The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, Hybrid Work is here to stay

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

For the first time in almost three years, most white collar professionals are back in the office, at least some of the time.  The pandemic unleashed sweeping, societal change virtually overnight, and among the largest of those changes, was the way that we work. But now, almost three years later, we have returned to some semblance of normalcy.  But hybrid and flexible work schedules have persisted.  And for many managers, consultants, and economists, the cat may be out of the bag for good.  These folks argue that given their newfound flexibility and improved work/life balance, workers will never return to the office 5 days a week.  And that’s probably not such a bad thing. There is no demonstrable drop in productivity working from home.  The reduction in commuting time may even increase overall worker output. And given worker’s preference for greater flexibility, hybrid work is undoubtedly the future. But detractors argue that standard metrics of productivity are missing the big picture.  Perhaps what works in the short term may have serious consequences in the long term. How can companies maintain a corporate culture without a central space? How can managers develop and foster young talent without in person interaction? And how can society as a whole progress without the impromptu creative interactions that are a hallmark of functioning office spaces? In short, hybrid work may be the present, but it is not the future.    Arguing for the motion is Raj Choudhury, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School whose research is focused on studying the Future of Work.   Arguing against the motion is Allison Schrager, Senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. Speaker Quotes  RAJ CHOUDHURY: “The day of traveling to a downtown office five days a week is over. And there are different creative ways to arrange work, and why don't the teams decide what's best for them?”.   ALLISON SCHRAGER: “Technology is changing and I have no doubt the nature of work is going to change, but it still doesn't change the way humans are”. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.     Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/   To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].     To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Senior Producer: Jacob Lewis Editor: Adam Karch     Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide

civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day. Our goal is to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be a resolved. Hybrid work is here to stay. After two years of the pandemic, some things are getting back to normal. Many employees are returning back to work in their offices. Companies are weighing a hybrid work model, having some of their employees stay remote while others return to the office. But might there be disadvantages, including a sense of friction and unfairness among workers? As Silicon Valley and Wall Street settle into hybrid work models, companies may need to change their talent acquisition strategies.

I think we're looking at a permanent realignment. So what that means is that there's going to be a complete change in the way we work. Hello, I'm your moderator, Redyard Griffith. Well, for the first time in almost three years, many white-collar performance. professionals are back in the office, at least some of the time. The pandemic, we know, unleashed sweeping changes overnight, including to our offices, to our workplaces. Well, times are changing. People are making their way back slowly, hesitantly, into their workplaces. But are hybrid and flexible work schedules really in the interests of companies

and workers? Some people say, no, it's time to get back. back into the office full-time for each other's benefit and for the companies whose profitability we all rely on. So today is the day that many Wall Street firms have targeted for employees to return to the office full-time, but that's not what some workers want. Others argue that hybrid work is helping with productivity. It's boosting workers' job satisfaction. And ultimately, it's in the interest of the bottom lines of companies and, you know,

workers alike. In short, hybrid work is here to stay, and that's the motion we'll be debating on today's Monk debate. Arguing for the motion is Raj Chowdhury, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, whose research is focused on the future of work. Arguing against the motion is Allison Schrager, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. Raj, Allison, welcome to the Monk Debates. Hello. Hey, I'm looking forward to this debate today. It's a world, a life that many of us are living day in and day out, a hybrid reality sometime in the office, sometime at home. What exactly that balance is depends on each and every one of us and the workplaces we are working in. But the opportunity to have a conversation with both of you today about whether this new post, can I say that, post-COVID reality is here to. to stay is an important one.

And thank you again, both for coming on the program. So our resolution, simple to the point, be it resolved. Hybrid work is here to stay. Raj, you're in favor of our resolution today. So let's put two minutes on the show clock and turn the program over to you. Thank you so much. So here is my sort of core argument. The first thing I'll say is that hybrid work has been happening for many, many years.

