and productivity. But it appears that every time it is tried, employers make a quick about-face and return to business as normal. The cycle is repeating itself, this time with a wave of return-to-office directives, or RTO. Although most businesses claim efficiency concerns, there is a deeper explanation for their hesitation to embrace alternative jobs. Americans are culturally hardwired to see labor as incompatible with flexibility. Employees that are pleased and relaxed are probably not working. Any initiatives to reform the workplace collide with this hard reality.

I am an anthropologist who investigates the cultural beliefs that influence how people think about employment.

Americans regard work as a type of moral sacrifice, therefore discomfort is a cultural requirement for employment. Long commutes, punishing hours, and 24/7 availability are not the only drawbacks of the modern office. They are the prerequisites for working in America. Top Videos Ukraine joins NATO drill to test anti-drone systems (close). Office sadness is a common theme in American pop culture. Everyone from Mr. Incredible to the unfortunate intern in "The Devil Wears Prada" faces the same combination of mind-numbing tasks, shady office politics, and unattainable deadlines because, well, that's what work is. We criticize one another with the saying, "If it was fun, it wouldn't be called work," and anyone who simply meets, rather than exceeds, their job requirements is labeled a "quiet quitter." The most prominent example of this cultural belief is the inclination to link flexibility with lethargy. When Elon Musk proclaimed that remote workers "should pretend to work somewhere else," he left no mistake. However, most CEOs continually imply that people who seek flexibility are doing so to avoid work. Long before COVID-19, employees who took advantage of flexible work regulations were perceived as uncommitted to their jobs, even if their performance remained good. Perceived idleness hits a deep chord in a nation defined by the Protestant work ethic, creating a blind spot in how Americans perceive different sorts of effort. Nonetheless, employees have numerous reasons for requiring flexibility. Working parents who want flexible hours so they can pick up their children from school are not lazy.

Dual-earner couples who are unable to obtain work in the same geographic area are not lazy.

Adult children caring for elderly parents all around the country are not lazy. People of color who desire to avoid daily microaggressions are not lazy. They are attempting to execute their work despite the numerous difficulties in their road. They are 21st-century personnel with 21st-century requirements who work under early twentieth-century conventions. And study backs it up. The COVID-19 epidemic served as a real-world experiment in flexible work, with overwhelmingly favorable outcomes. According to research, flexible work arrangements raise employee satisfaction, improve work-life balance, foster diversity, and increase labor force participation among working parents while having no influence on productivity. Depending on the sort of work, they can also boost productivity. Nonetheless, buttocks in chairs is the new benchmark for business productivity. Ninety percent of businesses plan to implement RTO policies this year, at tremendous expense to employee diversity, morale, and vitality. Undoubtedly, certain professions and tasks necessitate in-person work and strict deadlines. Some jobs are not suitable for remote work, but that doesn't mean they can't accommodate other sorts of flexibility. In-person cooperation and career development possibilities for new employees are both genuine issues in remote and hybrid workplaces that must be addressed. However, broad RTO orders that impose archaic pre-COVID-19 work styles eliminate the opportunity of meaningful communication between employees and employers regarding mutually advantageous work arrangements. Many CEOs who have adopted broad RTO policies have outsourced flexible work to foreign countries.

They should instill the same ethos among its US staff.

We must question these preconceptions by embarking on daring new work experiments that go beyond the in-person versus remote debate and consider inventive new models that advance the twin goals of productivity and employee pleasure. A reformed view of work would acknowledge that work-life balance is the foundation of employee productivity. It would compensate employees based on results rather than face time or apparent devotion to the job. It would encourage employees and companies to experiment with novel work models, such as radical flexibility, which allows teams to choose not just where they work, but also their daily schedules (for example, atypical work hours), effort, and activities. Gartner discovered that when firms provide radical freedom, "the percentage of employees defined as high performers increases by 40%." According to a recent Moody's research, if women's labor-force participation reaches levels seen in other developed nations, the US GDP may rise by $1 trillion over the next decade. Consider what the figure would be if we unlocked the potential of the numerous employees who want to work but need flexibility. We must tackle our punishing attitudes about labor and encourage innovative new experiments in when, where, how, and how much Americans work. Otherwise, we will simply repeat the AT&T cycle, passing up the potential to establish a more equitable, productive, and vibrant workplace. Tara Schwegler is a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio, having formerly taught at the University of Chicago.