Front Burner - Work-from-home goes ‘pandemic’ to ‘permanent’

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

Twitter says its staff can work from home as long as they want. The head of Shopify says “office centricity is over.” OpenText is shuttering half of its offices, reducing its workforce and shifting 2000 employees to remote work. COVID-19 forced hundreds of millions of employees to temporarily work from home, but companies are starting to change their remote work strategies from “pandemic” to “permanent.” Today on Front Burner, NPR reporter Bobby Allyn explains what’s driving the enthusiasm for remote work in Silicon Valley, and the employee surveillance tools he calls a “morale destroyer.” Then, author and UN Happiness Committee member Jennifer Moss tells us who working from home is and isn’t working for.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, I'm Pia Chattopadhyay, and I'm reading this introduction and doing today's episode from my basement. Like so many others, I am working from home these days, WFH, while this pandemic keeps doing its thing. But some companies are looking at making this kind of move permanent. Last month, the head of the Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify tweeted, Office centricity is over,

announcing the company's plans to have most employees work remotely well into the future. Today, the shift towards remote work for better or for worse. This is FrontBurner. In a minute, I'm going to talk with Jennifer Moss about how people are reacting to their new workplaces. But first, Bobbi Allen covers tech and Silicon Valley for NPR where this trend is taking hold. Bobbi, hello. Hello. So I think we all understand, we know why those of us who are being asked to work from home now are doing just that. But I just mentioned Shopify in the introduction. We're hiring from all corners of the world to design the future together. A future that is digital by default. What other signs are you seeing that this work from home move could continue post pandemic?

So in Silicon Valley, a lot of tech companies are using the pandemic as a reason to rethink offices completely. And this is really notable because think about it. And Google and the big tech giants here have basically, they've built campuses that resemble college campuses to basically, you know, make sure that people never want to leave the office, right? They have nap rooms. They have ping pong tables. They have catered lunches and dinners. They're working long hours and they never leave. There's volleyball nets and colorful umbrellas. And you see people walking their dogs.

This spot over here is actually our nap pods. I have a one-year-old, and when I was working and pregnant, you get so tired in the first trimester. I go crash for 20 minutes and then feel better. And now they think, actually, now that people are working remotely, they're just as productive, you know, anecdotally, maybe even more productive. And if we can downsize some of our office spaces, there might be some cost savings there, and the employees might be, you know, happier.

And so Twitter announced that they are going to let all of their employees work from home indefinitely. Facebook, which has 45,000 employees, said in the next decade, about half of its workers might be scattered around the U.S. as opposed to being concentrated mostly in the Bay Area. And coming out of this period, I expect that remote work is going to be a growing trend as well. And it's a trend that, you know, most people who are watchers of the tech industry say is really probably going to catch fire across all of the tech sector. Walk me through some of the reasons, Bobby, you think that they're proposing this shift out of the office. I know some of it obviously has to do with pandemic, but beyond that, what's behind this thinking, do you think? Right. So like you said, beyond the obvious that people are going to be wary about going into

office spaces, when people do go back to the offices, going to have more space between desks than they used to. What is that going to mean? Fewer people are going to fit in their office buildings. But there's also sort of the larger macroeconomic point of, wow, if we can tap labor pools in Milwaukee, Detroit, Nashville, Portland, Oregon, Baltimore, Maryland, where there's lots of really talented software engineers who look at the Bay Area and look at the cost of living here and say, no, thank you. It's one of the most expensive places to live in America. And if Facebook and Google and other big tech companies can offer jobs to people and they could just stay put, they could keep their families and they could keep their communities where they are, they're able to really diversify and just have a

more sort of interesting group of employees. That's Mark Zuckerberg's justification. We also see on the retention side, one of the top reasons when people leave the company that they tell us that they were leaving is because they want to move to a place maybe to be with their family, but we don't have an office there. So we'll now be able to keep more of those folks in the loop, which will be in some ways even going to need very fast internet and the companies are probably going to have to foot the bill. There's going to be investments they're going to need to make their home offices up to snuff. There's additional expenses that are going to come with the work from home shift. But I think offices might be looked at years from now as sort of these historical relics. It's like giant, beautiful things that were built. And we don't know, but a lot of analysts are saying maybe they're going to empty out.