It's just getting more popular. and this is the reason it will stay. It's both good for organizations and people. It's good for people in the following way that it gives individuals more flexibility over their time and where they live, which is a big deal for many people. It's also good for organizations because it helps organizations attract

and retain more diverse talent, especially women and minority workers. And it's also a way of, to save costs in many ways, real estate, utilities, whatnot. Having said that, I'm also a believer that we need to meet in person to build our connections, to get mentorship for deep collaborations to happen. But hybrid work takes care of that. It's not that while working in a hybrid arrangement, you never meet your colleagues. You do occasionally meet your colleagues. Some teams can meet once a week. Some teams can meet a few days every month. Some teams can decide to meet once a

quarter. But the teams can decide that. It's just that you don't have to go to an office in a downtown location every day. And so my closing argument here would be that the day of traveling to a downtown office five days a week is over. And there are different creative ways to arrange work. and why don't the teams decide what's best for them. Raj, thank you for that opening statement. You're listening to our debate today, be it resolved. Hybrid work is here to stay. Allison, you're opposed to our motion.

Let's have your opening statement, please. Well, I mean, Raj brings up a lot of good points. And me, more than anyone, hates having to take the time to get dressed, to commute, to go into the office every day. But there's a lot of good reasons why we do this. and, you know, the whole purpose of an office is largely coordination. And in some ways, I think a lot of us looked at hybrid as the best of both worlds. You get some of the flexibility, yet you also get some of the community.

But it also, in a lot of ways, is more like the worst of all worlds in that there's a, you know, you get, either you have like no coordination or you have to have so much coordination, you lose the flexibility. So in some ways, you're just better off with all remote or all in person. If you all have to agree on certain days, everyone's going to want the same day so you don't really give up on the space issue. You end up with presenteism, which is people who show up more end up being promoted faster, and that can be unfair to people who have more family commitments. And generally, our society, you know, as much brings out, like work has been evolving for a long time. But in a lot of ways, our work structure is not really set up for everyone to be home alone right now.

It will just make us more isolated. It's not good for society either. So any way I could see a lot of arguments why hybrid could make us more productive, I don't think it is what we call in economics an unstable equilibrium. Because eventually everyone's going to end up back in the office. If for no other reason, it's what managers and bosses want. And ultimately, when the labor market tightens, they get their way. Thanks, Allison.

Great opening statements from you both. So now let's go to rebuttals. Raj, your opportunity, another two minutes on the clock, to react to what you've just heard from Allison. Yeah, so I'll say two things. The first thing I'll agree with Allison that getting hybrid work correct is going to be a process. So what I'll say is that there's good hybrid and there's bad hybrid. But that's true for any new organizational innovation, be it a management practice, be it a new technology.

There are some companies that will do hybrid better than others. And I can talk later in the show today about what I think of as, as, best practices for an effective hybrid program. The second thing I'll say is that the bosses versus employees debate, actually, I don't subscribe to because I honestly think of hybrid and flexibility as a win-win. And in any economic cycle, the bosses and the managers want to retain and attract the absolutely best talented workers. And in any economic cycle, these real, really, really, really, um,

you know, right tail of the distribution talent, they always have outside options. So if you are going to mandate something which doesn't work with people's individual choices, not everyone will leave, but some of your best workers will leave for competitors. So I think that's the risk. So, and the way I think I'll flip the argument is that in embracing hybrid, you are creating a more diverse workforce, which is more balanced on gender and race and geographic location. And that is what honestly managers and leaders should be thinking about. Thank you, Raj. Okay, Alison, your opportunity now for a rebuttal.

You can react to what you've just heard from Raj or revisit his opening statement. The right tale of talent is super important. But really what makes a company run often is culture and commitment to the organization as a whole. And that takes people coming together and working on common tasks together. You know, you can't just have, I mean, if this is a big issue right now for employers is sort of the set of superstars who end up using company capital and then moving on and profiting off themselves. Really, you need those people who are committed to the institution as well. And that's why you need people coming together and working together regularly and feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. And that involves a lot of

