Name: Davos 2022: Global leaders discuss the post-pandemic work day
Uploaded: 2022-05-26
Duration: 5 min 29 s
Description: From hybrid work to four-day workweeks.

Davos 2022: Global leaders discuss the post-pandemic work day

Leadership

Davos 2022: Global leaders discuss post-pandemic work day

uh there's been a cataclysmic change over the past couple of years in the nature of work. Uh in some ways we've had more change in the 1st 20 weeks starting in 2020 than we did in the previous 20 years. Some of my own research found that About one in six Americans was working at home at the beginning of that year and by the middle of it it was about 50%. And now that the pandemic, we hope it's beginning to receive many people are going back to their workplaces but I think work will never be the same. Some of these changes are going to be here to stay. Uh We're learning new ways to interact with each other. Some of them may be more productive but they're not affecting everyone evenly. Kind of the question, how do we bring the best of both worlds? Right. How do we bring that flexibility um that workers are looking for about how do we bring as well kind of that connectivity and those moments that matter. That is saying how do we bring that together? Because we need to nurture and bond those connections especially we need to force their you know employee culture. I mean clearly a number of companies have moved hybrid now for quite some time. So there is some some data and some learnings from it. Right. In terms of productivity, I was saying average many companies have experienced around 5% productivity increases. Um and it's clear that you know this hybrid model um work employees really value flexibility and that creates an increase of satisfaction, implementing a work my way strategy which is really responding to the desires of workers and our employees which is to have more time for their lives. And um you know, I think that's been a really good evolution, I would say unusual at first, but I think we can see that this is what our employees are looking for more control, more choice. I'd have to say though that the four day workweek discussion, you know, I am I see it as part of the desire so clearly expressed during the pandemic and will be expressed will be one of the lasting legacies of the pandemic that workers in general desire more flexibility. So they have more choice. The biggest one of the bigger challenges we see is the the never ending workday. Um The fact that workers are working longer hours during the pandemic than they did in the past. And how do you put some guardrails around that? Because if you have total flexibility, you're also always at work and there's nothing that can ruin your nice evening at home less than a phone call from your boss that you're expected to take. Which actually that is so the right to disconnect for us is really critical. The Aiello and W. H. O. Said that work was killing us. And for the last two years I've been running workshops with workers in kind of post industrial places. And what they ask for is not a four day week. What they ask for is a rethinking of the linear life with less work. So I think it's a necessity, but it doesn't go far enough because four days is a kind of may I say, a male solution to this problem because basically, it doesn't think about care because as we all know, care of our Children or our parents or just being with friends doesn't happen in four days. It happens around the day. So what we actually need to do is rethink the boundaries of time between work and care between learning. Rethinking the linear life, of course, doesn't mean just the work study kind of in blocks and maybe we need some new boundaries so that we do have time to play and to be and so on. A four day working week, a necessity a start. But I think not the picture, the remote work phenomenon has changed cities fundamental because people now can work from anywhere for a company located in a different city. And and and and and it it dislocates them uh physically from the place of work. So, cities are going to take advantage of that. Miami has been a huge beneficiary during the pandemic of the remote work phenomenon. As people have left areas that are higher in taxes to come to a city with Miami, which as was mentioned, had a much more liberal covid policy. Um and and and allowed people to dine at restaurants and do a variety of things. So once that all happened and people came to Miami, what they realized what they learned about Miami was that there was a critical mass. So we've moved and I said this at the last panel was on, we've moved about $2 trillion 18 months. And we've grown our venture capital pipeline by 400 I think to just frame the discussion about at home versus out of home because both of us are in the out of home business. We're also a bit in the in home business and in home business has been obviously going through a transformation that's been going on for a number of decades It took two decades for 50% of households in the us to have a radio that pushed people to stay more at home TVs did it in a decade. Internet and mobile phones that is in five years And now smart speakers did it in almost three. Let's see if the metaphors makes it in less than that, which means that the at whole market is becoming more central to our lives and more relevant for our our business people are shopping more online, entertaining more online, working more at home and certainly, you know uh consuming more at home. But what we see is the more that you consume and spend time at home actually psychologically there is an even bigger hunger and thirst for a human and social experience.