The cost of flex work? Lower pay growth

Flexible working has come at the expense of pay rises

An extensive survey of 2500 UK firms has delivered significant insight to the state of contemporary working and a clear prediction of our medium term future.

The report by CEPR, a non-partisan think tank suggests that most firms believe that the current state of flexible working is now here to stay.

For all the worry of productivity - best articulated by the ‘productity paronoia’ coined by Microsoft in fact most hybrid workers demonstrate higher levels of productivity than fully onsite workers. The report finds that:

‘The relationship suggests that for each extra day a firm’s average employee works remotely, that firm’s productivity is around £15,000 higher.’

It’s worth emphasising that this is correlative data (not showing a causative relationship). Those with information-based jobs demonstrate higher levels of productivity than those in retail or hospitality jobs.

From workers’ perspective it is the wage data that is most valuable. The report found that the greater the flexibility offered to workers, the lower the pay growth in the last 12 months

This represents a win-win for firms: home working is popular with employees and is cheaper to sustain. Not ideal for the rest of us trying to pay soaring bills though…

Read the full report

• A survey by Gartner found that high performers are the first to leave when firms enact a Return to Office mandate:

• Do you find the noise of the office one of the biggest turn offs of going in? You’re not alone, one in five of us has significant sensitivity to noise

• On the subject of broken office environments, this study found that women perform less well in cold offices

• The IPPR released a report suggesting that up to 8 million jobs are at immediate risk from AI in the UK. The think tank asserts that the government has a choice to make on how they reward or incentivise the use of new technology. If AI is used in an additive way could add up to £306 billion per annum to the UK economy (13% of GDP). We are months away from a General Election. Elections are generally about a choice between the past and the future. (It’s why ‘Change’ is an almost consistently used motif in US elections). It will be interesting if any political party lean into this moment in our history

• Want a healthier relationship with your phone? Would you commit to one evening a week without it?

• I really enjoyed this pushback by The Economist on the recent spate of books criticising Gen Z kids:

• Demand for office space in the US remains catastrophically low, with vacancy rates at the highest level ever. With that context I find it intriguing to see what people in the sector are saying, this Reuters article quoting one real estate firm saying ‘recovery to prior usage is unlikely for years’. It’s astonishing that they think demand is going to come back. When you’ve always seen the tide come back in I guess you stand at the shore waiting for the pattern to repeat

• McKinsey are offering poorly performing staff full pay, career coaching & CV help while they search for jobs elsewhere - whatever happened to just paying workers a severance?

• Commuting full-time to the office and buying lunch would cost the average worker in London almost 10% of their pay, but only 6% in Scotland

• I really enjoyed this episode of Frances Frei’s Fixable podcast offering unsolicited advice of how Boeing could fix their culture. It includes discussion that ‘organisations are perfectly designed for the outcomes they get’ - meaning that your company became the way it became because of decisions that leaders made.

• I briefly featured in Helen Lewis has left the chat in a fascinating episode about Slack and workplace messaging

• A great Zoom background (Be surprised when colleagues who aren’t Extremely Online don’t recognise it)

I suspect there are a lot of readers who are Black Belt in the area of Employee Experience and how it differs from Employee Engagement, but I still hear plenty of people who express uncertainty and confusion about these themes.

I first spoke to Emma Bridger, who is the author of a well respected book on this topic and the founder of the EX Space, a learning community focussed on raising the bar in the Employee Experience field.

Then I picked the brains of Melanie Wheeler who leads People Communications at Sutherland, a firm widely recommended to me as outstanding in Employee Experience.

Listen: Apple / Spotify / website

Make Work Better is written by Bruce Daisley

Bruce’s first book The Joy of Work was runner-up as CMI Management Book of the Year. His second book, Fortitude, rethinking resilience, was described by the Financial Times as the ‘best business book of the year’.

Bruce works with organisations tackling themes of workplace culture with leadership teams and beyond. In the last few months He’s completed assignments on culture with Google, LVMH, Microsoft, Chanel, Ubisoft, Specsavers, ITV & lots more. Drop him an email for a chat or check out his website.

Explore the 200 episodes of Eat Sleep Work Repeat, an Apple Podcasts chart-topper on workplace culture.

The Workplace Trends for 2024 deck is still available. It’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times. Access it here.

Thank you to LinkedIn for making me a Top Voice this week. Really appreciated!