Why Working From Home Is a “Future-looking Technology” 01-07

Working from home gets a bad rap. Google the phrase and examine the results — you’ll see scams or low-level jobs, followed by links calling out “legitimate” virtual jobs.

But Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Nicholas Bloom says requiring employees to be in the office is an outdated work tradition, set up during the Industrial Revolution. Such inflexibility ignores today’s sophisticated communications methods and long commutes, and actually hurts firms and employees.

“Working from home is a future-looking technology,” Bloom told an audience during TEDxStanford, which took place in April. “I think it has enormous potential.”

To test his claim, Bloom, with co-researchers James Liang, John Roberts, and Zhichun Jenny Ying, studied China’s largest travel agency, Ctrip. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company has 20,000 employees and a market capitalization of about $20 billion.

The company’s leaders — conscious of how expensive real estate is in Shanghai — were interested in the impact of working from home. Could they continue to grow while avoiding exorbitant office space costs? They solicited worker volunteers for a study in which half worked from home for nine months, coming into the office one day a week, and half worked only from the office.

Bloom tracked these two groups for about two years. The results? “We found massive, massive improvement in performance — a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home,” Bloom says.

Two reasons led to that uptick: First, people working from home actually work their full shift. In the office, people might be delayed by traffic, take a long lunch with a colleague, or leave work early to let a repair person in. They are less likely to be on the clock for the full workday. 

Second, Bloom says, people at home are able to concentrate better. “The office is actually an amazingly noisy environment. There’s a cake in the break room; Bob’s leaving, come join. The World Cup sweepstakes is going. Whatever it is, the office is super-distracting.”

Also, his study found that resignations at the company dropped by 50% when employees were allowed to work from home. “Not only do the employees benefit (by working from home), but the managers benefit because they can spend less of their time painfully advertising, recruiting, training, and promoting.”

Bloom says the experiment led Ctrip to roll out a work-from-home option to all its employees. The company reported that it made about $2,000 more profit per person at home, Bloom says.

Bloom hopes this example helps kill the negative stereotypes of working from home. “For employees, they’re much more productive and happier. For managers, you don’t have to spend so much time recruiting and training people. For firms, you make far more profit. For society, there’s a huge saving of reducing congestion, driving times and, ultimately, pollution.

“There’s not much to lose, and there’s a lot to gain,” he says. 

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Predictions and Pitfalls In the Workplace: 6 Things to Watch For in 2018.. 12-16

As the year winds down, it’s a good time to reflect on the year that was and the trends reshaping the nature of our work and workplaces heading into 2018.

The main driver of this change? It continues to be the increasing scale and use of technological solutions to traditional and modern workplace challenges. As we progress beyond the advent of connected work apps and online platforms of the past five years, we’re preparing to move past other impactful organizational shifts — like the rise of remote workers.

All this is to say that 2018 is going to be another significant and very interesting year for both workers and their relationship with the workplace, and there are some key things those in the HR space should be aware of.

Here are my predictions on what will be making an impact in the year to come.

1 – The app and information overload will continue

Apps and SaaS online platforms have become as standard in our jobs as Microsoft Office, and while they have added some great new tools and abilities to our work day, they  are also increasingly making work more challenging. How? By giving us more programs to juggle and making information more scattered and difficult to retrieve.

Though this overload is hard to stop. We’re seeing the rise of a new solution that will greatly expand in 2018: the use of AI-powered assistants that can plug into the various apps and platforms we already use and retrieve the information we seek on our request.

With developments in natural language processing, we can now have a text chat with a helper bot and ask questions about diffuse information sources that it answers in plain English.

2 – Employee engagement efforts will get smarter  

Making employees feel more connected, engaged and happy at work has become a major priority for workplaces and their HR teams. We’ve seen a lot of enterprise firms getting flexible with their approach to employee work-life balance and adopting some of the more casual approaches to work and workplace rules seen in trendy tech startups.

This will continue in 2018, but at a higher level: efforts to engage employees will be given a major boost by smart new digital tools that let HR better monitor and react to engagement and office culture.

Underlying AI technology — like machine learning — is now parsing the language used on workplace chat platforms, and even in employee emails, to analyze employee sentiment for potential negativity, a sign of disengagement, and doing so on an office-wide level.

Expect this to become more widespread as new tools read more telltale signals. Researching whether such engagement tech is right for your HR challenges will be key in 2018.

3 – Diversity and inclusion will be an even bigger priority

This past year saw some major corporate scandals around diversity and inclusion, leading to more awareness and calls for change. There have been some major shots across the bow, and we’re seeing executive teams start to make some major reforms to modernize their workplace makeup and culture.

This will be a significant priority in 2018, not only in response to very public scandals but also because of the fact that more inclusive, diverse workplaces have been linked to higher productivity and are now recognized as better for innovation and new ideas (and more attractive to Millennial hires).

At the ground level, HR should be aware of the new set of equity tools designed to eliminate unconscious bias in recruiting practices. You can now have your job-posting text read by an AI bot who will suggest more inclusive language, and another will help screen resumes in a fairer way.
This is a fast-growing area, and one every HR department should be evaluating for fit.