So one of the other things Zuckerberg said was there could be cost savings associated with this move, but it's not the primary motivation, he says. One of the things that's been a little surprising to me in talking to other remote companies is that a lot of people feel like this hasn't generally been a big cost saving. The cost of supporting remote workers has generally offset the real estate and other costs of supporting people in the office. But another thing he also said that struck me is, it's pretty interesting, is that there could be compensation adjustments that would go with a new remote work policy.

We pay a market rate. And that varies by location. So we're going to continue that principle here. How so? Yeah. So if you live in the Bay Area, you know about the divide of the Bay Area. There's big tech and everyone else. I mean, the big tech companies, their median salaries are around a quarter million dollars a year. These are, you know, 20 something kids often who move here and have these, you know, surgeon salaries. It's really expensive to live here as a result, right? And so if you're going to command that kind of salary in Podunk, Montana, it might not be totally in accord with the cost of living. So Zuckerberg has said, look, if you're going to move to some other place outside of the Bay Area, we're going to basically reduce your salary.

And don't try to deceive us and tell us you're in the Bay when you're not. So there could be some cost savings there. Of the people who said that they might want to work full time remotely, you know, as many as 75 percent, if they're able to do that, would move to another place. You know, of the people who said that they would prefer to stay in the U.S., about 38 percent said that they would prefer to move to another big city. And then the rest said that they would move to a different kind of smaller city or other type of area like that. You know, interesting when you just mentioned that Zuckerberg says, don't do this because we know where you are. They actually are because they're going to monitor where people are signing into their VPNs from. Right. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. And that's something that through my reporting I've found is really happening beyond tech, right? This whole new sort of surveillance arm that is

stalking work from home employees. I mean, people in daycares, people in IT companies, people in media are increasingly finding that their managers can't see them and want to keep tabs on them. So keystrokes are being monitored, what websites you're on for how long are being monitored, your movements are being monitored in some cases. I mean, the most extreme examples are, you know, companies that are requiring so-called geotags. So they basically put a geolocation around your apartment. And when you leave that geobubble, an alert is triggered and your pay is immediately docked. That's the extreme example.

That's not everywhere, but that is happening. I think a lot of people would say this sounds very, very invasive. So what's the justification provided by employers? I have to say, when I talk to people who've studied this for a long time, they say it's really nothing new, that you should always assume in the US that if you're using company issued laptops and computers, that the IT team at your whatever company you work at can probably see what you're doing, right? This is just really accelerating a trend that's been around for a while.

see what you're doing, right? This is just really accelerating a trend that's been around for a while. But bosses are justifying it, you know, managers are justifying it by saying, we have no way to do our job, right? Part of their job as being a manager is seeing the progress on projects, is seeing what you're accomplishing day to day. And if, you know, they can't have sort of collaborative meetings with you, they can't have one-on-ones with you. How else are they to quantify to their higher-ups that they're keeping pressure on you to do your work every day? I should say it's not just the U.S. In Canada, there are no laws, no Canadian laws against an employer using that kind of software as long as the employee is fully informed on how the system works. So you've got to be told you're being watched by your boss in this way.

This is a comment from an employment lawyer, Andrew Monkhouse, and he says this, the non-unionized workplace has less control because generally the employer is able to institute policies that they think are appropriate, and employees have limited ability to refuse reasonable practices. The workers told you, yeah, like we know this is happening. Did they tell you how they feel about it?

Yeah, I mean, it's really been a morale destroyer. I mean, workers I've talked to say, you know, it's one thing to have to, you know, have more Zoom meetings, to have more FaceTimes, to be on messaging services all day with your colleagues. But it's a totally other thing to be monitored and tracked in this sort of big brother way. If you're idle for a few minutes, go to the bathroom or whatever, a pop-up will kind of come up and it'll say, do you have 60 seconds to start working again or we're going to pause

your time after talking to a co-worker for a few minutes? I feel like crap. I feel like I'm not trusted. I'd feel ashamed of myself, like I shouldn't have done that. Maybe I should have worked harder. I should have been at my desk. The workers I talked to, all of them said this has made them look for new work. One of them actually refused to download software on her phone to be tracked every time she

took her dog for a walk and said, I'm not doing this. And the company said, OK, well, that means you're going to go on unpaid leave. There's five of us. And we always came to work, always came on time. There was no reason to start location tracking us. And everyone has since kind of taken a step back and said, all right, if this is how they're going to treat us, why go the extra mile? Because clearly it doesn't matter to them. And I've spoken to a number of other people who have the same sort of queasy, icky feeling that this is not okay and I'm not going to stand for this. That said, you know, 40 million people have filed for unemployment in the United States and that means that workers are at a bit of a disadvantage. Having any job at all right now,