coordination. And hybrid just makes it harder because people have to agree on what days to come in. I mean, can you imagine, I mean, it's hard enough agreeing on a restaurant when you go on a team dinner, let alone what days you're going to come in. Everyone's going to want the same days because no one's going on work Mondays or Fridays. So the sort of overarching coordination is what makes this all work. So this is why hybrid is said is just not sustainable. In any way, it means you can now hire people in different countries of different points in their life, of different ethnicities. At the end of the day, the people who show up the most are they going to want to get rewarded and promoted. It's called presenteism. And I think it's a real reason why this is just isn't a sustainable

equilibrium. And in some ways, that's going to punish people with more family commitments who live further away more. And ultimately, as I said, this is why it becomes an unstable liquid room. Thank you, Alison. Guys, terrific opening to this debate. So many questions on my mind and I'm sure on the minds of our listeners. So let me try to dig in here and channel some of the bigger themes in this debate to you both for your reaction. And Raj, let me come to you first. And I think this is something that we're all experiencing. Maybe seem a bit prosaic, but it could go to Allison's point about the disequilibrium here and the fact that hybrid assumes balance.

I think many of us are experiencing now going into offices, and we're finding that our coworkers are not showing up on the days that we're supposed to be in there as teams together. To what extent are you confident that you can strike the right balance between in work and at home, when the experience to date, Raj, would you concede is that at home is winning over at work? So I think there are several layers to this problem, and we can just talk about this problem for the next hour. So I think I'll say two or three things. The first thing is to Allison's point of coordination, I completely agree. It's a critical point.

And one large tech company that I've been studying, the way they do it, is to sort of bake the decision of which, weeks or which days to be together in the annual planning cycle. And then there are no surprises. It's almost like setting a KPI or a goal for the year. The other thing that, you know, has to be thought through here is what do people do when they go to the office? So if you are going back to the old office, sitting in your cubicle or sitting in your corner office and doing your individual work, that is frankly completely counterintuitive. So we should only go to an office or an offsite anymore to engage in social tasks, either mentoring people or having deep brainstorming sessions or honestly going for team lunches or dinners.

So all individual tasks we know can be performed from anywhere. That's what I've called work from anywhere in my own research. The only purpose of going to an office needs to be social and the new office architecture, the new office design, the new office set up, everything needs to speak to that. And there are some companies, again, doing a much better job on that, but some companies are not. So I think instead of questioning why people are not showing up on the days, I think what managers need to think about is, are we creating enough incentives for people to come? Does the office architecture foster these collaborative discussions?

Are we scheduling these round the clock? are we organizing team lunches and dinners that incentivize people to drive down and be here? Thank you, Raj. Okay, Alison, come in on this point. So Raj, in effect, is saying, look, this is an evolution. We're figuring this out. It may not be perfect now, but there are best practices that he's seeing in businesses and companies, which suggests that this indeed is the future.

You know, and he makes a great point. If you study the history of work, what we mean to have work is always a voluble. I mean, initially people did all work from home. And then they did sort of rather abruptly get moved into the factory and then that made way to the office. So, I mean, I think he brings up a great point that we're always evolving. I just don't see evolving to hybrid. As I said, it sort of just becomes the worst of all worlds. And, you know, because your job is not just your tasks you do every day. It is contributing to culture. And it is often mentoring and young people or even championing them. I mean, that's really how you grow. and get ahead. And, you know, this can't, like, I sort of liken these sort of ideas that you're going to get all these social needs and collaborative needs met on an offsite. It's sort of like mating in captivity. You know, I mean, I have to admit, I've only ever worked in an office for two years of my career. And it was, like, the collaboration and the relationships weren't like when we necessarily, you know, were even informal meetings. It was around the coffee table. It was

convincing about how much we hated our supervisor or a coworker, all these little things that make humans human happen in the small moments and happen often in these rather mundane moments. Thanks, Alison. So, Raj, another antidote story from, you know, all of us dealing with this new post-pandemic reality is an assessment. Jamie Diamond was in the press recently on this, that this doesn't work for young people. It may work for companies, as you say, that are trying to attract and maintain top performers, but for young people who require acculturation, mentorship, all the things that, I don't know how old you guys are, but I'm in the 50s, I certainly benefited early on in my career often from being put into situations, as Allison described,

at in-person work that were, I don't know, at times uncomfortable, unexpected, but they all had a big impact on me and shaped my sense of what work. was and the purposes to which I wanted to dedicate my professional life. So, Raj, do you have any concerns here about a demographic analysis of this? Working for some groups, not others? Or do you think this hybrid work can be a blanket solution for every group and every community, if done properly? You said it in those last three words. It's all about if done properly. So here's my key point here. I think the evolution of hybrid work would need a new set of management practices. It's less about technology.

