Hopefully you haven’t gotten too comfortable in your home office/sofa, because according to one expert, remote work could soon be coming to a close.
Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn’s first chief HR officer, spoke with CNBC about the “post-pandemic” workplace and shared that it could be in companies’ best interests to return to a full-time, in-person office.
Cadigan explained that younger workers, particularly Gen Z and young Millennials who entered the workforce immediately before or during the pandemic, will need to embrace returning to pre-pandemic norms if they want to advance their careers.
“That 20 to 35, particularly the 20 to 29, 30-year-old age is really frustrated,” Cadigan told CNBC. “Their sense of commitment to an organization where they haven’t met people in person, they haven’t been around, is much less than the people who are spending time together as we were before.”
Remote work has changed workplace culture and exposed many problem areas that need to be corrected, including work-life balance, and mental and emotional health expectations. However, a major issue remote work has caused has been disconnection between employees. The lack of team relationships has been one of many factors contributing to the Great Resignation.
To counteract this, Cadigan shared that younger workers in particular will need to return to the physical workplace in order to nurture important relationships with fellow teammates and superiors. He believes that intentionality is key.
“It’s really, really hard to [connect] in a remote capacity, and that may be a big forcing function that’s going to force organizations to realize we need to get this younger demographic together for them to feel more committed and for them to feel excited about being part of the team. It’s a big challenge right now,” he said.
In April 2022, only 34 percent of workers had returned to the office full-time. Many companies have considered a compromise for employees who don’t want to be in-person by offering hybrid options. The future of the workforce is still up in the air at the moment, but employees should be prepared for another shift coming fairly soon.
