Summary
Julia Hobsbawm explains why hybrid work is here to stay and why organisations cannot return to pre-pandemic models of office life. She argues that the pandemic exposed long-standing dysfunction in work and triggered a cultural shift in how people think about autonomy, wellbeing and purpose.
Hobsbawm introduces the idea of the “Nowhere Office” to describe a transitional phase where work is no longer tied to a single place but not fully remote either. She explains why hybrid work must be designed intentionally, why it cannot be one-size-fits-all, and how HR leaders can humanise work by focusing on trust, flexibility and realistic change rather than forcing a return to old norms.
10-minute watch
In March 2020, millions of people around the world left the office and began a new way of working. Nearly two years later, while some are drifting back to the office, work has changed for good. Gone are the days of the traditional 9-5 office life. The genie is out of the bottle and work expert Julia Hobsbawm is adamant it isn’t going back in.
“The pandemic has lifted the lid on a lot of latent desires that workers, and indeed the c-suite, have to be human in a machine age – to have a life, to have space, to be with your families or to do your washing and also to have colleagues, also to have a community in a workplace,” she says. “And the Great Resignation is people rejecting the idea that work was fabulous and doesn't need amending.”
With some 40% of workers in developed economies classed as knowledge-based, service sector workers – and this being the fastest growing sector of workers in the world – it’s a profound change that employers will have to address. But it’s not easy to navigate. There is no one-size-fits all answer. However, says Hobsbawm, the offer of hybrid working in a meaningful, manageable way will be “part of the allure to attract and retain workers in the way that perhaps pay and perks and job titles and travel used to be”.
Drawing on the thinking that underpins her new book, The Nowhere Office, in this video Hobsbawm discusses why employers should embrace this opportunity to reset work. This is a pivotal time when we can try to end the endemic stagnant productivity and stress crisis that predated the pandemic and tackle the issues that have long mattered to people and businesses: how to balance home life and work life, and how to cope with the cascade of technological opportunities and threats. She discusses hybrid haves and have-nots, why remote is not desirable for most organisations and why we are nowhere near where it's all going to end up.
About Julia Hobsbawm
Julia Hobsbawm writes about work culture, work-life balance, and the age of overload. She is Chair of The Demos Workshift Commission and Founder and Chair of Editorial Intelligence. She writes for Strategy + Business, and for outlets including the OECD network. In 2021 she was listed in the HR Most Influential List. Her book The Simplicity Principle won Best Business Book of 2020 while Fully Connected was shortlisted for Management Book of the Year. She was awarded an OBE for services to business and regularly speaks to global audiences in government, public and private sectors. . The Nowhere Office is released on 17 February 2022 in the UK and 12 April 2022 in the US..
Transcript
Why the office was already broken
The reason why I think with absolute certainty actually that you can't put the genie back in the bottle and that when you do, when and if you're an organisation that compels your workers to being fully present all of the time, you're likely to experience more of the Great Resignation trend than otherwise. The pandemic has just lifted the lid on a lot of latent desires that workers have and indeed the c-suite have, to be human in a machine age – to have a life, to have space, to be with your families or to do your washing and also to have colleagues, also to have a community in a workplace.
The Great Resignation as a cultural moment
One of the things that's been surprising to everybody is that after nearly two years of the pandemic we're experiencing something called the Great Resignation and that means in practice that in America something like 3% of the workforce quit their jobs in one month in August – about 4 million people. And that may not seem like a lot but in fact it caught, if you like, the imagination because the Great Resignation is really a symptom of a certain kind of malaise that after the pandemic people aren't just rushing back to the office.
Yes they're missing certain aspects of camaraderie and work, and work from home is absolutely not all it's cracked up to be for everybody all of the time but the Great Resignation is a cultural moment. It's people rejecting the idea that work was fabulous and doesn't need amending, and there's some data to back that up.
So before the pandemic the World Health Organization declared stress as the health epidemic of the 21st century and in the EU alone 60% of working days lost are lost to stress and stress is, of course, highly related to work and the toxic workplace. Everybody knows what that means. In popular culture some of the best-watched programmes on television from Succession and Mad Men to The Office and The Parisian - at the heart of it is actually office disfunction. So nobody can pretend that the office was healthy, and let's just be clear, the office is a sort of byword now for modern work.
So I think that work does need to be re-imagined just to be completely clear. I don't want to point the finger and say there's one single source of blame, although anyone calling themselves a manager or a leader does I think have to be in the crosshairs but no, you can't say that work was working perfectly before the pandemic and I do think this is a fantastic moment to reset and to have the kind of Great Re-imagining as well as the Great Resignation or rather instead of the Great Resignation.