It's more about management practices. And on this issue of new hires and young people, I completely agree with you. And I'll tell you two or rather three best practices really quickly. So in my own research, we have studied whether virtual water coolers, where senior managers are mentoring people on Zoom. and these are not managers who directly work with these new hires. These are like really, really senior people in the organization, whether those virtual water coolers are effective.

And the reason this research was motivated by the following fact, that even when we used to go back to a physical office five days a week, there's research going back to Tom Allen in MIT in the 1970s, that are in-person conversations, water cooler conversations, were only within 25 meters of where we sat. And if there was a floor between the two people, much less likely so. If two people were sitting in different buildings,

you almost never had that moment that Allison was describing. And the implication of that is the interns, the new employees, were sitting around other new employees. And I've never heard an intern go to the C-suite, knock the door of an CEO, and say, let's have a serendipiter's conversation. But you can break that barrier online, and we organized these virtual water coolers,

and we found that they were effective, not for everyone, but for demographically matched new hires. So that's a new management practice. The other one I'll quickly mention is virtual communities of practice. So if people are living indeed all over the country, what the organization can do is find people,

senior people, who are living in Maryland around you or living in Virginia around you, and then organize these meetings, which can be very informed, you know, somewhere at a restaurant or a golf course where you get the mentorship. So I think we're going to see all these experiments of how to make mentorship work, and we'll all collectively learn in the coming years. Thanks, Raj.

So, Alison, Raj brings up an important point, which is this time is different, right? This time compared to, let's say, the 1917, 1918 global influenza pandemic or world wars or other big societal disruptions we've had in the past, this time we have a whole bunch of technology that is allowing for effective, productive work to occur outside of the traditional workplace. So if you take just the balance of that technology, the scale and the scope of it, apply some best practices to it, again, it is different this time. And that is a fundamental challenge to any concerted long-term return to in-person work? Yeah, I mean, technology is changing, but humans are still humans and relationships still evolve the way they always have. I mean, I think this is sort of a

reoccurring theme of our age is that, you know, we're trying, you know, technology always disrupts human relationships, but I don't know, I hear Raj describes, and I just feel sort of sad for young people of today, because you think about, yeah, you don't often see the CEO around the water cooler, but that one time you do and you make that common insight is what makes that relationship. It doesn't have to often, often, it just happens a lot. Or early in your career when, you know, jobs are kind of terrible. Skill development is not a fun process. What you have to do is often really tedious and it means a lot of long hours.

And what gets you through that is all of that close proximity to your coworkers going through the same things. They often become the best friends of your life. And sort of having the time with these people sort of, of pre-arrange, sort of like it reminds me of people whose childhoods are all scheduled playdates instead of sort of more natural interactions. I don't think it's good. I think it's leading to a lot of anxiety. And I don't know why we would pile this on by now saying at no point in your life you're interacting with people, most of your time is on the machines. And any times you do have

with people is pre-scheduled and preordained by some higher up. I think it just, technology is changing. And I have no doubt the nature of work is going to change, but it still doesn't change the way humans are. Hey, Monk podcast listeners, I wanted to let you know about our other weekly audio program. It's called Friday Focus. And hey, guess what? It comes out each and every Friday. It's half an hour long and it provides you with a masterclass on international events, all the big issues and ideas shaping our world. We've got that for you. Each and every Friday here at the Monk debate, simply access via our website, Triple W.com, monk debates.com.

