A Microsoft executive has urged workers to “actively fight back” against efforts by businesses to force them back to the office.

Lucy Cooper, Head of Customer Innovation for Europe at Microsoft, argued that returning to daily commuting would negatively impact women and young people. Cooper added that rather than using the stick of forcing people back to the office, businesses should instead focus on the carrot of “encourag(ing)” employees to return.

Cooper said:

Flexible and remote working benefits single parents, young people, people who have an a-typical work or life environment. We need to be really careful before we disenfranchise those groups. We have to actively fight back against the rhetoric we are hearing and try and find a new model to help the remote, flexible, hybrid work environment. We want to encourage these people to be able to turn up and be as valuable as they possibly can.”

Cooper’s comments, which she stressed were a personal opinion and not representative of Microsoft, were delivered at the MindGym HR summit in London.

Microsoft currently adopts a hybrid working model with employees expected to be on-premises for at least 50 percent of their workweek unless they have special permission.

The Challenge to Hybrid Working as the New Normal

The world had to adjust to the realities of remote working when the COVID-19 pandemic spread in early 2020. Some businesses inferred from the experience that there were long-term employee health and productivity benefits of a remote or hybrid working model — enabled by platforms such as Teams, Webex and Zoom. Many organisations decided to preserve the policy, and hybrid workplaces have become the new normal.

However, some businesses have attempted to return to varying extents of on-site work, believing collaboration suffers when employees work remotely. This has been especially notable in financial services and banking. JP Morgan, BlackRock and Lloyds are three prominent financial businesses in the news recently for revamping their hybrid working policies.

JP Morgan asked its senior bankers to return to the office five days a week in April, while this week, BlackRock released a memo asking all staff to be on-site four days a week starting this autumn. During its recent annual meeting, Lloyds was criticised by staff for revising its flexible working model. Robin Budenberg, Lloyds’ chairman, said the changes were part of a policy scheme.

How do Businesses “Encourage” Employees to Return to the Office Rather Than Force Them?

Cooper’s comments about encouraging employees to return to the office echo one of the critical challenges for businesses building a successful hybrid working model in 2023 — to make the office a magnet, not a mandate.

Many UC vendors are innovating technology to produce seamless working experiences and collaboration — whether on-site, remotely or on the go. Naturally, the magnet v mandate question is as relevant to their own flexible working policies as it is to the customers they’re selling their goods and services to.

The subject was debated at this year’s Enterprise Connect, where UC Today spoke with several experts about the topic.

Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, described hybrid working as a “disaster” in 2023. “Companies don’t know how to implement hybrid work,” Kerravala said. “I know the theory of ‘make the office a magnet, not a mandate,’ but most people in UC I talk to, their companies have mandated it.”

“People have to come in for the right reasons,” Kerravala continued, “but companies are still struggling with what those reasons are. If you’re coming in to just sit on your Zoom calls, don’t come in.”

Craig Durr, Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research, told UC Today that this current debate reflects a period of structural change: “I think what’s transitioning right now is that people are embracing the idea that you’re removing the friction from people trying to find each other. They’re coming into the office after being given reasons for coming in.”

Durr believed that tangible incentives are the best route for attracting people to the office and for fostering a positive working environment in general.

“People come into an office to do a thing called work, and that work used to involve a specific idea (of place),” Durr expanded. “‘I have a lab, I have a desk, I have someplace to go to,’ and now they have work to do with the idea of people. ‘I need to come in to have this meeting with X, I need to see them in person,’ or ‘I need to do something being around this team to create this outcome or product.'”



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