Why hybrid work is hard – and unavoidable
I think hybrid is here to stay, but I think there's absolutely no one-size-fits-all and in my book I refer to hybrid haves and hybrid have-nots. What I mean by that is not so much the frontline workers who don't have any choice and have to turn up for a fixed place of work. But I'm talking about the large swathe of knowledge workers and office workers whose primary machinery is a laptop, who do have some choice and agency and for them the hybrid have and have-nots will be do you work for an enlightened workplace which really gets the best from you and with you and acknowledges that some of the time you don't need to show up to an office.
Now that's really complicated. I called my book The Nowhere Office not because I advocate no office. It's to reflect this in-between nowhere place, this liminal transitionary moment where I think it's fair to say nobody is expecting the office to go back to exactly how it was before.
People have experienced too much change. They've experienced the savings of time and stress and cost on the commute. They've experienced the virtue and value of technology working pretty well. Not completely replacing face-to-face, not replacing the social capital benefits. There are many reasons to go into an office. But there are many reasons to argue that going into an office in the same way, on the same days consistently won't work for everybody.
And so hybrid is both here to stay, but I would say it's hard and I would say it's not one-size-fits-all. I'd also like to point out that quite a lot of commentators are getting muddled about the difference between say hybrid, part-time and fully remote. They're not the same. Fully remote is not desirable in the sense that it may work for very particular digital-first organisations but what you'll find is even they compensate, if you like, by having lots of digitally face-to-face meetings. So no one is advocating a situation where the human is taken away and the machines take over. Humans need to do what we're doing which is I hope having a perfectly reasonable conversation mediated through a screen. It would be different in person but it is possible technologically.
Fully remote, however, is not really an option unless you happen to work in a very specific industry and probably have no dependents, no caring responsibilities, no kids, no parents, no whatever. So hybrid is very different from fully remote. I think it will become the norm and I've called my book The Nowhere Office because we are nowhere near where it's going to end up because it's so complicated and we're definitely nowhere near to going back to full occupancy five days a week of offices. That I would say is over.
What I am saying with absolute conviction is that the office life, that is the 40% of workers in the developed economies who are classed as knowledge-based, service sector workers who are the fastest growing sector of workers in the world and there's over 3.3 billion people working, those knowledge workers have tasted through technology, through the pandemic, through the changing demographic of younger gen Zs, they've tasted freedom. You cannot put that genie back in the bottle.
And so what you're going to find, I think at the very least, is that the offer of hybrid working in a meaningful, manageable way - whether that's two days a week or three days a week or purposeful going into the HQ for very particular reasons: training, social, big ticket meetings. You're going to find that is part of the allure to attract and retain workers in the way that perhaps pay and perks and job titles and travel used to be. And that is a massive shift because that shift in power away from top down, the boardroom buying you with the brand and with the glamour and with the pay, and actually being bottom up, which is how do people want to live as well as how do people want to work. In other words, for me productivity is about purpose. It's about values. It's come into the space that the pandemic has opened up.
Winners and losers in the office
The point about the office is the losers, I think, are going to be big property conglomerates who simply won't be able to fill the space in the same way. A revolution is going to happen there in city centres and in big corporate office space. But the winners will still be those organisations that can provide stability, community, leadership, good governance to their teams. And those teams are going to want to get together in an HQ but they're just not going to want to get together all the time.
And the analogy I use in my book is that of the family or even the blended family. We get together for Christmas and holidays and high holy days and masthead events. The family, the organisational family, will come together for these masthead events into a space, which is a very different thing from everybody comes in on a Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday.
I think those countries that are larger and have by necessity geographically distributed workforces, or operate in different time zones, I think they're going to get the hang of this much more quickly.
How HR can humanise hybrid work
If I had a magic HR wand, which I don't and with the caveat that I'm a commentator and an observer rather than in the weeds of actually doing. So I totally understand any HR leader looking at this going, well it's all right for her. If I had an HR wand, however, I would say, first of all, admit what's not right. This is your moment to clear the cupboard. Admit what doesn't work, admit where the conflict is between what the board may be asking - maybe it's the timeframe that's unfeasible, whatever. Hear what's going wrong.
Come up with no more than three things over the next three months that would make a difference. And then set about having a very small team to help you realise those three things. Keep it small, keep it simple, keep it focused and keep it real.
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