Click on Friday Focus in the top right navigation. You'll get all the details or check out a sample of the program in the same podcast feed as the main monk debates podcast. I hope you'll join us for the next edition of the Friday Focus podcast. Now back to our program. Raj, I mean, what about serendipity? What about the unexpected? It does sound, Raj, that the vision that the hybrid,

pro-hybrid work group is asserting here is a very program, scheduled, regimented kind of regime of interaction, you know, a specific type of behavior online in front of the screen, other very scripted now specific behaviors in the workplace. And I guess to take this one step further, to what extent does that actually at the end of the day foster the goal of diversity? You know, is there a qualitative difference between diversity expressed online, diverse communities of workers from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, versus diversity in a physical workplace where people are actually interacting with each other, days, you know, multiple days during the week, maybe in a high-pressure environment?

Why isn't that type of diversity more meaningful? Why isn't that type of interaction with it's serendipity and the unexpected, more human, as Allison asserts. I'll offer two comments. So I completely agree. Serendipity is very important. And, you know, I'm the biggest champion for human connections and meeting face to face. But the point is that you can orchestrate both human interactions and serendipity in a hybrid

setting. So I'll give you two examples. The virtual water coolers that we have experimented with, these are serendipitous conversations. These are not Zoom happy hours that are programmed. And I don't like Zoom happy hours at all because the same group of extroverts show up every week and new people introverts don't show up. But in a virtual water cooler, the idea is that you are going to be randomly paired with three other people in the organization. And you don't know before you start the call who that might be.

You just might be lucky enough to talk to the CEO today. or in any case, if you're working in finance, you might talk to someone in marketing. If you are a new hire, you might talk to someone who's been here 17 years. And so there is some algorithm which is actually constructing this set of connections randomly. And so for that reason, it's serendipitous. And it's better than the conversations we have in the office, because in the office, like I said, you're only talking to people within 25 meters who are very similar to you. The second thing is when I studied off-sites, and I study this in the context of all remote companies that don't have any offices, but they do show up at off-sites every quarter.

And in one of the studies we found, like Allison was saying, that those small moments matter. The last thing I'll say is that, you know, given the set of tools we have, there's so much opportunity to experiment. So this is a white canvas. and, you know, I feel some companies will do it better, and they will be the disproportionate winners in attracting talent, and some companies will be catching up like any other big management practice change. So, Alison, just to build on this question of diversity, we are hearing from marginal groups, members,

some of those groups, that they are appreciative of hybrid work. They feel that they're experiencing less discrimination, less casual racism. There is something happening here that is resetting, you know, power relations and effective imbalances between communities, which they subjectively are not experienced in that physical workplace

that they're feeling less of virtually. Do you acknowledge that something positive is happening vis-a-vis marginal communities and groups and how they're being integrated or fulfilled within companies and within work on a hybrid model. Absolutely. And what they had to deal with in the office before is unconscionable. But I worry about their long-term job prospects under hybrid.

Just because, you know, I just said I just don't see as a stable equilibrium. The people who come in every day all five days a week and are present and are adding to culture are always going to be at an advantage. So, as I said, if someone's uncomfortable and they're coming in less or they live far away, maybe because they can't afford to live close to the office, they're coming in less. They will be at a distinct disadvantage and best likely to get promotions, to get raises, to be part of the community, and instantly feel left out or be siloed from core culture, which in the long run will be even worse for them and make them feel even more alienated. Thank you, Allison.

Okay, we're as we start to wrap up this debate, just a few more questions to hit you guys with before we go to closing statements. Raj, a lot of people are concerned about increasing surveillance, you know, in our lives, by the state, by social media. Some people have said, you know, this hybrid model, in fact, is not necessarily empowering of workers. It is subjecting them to a whole new set of technologies and regimes of workplace surveillance,

some of which are frankly brutal in terms of productivity and how people are expected to, you know, to meet expectations, you know, down to, you know, data points that I think would shock some people in terms of, you know, monitoring keystrokes or mouse clicks. Do you worry that in fact, Raj, there's a potential here for, you know, workers to fall into a kind of surveillance state that builds up orchestrated by companies around hybrid work

that disempowers them and ultimately leads to a sense of alienation of NOMI that usually comes with being the subject of surveillance. Yes, I'll react to that and I'll also address the point, which I totally agree that Allison brought up a very important point about presentism. So the concern that if I don't go enough to the physical office and don't show my face to my manager, I'll get a worse performance rating. So both that concern and the concern of surveillance is actually not a feature of hybrid. It's a feature of how we have measured productivity.