bosses say, is something you shouldn't take for granted. In fact, one worker said when she pushed back on this surveillance technology and said, I think this is, you know, a little creepy. The boss said, this is the coronavirus. You should be lucky to have a job. You know, at some point, most likely there will be a vaccine against COVID-19 and people could conceivably go back into the office because we wouldn't need to socially distance. So kind of big picture, Bobby, what are you going to be watching for as lockdowns lift and companies continue with these work from home WFH, as they're known, policies. Yeah. I mean, the one big thing I'm going to be looking for is how much work from home is just going to become part of a weekly or monthly schedule as an employee. Even if you don't want to say what Jack Dorsey at Twitter said, which is, you know, we are going to allow

our employees to work indefinitely from home if you want to. Dorsey telling his employees they can work remotely forever from anywhere. He tells USA Today that the past few months have shown them that business can function normally with more remote workers. You know, maybe, you know, companies are going to say, we figured out during this pandemic that especially among knowledge workers, you know, the white collar class who do mostly computer work, they can do a lot of that stuff from home, they don't have to come into an office. So maybe part of their package to new hires is, here's your salary, here are your benefits, and you have X number of work from home weeks. You know, talking to labor experts here, it really seems like this has been a test of how well work from home will work for companies, and companies were for so long reluctant to give workers this flexibility. But now I really do think it's going to become something that is going to be built into every job.

So I'll be looking out in tech and beyond to see just how much of a norm this does become and what kind of new issues besides the surveillance issue crop up or don't crop up. I mean, you know, maybe this is the way of the future. And it's going to be, you know, a boon to both workers and employers. We just don't know yet. Bobby, good to talk to you. Thank you. I'm not spying on you. I just want to let you know. Bobby and I are both at our work from home offices. We never leave. In fact, we tie ourselves, we glue ourselves to our chairs. Thanks, Bonnie. You got it.

Okay, take care. Bye-bye. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So the aggressive monitoring by some employers might be a morale destroyer, as Bobby put it, but surveillance isn't the only challenge when working from home. To understand how the broader workforce is reacting, I want to bring in Jennifer Moss.

Jennifer is an author, speaker, and member of the UN Global Happiness Committee, and she's been looking at who is and who is not thriving in their new workplace. Jennifer, hi. Hi. So, Bobbi told us how the tech sector is quickly embracing remote work. But beyond tech, what do we know at this point about how working from home is actually working for people? Well, in some industries, like you said, in tech, it works well, because it's sort of been in the process for decades. There's been a lot of research done in that sector about why

it's beneficial for that group, because they can just pick up a laptop and go. But you know, in education, for example, they are working from home right now at the same numbers, the same levels as tech. In a survey where they surveyed about 10,000 employees, the teachers surveyed, there was 95% of them that said they hate it. They never want to work from home ever again after this experience. And actually, some of them did want to work from home or they thought that it was going to be some sort of panacea. They were going to have this amazing experience working remote, but they have no interest. So for them, it's just created a lot of stress, chronic stress, anxiety. Allison Ferrante is a seventh grade math teacher in Queens, New York. She's struggling to

teach her six and eight-year-old sons at the same time. I do a to-do list every day. It's just so much on there, just thinking about, does everything you have to do? And it just, it starts to get like very overwhelming. I can hear it in your voice. Yeah, I'm starting to get upset. I'm trying not to. Most people really do love working from home. And I love it.

It's something that I choose to do. But, you know, when we look at the data, the most optimal and happiest employee is one that goes into the office once a week. So people still need interactions. is one that goes into the office once a week. So people still need interactions. And so for most people, even despite whether working from home is really healthy for them, it's important for employers to understand

that physical interaction, those collisions, that ability to collaborate in person is also still very healthy for people. Jamie Andis works for a New York real estate brokerage. Meetings, meetings, meetings. That's all we do every day. It's difficult to pay attention to everybody, talk when you're supposed to talk, listen when you're supposed to listen, people talk over each other, all that kind of stuff. So it's a lot more mentally draining than you'd think. I'm craving human contact right now. So I want to go back into the office. I want to be

