Malcolm Gladwell: WFH is “not in your best interest”

It’s now been two and a half years since COVID-19 hit and transformed where and how office workers around the world work.

Ever since then, business leaders have been debating whether working from home is positive or negative for employee productivity and business bottom lines.

Leading proponents of returning to the office include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, and Morgan Stanley CEO David Gorman.

Solomon is well-known for describing full-time long-term remote working as an “aberration”, whereas Musk famously told Tesla employees that they must return to the office, or they should “pretend to work somewhere else”.

Another voice has joined these CEOs in disputing the data showing that while remote work is not a silver bullet, it has benefits for productivity and wellbeing.

During an episode of Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast, author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell stated: “It is not in your best interest to work at home. If you’re just sitting in your bedroom in your pajamas is that the work-life you want to live.”

Although he admitted that he was aware commuting is a “hassle”, not doing it means, in his view, that workers are missing out on connecting with their colleagues.

He noted that his audio company Pushkin has a high turnover rate. And the people that go “are the ones who are the most social disconnected from their organization” aka those who came into the office the least.

Gladwell believes the reason for this is that it’s “very hard to feel necessary when you’re physical disconnected”. “We want you to have a feeling of belonging, and to feel necessary, and if you’re not here, it’s really hard to do that”.

He emphasized that “you aren’t just doing this to get a paycheck”, and asks listeners “don’t you want to feel part of something?”

Steven Bartlett shares his views

In the podcast episode, entrepreneur Bartlett told Gladwell that he is preaching to the converted, and that he largely agrees with the journalist’s view.

Bartlett added that he has never recorded an episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast on Zoom (including during the pandemic), he explained this is because he does it to connect with people, not just for the sake of doing a podcast.

This ties in closely with his views on the importance of inter-personal connection in the workplace.

However, he believed that CEOs are scared to call people back into the office. They don’t want to rock the boat, or risk high attrition rates, particularly in the ‘Great Resignation’.

According to Bartlett, CEOs are often saying “do whatever you want”, without realizing the impact this has on company culture.

Bartlett shared that “culture has to be reverse engineered” by companies and leaders. He notes that this “do whatever you want” attitude is not how sports teams work.

Despite this view, Bartlett is clear that hybrid is the future. Companies must give employees some choice and freedom around when and where they work, but also note that “we’re a group of people who get together” in order to create that connection.

Bartlett noted that his teams plan to use the office culture as a perk when hiring.

Gladwell commented: “If you preferentially select people based on their desire to work in the office, [that’s a] nice way to build an office culture”. Bartlett retorted: “Those are the people I want to be with anyway”.

Ultimately, for Bartlett, employers must be clear on what their workplace culture is – and whether it involves the office or not.

The issue for Gladwell is that leaders are not successfully selling the office, and the value of in-person connection, to workers. “I really am getting very frustrated by leadership’s [failure] to explain this to their employees”.

The question now is what can companies do to persuade their workers to return to the office and benefit from that in-person connection?

Are perks like free pizza, more casual dress codes, or socials sufficient? Or do companies need to go further and start footing the bill for commuting costs? Just some food for thought for leaders who want to get workers back in; you have to make it worth their while.

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