So one of the things that I have done with companies is to rethink how productivity is measured. And the short answer is productivity should be measured not based on the input of work, how long you work, how many days, how many hours, how many weekends, how many meetings, which honestly is just an input to your work. It should only be measured based on the output of work, the quality of work. And it should be completely objective to the extent it's possible. So what we've been doing is going task by task, job by job, and rethinking the KPIs and trying to make them free of presenties concerns and free of any subjectivity that can come from meeting your manager more or less. So that's the first point. On the surveillance point, again, I think it's a feature of bad hybrid. And the other example I'll give on the flip side is a set of companies which collect this data of how,

long you work through these tools. But don't ever share those data with the manager. The only team and the company that gets that data is the wellness team. And the wellness team will then send you a message if they see you up midnight doing calls for too many days. So this, again, I think the point I keep coming back to that there are going to be good hybrid models and terrible hybrid models. And I think like any other management practice, we need to learn from the best practices. Let's just end with a discussion on AI. And particularly, you know, what I think we're all kind of startled by is the seeming kind of computational power, the possibly transformative nature of these large language learning models like chat, GPT. You know, Alison, I saw that the founder of OpenAI

recently, maybe in an unguarded moment in an interview, said basically that the next iteration of CHAT GPT, number four, that could be out in a matter of months, would, quote, do everything that a remote worker does for your company right now. We've talked about throughout this podcast about how technology is disrupting and in some ways has created hybrid work. Do you think chat GPT and the arrival of large language learning models could spell another revolution, another transformation that maybe itself is a direct kind of a threat or assault on hybrid work? Yeah, I mean, if I were starting my career now, that's why I would be building up skills that are AI proof, which is sort of said very good interpersonal skills, being present,

adding to community. Like I was talking to her friend of mine the other day, even about this debate, and she was excitingly showing me this new article. They're called New Color Workers. It's people who don't necessarily have a college degree, but do sort of high-end administrative tasks, and what a large part of their labor force they are. And she's listing this off to me, and I'm like, those are all things AI can do. So, I mean, I'm excited, and I think like any other technology, it will definitely improve the human experience to make us more productive. But there's going to be a lot of messy disruption along the way, as there has been in the past. And if you can do your job remotely, AI can probably do your job. So you really want to think carefully of, do you

want your job just to be defined by the tax you're getting done or these sort of more fuzzier soft skills that only humans can do? So, Raj, you're at Harvard. You're at the business school there. You must be having wide-ranging discussions about chat GPT and what it means for the workforce, for the economy. What are you hearing? What are you learning? And I guess are you concerned at all? Because there does seem to be something intuitive in what Sam Altman, the founder of open AI, is saying here that if you are working remotely, there's a lot of functionality, a lot of productivity that you may be creating that could be subject very soon, much sooner than many of us thought, to automation in the same way that blue collar workers have faced now waves of automation through

robotics and warehouses and driverless, you know, coming of driverless cars and trucks, that automation is now coming for the creative class, for white-collar workers. And if you are working remotely, your job, do you think, Raj, is more at risk than if you're in the office building social capital, creating deep networks of learning and collaboration that can't easily be replicated by the likes of OpenAI? So two or three comments here. So first of all, I disagree with the comment that remote workers are the only ones that do codifiable tasks. That's the implication of that statement.