communicating with everybody in person. Yeah, I can't imagine like if you were a new employee, it is never actually in real life, having met your colleagues, right? And also because, you know, when you're having a conversation, whether it's in a meeting or a hallway, there's more than just what the person saying, there's the body language and all that other stuff. Yeah, and there's some really awesome research that Google did that was called Project Aristotle, and it looked at the highest performing teams. And what they found across all their data was that it was just physical connectivity, but they also decided that a lot of their best ideas came from the

lunchroom. So people that were waiting in line would go and talk about projects they were working on, and then they would go and sit and have lunch and further discuss them. And so they actually purposely slowed down the line in their kitchen for their employees just slightly, just enough so that they could create better collaboration and opportunity for innovation. And you can't get that always when you're working remote. And so for people who, you know, leaned on the side of like, look, I really do like WFH working from home. What are they saying in terms of the you know, the great benefits for them? Well, I keep saying I love it. And a lot of people

do. There's been an extensive amount of research done on the benefits of being able to be home at the end of the day with your kids to be able to flex your hours. So if you're a person that is really productive in the afternoon, but not so much early in the morning, well, then you can really utilize that time if you have the ability to sort of work those core hours and not have to worry so much about nine to five productivity. You know, you have sort of that space, that quiet, you're not as likely to get interrupted. You know, open spaces inside of workplaces have actually been blamed for a lot of the distraction, a lot of the lack of productivity.

Employees like Tanya's wicker are learning strategies for the long run. Having the children home from school and working from my living room couch, I think that there could be complete chaos around me now and I could focus. And then the other thing also is it depends what your home is like, right? Some people don't have the space. There's two people working at home. Yes. I mean, you're looking at urban centers where it's pretty dense.

You might only be able to afford, say, a studio apartment or a one bedroom. I mean, you could be sharing it now with two people who their companies have just decided to go digital first or work from home forever. So now all of a sudden you have to have space set up for that. And, you know, what are the conditions that are going to make you most productive? And that's where leadership needs to come in and make sure that they're collecting that kind of data. They're finding out, you know, what is going to be an optimal environment for you and, you know, the money that they are saving on, you know, shuttering their offices. For example, OpenText is going to save $65 million at USD a year. OpenText essentially closing half of its traditional offices. I'd rather be spending

that money on the company, on innovation, on our employees versus spending that money on a building or reconfiguring a building. They should be able to take that money and then make sure that you're set up at home, you know, ergonomics, all those things are considered. You know, these people, you know, just went into COVID lockdown and throughout the last two months, because they've maintained productivity levels, they're now potentially going to have a complete shift in their job expectations. Some people, like I said, there's a good swath of people that do love to go into work and see their friends, and they don't have that infrastructure set up. So if you're going to dramatically change someone's job expectations and role expectations, you need to be able to accommodate for those changes.

So no matter sort of where you are, here we are at this moment in time, most people who are lucky enough to still have jobs are working from home if their jobs can accommodate that. What specifically should workers be asking of their employers to make sure that they're being supported? Well, I think we need to be able to make sure that employees and employers continue to have conversations about how they're feeling and if they're feeling like they can keep up, making sure that in this new sort of experience of work, that we're still analyzing if this is sustainable. So many, you know, organizations that I worked with in the past weren't very good about asking, like, what are the things that are keeping you sane? What are the things that are even just asking, what are the things that are bugging you? And there was just a small group of companies, I would say, you know, across the entire workforce that were doing that really

well. But they were the healthiest, best, most productive, most innovative companies. So what I would say is that we need to do that even more now, because we're going to get less opportunity to talk to people face to face, we're not going to be able to see if that person is feeling tired, or if their work is suffering, or if they're late, you late, they're going to start to have to be intuitive and they need to ask more questions and they even need to get more engaged in people's real lives so that they can understand how they're feeling as a human

because all of that trickles between work and life. We don't bifurcate anymore. And now that we're bringing it into our homes permanently, it's going to shift that relationship between employer-employee. That's going to, you know, be interesting and challenging. But in the end, if there's a more of an intimate, you know, ability to have those kind of communications, we'll all be healthier for it. Jen, thanks for helping us wade through this and take good care working from home.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Yep yep off to homeschool that's all for today and that is actually all for me. Starting tomorrow, I'm passing this podcast to my colleague, Josh Block. Josh is a producer, longtime CBC producer and host of the Uncover Escaping NXIVM podcast. And Josh is going to be covering for Jamie for a couple more months as she spends some time with her family, including their newborn son. I'm Pia Chattopadhyay. It's been nice to be here. Thanks for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.