4 – More human workplaces, more collaboration

Can smart tools using AI and machine learning make work better?

We don’t have a complete answer to that yet, but we are seeing the needle start to move with the application of AI software to areas with a direct impact on our workplace mood and empathy levels. This includes the physical design of our offices to be more human-centric, and assistants that can read our emails as we write them and let us know if we’re coming off as unprofessional.

At the same time, the importance of collaboration is rising as the micro-jobs that eat up our work day are automated by virtual assistants — tasks like booking meetings and drafting routine documents. With more time for creative, deep-thinking work, more value is being placed on employee collaboration, which is becoming a key factor in firm performance.

Both these trends are going to get bigger in 2018, and successful workplaces will want to stay on top of them.


5 – Remote workers are the norm, and can do more

Having an employee work from home once elicited some quiet skepticism around the water cooler, but those days are now long gone. Indeed, leading workplaces now treat remote work as a standard feature, one that can not only let employees be more productive, but opens the door to a truly global workforce that provides a deep bench of talent.

Working remotely was once a bit awkward in terms of work routines and processes being locked to a physical space, but the digital workplace has gone a long way to throwing off those restrictions. Come 2018, and beyond, this will become the standard, and expect a majority of high-performing firms to have a constant chunk of their staff permanently off-site.

Our workplace tech stack has adapted to this new reality, and as more software migrates to the cloud with files accessible 24/7, we’ll see remote working grow tremendously.

This will be further accelerated by the rise of smart tools giving remote workers new abilities that would previously have required a visit to the office, such as creating and exchanging routine documents and meeting with HR for basic work-policy questions and assistance. The range of remote applications will continue its exponential growth, and is something the modern enterprise must be aware of and willing to adapt to.

6 – AI will go mainstream and get REALLY smart at understanding data

In what will be a seismic shift in 2018, enterprises will no longer require a computer or data science degree to understand and use the baseline and deeper functionality that workplace AI brings. Non-specialized knowledge workers will see the immediate benefits of these AI-powered tools, from frictionless collaboration and information sharing to quick and accessible new insights.

Yes, 2016 and 2017 both paved the way for the arrival of mainstream AI, and now we’ve reached a turning point, thanks to the standardization of third-party apps and integrations that can be understood and augmented by AI. This will allow employees to do more at work using previously inaccessible data, yielding new discoveries. To pick one example, 2018 will usher in the era of business intelligence beyond the usual, allowing employees to derive success metrics at the click of a button and gain new perspectives.

It’s clear that 2018 is going to be another exciting year for employers, workers, and their relationship with the workplace. HR teams should be aware of the upcoming shifts and opportunities to unlock new value, and, understand how to properly use data, insights and emerging tech to supercharge everything from employee engagement and productivity to organizational structure and IT.

Happy New Year!

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Richard Branson: Hire From Within and Let Your Employees Work From Home 04-29

The serial entrepreneur reflects on lessons learned during his long and varied career.

Richard Branson leads a charmed life. Today, the founder of the Virgin Group travels the globe, running his multibillion-dollar empire from his numerous homes and hotel properties.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Branson said onstage Tuesday at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Imagination Day in New York City.

Undeniably. But this good fortune didn’t happen by accident. While Branson credits his business success to an innate “screw it, let’s do it” attitude — “my greatest fear,” he said, “is saying ‘no’ to something” — recklessness alone doesn’t build a global brand.

Most people can take risks. What’s made Branson the bonafide face of entrepreneurship is the ability to try something and, whether it’s a success (as with Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Records) or failure (Virgin Cola), dissect the experience for lessons to use in his next venture.

The through line so far? “I learned very early on in life that business is simply coming up with an idea that makes other people’s lives better,” he said. “Some of the best businesses come out of initial frustration with the way other people are dealing with you.” Virgin Atlantic was famously born on a whim back in 1984. When British Airways cancelled Branson’s flight to the British Virgin Islands, he rented a plane to fly there himself, filling it up with fellow disgruntled passengers. “The rest,” he said, “is history.”

While Branson dedicated most of his conversation to general reflections on life and career, he also shared a few concrete pointers he’s picked up along the way. Here’s his case for why entrepreneurs and business leaders should:

Travel. Particularly for young entrepreneurs, it’s important to visit other countries and experience other ways of life, Branson said. “See what’s happening in France, see what’s happening in England, see what’s happening in China.” If nothing else, the exposure to different strategies to everyday problems may get the creative juices flowing. “If you can’t come up with a great idea yourself, you’ll find there are other great ideas out there.”

Take notes. Steve Jobs’ legacy may have popularized a style of leadership based on the manipulation of weaknesses, but Branson takes the opposite approach. For him, a leader is someone “who will praise and not criticize” in order to “draw out the best in people.” Along the same lines, his version of leadership is based on the ability listen more than they talk.

On a practical level, this means taking notes. Because in this regard at least, Branson is a realist: “If you don’t write things down, how are you going to remember half the things the person told you?”