There are companies where the entire company, including the CEO, is working remotely. These are the all remote companies like GitLab or Zap or Zapier or Automatic or Seek, and I can keep going on and on and on. but just on the question of whether these open AI tools will take over our tasks, I've studied that to some extent. In my sense is in the immediate term or even the medium term, I don't think that's going to be a huge concern for two reasons. So first of all, I completely agree with Allison and you that soft skills and investing in soft skills

is going to be a huge, huge priority for the workforce of the future. But even in our more knowledge-intensive tasks, what I found in my experimental research is that machine learning and AI cannot substitute for humans for two reasons. The first reason is something that is captured in the adversarial machine learning sort of like research stream, that if there's a human on the other side of the task, think about insurance claims processing, where people are not truthful about what they write on a claim of. or resume sorting where people might overclaim their achievements, then you need a human on the other side to discount for those pieces of text. But the other reason is that domain knowledge is often only developed through a process that's been called absorptive capacity building or rummaging. And that is something that humans can only do through hours and hours of practice.

And if the current state of rummaging is not reflected in the training data of the past, then machine learning will give you a very faulty prediction. So in short, I think soft skills are going to be important and domain knowledge and the fact that we're going to deal with humans in many of our jobs will make sure we won't lose our jobs. Thanks, Raj. You've been listening to our debate. Be it resolved. Hybrid work is here to stay. Well, let's go to closing statements. I'm going to ask you to come up first, Allison. what are the final thoughts, ideas, concepts that you want to leave our listeners with in this fascinating conversation? Yeah, I mean, I don't think any of us know what work is going to look

like in 10 years and 20 years. I mean, as I said, work has been evolving with every technology from, say, the Bronze Age or, you know, since we started, you know, doing agriculture. But I don't see it going to hybrid, which in some ways is said is just the worst of all worlds. And, you know, it sort of undermines coordination, which was really largely the purpose of offices. And it just sort of makes things even more difficult. A recent survey found 80% of human resources executives reported that hybrid is proving to be just too exhausting for employees, because often, as you said, they come into the office and no one else is there, or everything has to be a prearranged when they go in, and then they lose the flexibility. It just doesn't make, it just, I understand that technology

is making new things possible, but we as humans aren't really. sort of getting what we need fully by technology, especially sort of in a world where we have a lot less of institutions we believe in. So, as I said, feeling part of a culture, coming together is ultimately what an office is doing for people. And it has a lot of externalities that we really can't yet quantify. And I don't think people are going to want to give up on anytime soon, particularly bosses. And that's one of the reasons, as I said, they know their business. I mean, we're academics. We study this. But bosses know what works for their company. And they want everyone back for a reason.

Thanks, Allison. Raj, we're going to give you the last word in our debate today. Be it resolved. Hybrid work is here to stay. Wrap this debate up for us. Yeah, so first of all, I'll agree with Allison that the future of work is evolving and it will continue to evolve. I feel there will be good hybrid models and terrible hybrid models like anything else in

the world. And we all need to learn from best practice. I'll say that we should not, I have a huge amount of respect for. in-person interactions and social connections that need to be built through those interactions, mentoring and collaborative activities. But we should not confound the office as the only place that can happen. There's a company in Japan which is organizing these team meetings in railway stations because that's where it is most efficient for people to come and meet. There is a company in the US which is renting out ranches all over the country because it's more fun and you can go and cook

a team lunch together. So we don't have, I worry about the future of the downtown. And, you know, I think city planners and architects really need to think about why anyone wants to drive down to a downtown anymore. But I think we'll meet. We'll meet in different ways. We'll meet in different places. We'll meet in different times.

And there's some companies which will do this much better. And we'll all learn from those experiments. Thank you so much, Raj. And thank you so much, Alison. This is a thoughtful, far-reaching debate. touched on so many of the issues and ideas that I hoped that we would explore in our time together with both of you. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you so much for coming on the program today. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants,

Ray Chowdry and Allison Schrager. If you have any questions or feedback on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Also a reminder that on this very same podcast feed, you can get a sample of our weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. If you'd like to sign up for the full-length editions of each and every Friday Focus program, please consider becoming a donor to the Monk Debates for as little as $25 a year, 50 cents an episode. You get to tune into a masterclass on the big issues and events transforming our world each and every Friday on Friday Focus. You can do that right now on our website, triple-w monkdebates.com. Look for Friday Focus in the top right navigation.

Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. The Monk Debates podcast is mixed by Adam Karsh. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five. five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.