Hire from within. There are undeniable benefits to hiring an outside candidate as chief executive of a company. An external hire often comes with fresh perspectives and the ability to drive needed change, which helps explain why the practice at large public companies is on the rise.

Still, Branson tries to avoid it whenever possible. “We don’t often go outside,” he says. Yes, selecting from a company’s existing talent pool means that some boxes remain unchecked, but it also means you’re never exposed to a candidate with glaring, unforeseen weaknesses. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a morale play.

“The whole company will be pleased that you employ from within; they all have the chance to one day get the top job.”

Let employees work from home. When Yahoo controversially scrapped its work from home policy in 2013, it argued that requiring employees to come into the office each day would boost productivity and engagement. While the merits of this strategy are still up for debate, one thing is clear: Branson is on the opposite side of the issue.

On top of its existing work from home policy, in 2014 the Virgin Group adopted an unlimited leave policy. The overall aim is to provide “lots and lots of flexibility,” particularly for new parents.
Branson knows the importance of flexible schedules firsthand. Throughout his career, his policy has been to work from home — or homes, more accurately — whenever possible. By doing so, “the kids have literally grown up crawling at my feet.” He’s taken meetings while changing a nappy, and wants his employees to have the freedom to do the same.

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Marissa Mayer Is No Fool 03-10

Marissa Mayer Is No Fool

by Michael Schrage  |   

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Who do Yahoo's "work@home" telecommuting champions think they're kidding? Marissa Mayer is no fool. She didn't take over as Yahoo's CEO because the company was doing well; she came on board because the stumbling Internet enterprise was an underperforming underachiever that had lost its way.

So when Mayer decrees seven months into the job that she wants people to, you know, physically show up at work instead of telecommuting — or else — I'm pretty confident this reflects a data-driven decision more than a cavalier command. In all likelihood, Mayer has taken good, hard looks at Yahoo's top 250 performers and top 20 projects and come to her own conclusions about who's creating real value — and how — in her company. She knows who her best people are.

Let's be serious: if significant portions of Yahoo top performers were "stay@home" coders, testers and project management telecommuters, do people really think Mayer would arbitrarily issue edicts guaranteed to alienate them? It's possible. But that would imply Mayer hasn't learned very much about her company's best people, best performers and culture since joining last July. Most successful technical leaders I know avoid getting in the way of their best people's productivity. But what do leaders do when even very good people aren't being as productive as you want or need them to be? Challenging them to be better onsite collaborators hardly seems either unfair or irrational.

The logical inference to draw from Mayer's action is that she strongly believes Yahoo's current "stay@home" telecommuting crowd would be significantly more valuable to the company — organizationally, operationally and culturally — if they came to work. The crueler inference is that both the real and opportunity costs imposed by Yahoo's "work@homes" greatly exceeded their technical and economic contributions. My bet is that Mayer believes that "working@home" isn't working for Yahoo — in both meanings of that phrase.

Again, why should this surprise? Flailing companies shouldn't invest more in what's not working. The (far) more interesting counterfactual would have been a leaked memo declaring that telecommuters and virtual teams were — by far — the most agile, innovative and productive performers at Yahoo. Therefore the company would delayer its headquarters and remake itself as a virtual networked enterprise. If that had been true, Mayer would have been a different kind of teleworkplace revolutionary.

Then again, Mayer's Google background (and impact) suggested that she was predisposed to consider physical (co)presence as essential to digital innovation success as computational/design brilliance. After all, one key reason why Google invested so heavily in providing world-class victuals and dining experiences at the Googleplex for its employees wasn't health food benevolence, it was to keep people on campus working together. Google explicitly encourages and designs for onsite collaboration. Why would Mayer minimize what she had experienced as a critical success factor?

In fairness, critics such as Virgin's Richard Branson are not wrong when they assert the cultural issues here are arguably as much a matter of trust than facilitating collaboration. But trust cuts both ways. If a CEO authentically concludes that too many "work@homes" have not lived up to their side of the productivity relationship, then the call to return to the workplace could be interpreted as an invitation to rebuild trust. (That's nicer than simply firing them.)

Culture matters. Ultimately, turnaround CEOs have to make the very public choice around not just how best to empower people but how best to hold them accountable. I take Mayer at her word that she wants to promote the values of "collaborative opportunism" and "opportunistic collaboration" at the "new" Yahoo. That should be a leader's prerogative. I similarly don't doubt Mayer knows full well that there's no shortage of technology enabling high bandwidth, highly functional, high impact collaboration across time zones and zip codes alike. My bet is that, sooner rather than later, the truly productive/high impact employees with special needs will enjoy a locational flexibility that their lesser will not.

But, for the moment, this CEO has done what I always thought good CEOs were supposed to do: identify unproductive "business as usual" practices, declare them unacceptable and incompatible with her cultural aspirations for the firm — and then act. I completely understand why it makes so many employees unhappy. I'm sympathetic to the changes they're being told to make. But, on this issue for this company, my deeper sympathies belong to the CEO. 

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