Why the Future of Work Isn’t About ‘Going Back’ with Melissa Marsh

Melissa Marsh [00:00:00 ]:
And so I think what’s crossed the boundary in the place of the workplace experience technology is that more data is being collected than is being used to improve the experience for the employee. And that is what makes it feel unfair, manipulative, or otherwise problematic from an employee trust perspective is because we’re not using this technology in the ways that we could to actually build a better experience for people within in the space.

Frank Cottle [00:00:37 ]:
Alyssa, welcome to the Future Work podcast. It’s really great to have you here as a guest again, and I’ve enjoyed our conversations over time. Say you mentioned that we’re in the middle point of the evolution in the workplace, sort of between 2019 and today. What do you think is the next major step or stage that we’re going to be going through?

Melissa Marsh [00:01:06 ]:
Thanks. It’s great to be Back to the Future here with you. I’m sure you get that pun all the time. So, yeah, the observation I made, it actually originally came from being in lower Manhattan in 2011, 2012, 10 years after 9 11, and the devastating events that had happened there 10 years earlier. And when, when Covid happened. And we, we all transformed the where, when and how we work. And things were kind of totally shut down for a while. And I think New York City was one of the hardest hit locations in quite a variety of ways. I thought to myself, it’s going to take 10 years to be back to what we would have been, you know, without this unique moment happening, very similar to what had happened between 2001 and 2011 in the Tribeca Lower Lower Manhattan area. So that’s sort of the backstory of my observation. And that puts us right near right now at the 5 your mark of the past and the future, or the halfway point, as you say. And so what I mean by that and what some of my observations are is that, and this has been different in different places around the world, in different parts of the country. But speaking at least for the coasts of the United States, the Northeast Corridor and the east coast and the west coast, in terms of employment markets, in terms of workplace experience markets, those locations are at this midpoint. And what that means, from my perspective is we were out of the office for a long time. Some organizations have had a return to office mandate. Some organizations have determined that their solution is some. Some sort of long term hybrid. But maybe they’re even still figuring out what that is. And some organizations have determined, you know, to just completely embrace this moment and to think differently about how they use space as an organization. Maybe they are remote first and they’re spending their resources on things other than traditional real estate. Maybe they’re having retreats or events, maybe they’re spending more on video or benefits or other solutions. And so we have a range of ways that organizations have adopted the telework opportunity, but that’s not fully evolved. That even in itself is only at this halfway point and what I imagine in terms of the getting to the 10 year mark, we will really see cities in a new form, that those cities which are still currently experiencing relatively low office utilization rates will have less office space, more residential space, more mixed use space. And there will be a new type of vibrancy that comes into our cities. We’re not treating them as much as just these daytime destinations. And on the employer side of things, there will be a lot more clarity such that instead of many organizations feeling like they’re in this sort of tug of war about whether they’re an in office or a hybrid or a remote, they’ll have sort of gone through this puberty phase or these, this toddler phase. And organizations will have figured out who they are and what is their employment proposition from a location perspective. And they’ll be able to more clearly advertise that to their employees or to know which roles are on site roles, which roles are telework roles, et cetera. So it will feel less uncomfortable than it does right now.

Frank Cottle [00:05:38]:
Well, I think comfort is a big, a big issue that you’re, you’re addressing. And also you, when you started your, your commentary, you said back several times, back, back, back. Basically during the pandemic, the one of the phrases was back to normal, back to the office.

Melissa Marsh [00:06:02 ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:06:03 ]:
Okay. No, there is no back. There’s only forward. You know, time moves forward with time. So there’s only forward as, as we look at this process and it is a progressive process, I, I think you make an interesting distinction between the companies that mandate return to office and the companies which say, you know what, you’ve had a lot of freedom and you’ve been very productive. We don’t think that’s important. Overall, two big financial institutions within New York itself have this dichotomy of perspective going on. JP Morgan says, get back to the office. You know, Citibank says, yeah, you know, maybe not really. So same industry, same basic workforce. Two totally different perspectives on how to manage the workforce. The city doesn’t seem to be concerned with it. J.P. morgan seems to be concerned with preserving their culture and their productivity. I would posit that if you have to have people in the office, you don’t have a culture to begin with. That’s my personal view. Jamie Dimon might not agree with me on that one. If we’re in the middle of this, though, forcing people back, back to the office, is that really, is that really value you’ve always espoused, that you need to make the office so important to people, so desirable for people that they should want to go back as opposed to be forced back? Because forcing people to do anything really doesn’t seem to work historically.

Melissa Marsh [00:07:49 ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:07:51 ]:
How do we make the office so attractive? Everybody says, oh man, I gotta go there. And it’s not just culture.

Melissa Marsh [00:07:58 ]:
So I think there’s maybe three questions in there. One is this idea of back, and I appreciate you calling that out. I think that part of this discomfort is that there’s one group of folks that would like things to just go back to pre2020, that there’s another group of individuals in most organizations that are happy with the things that were accomplished and made possible through telework. And we also have to remember there’s five years of new people that weren’t even here for the other version. And in another five years, there’s going to be 10 years of people who weren’t here for the other version. And that’s a third to a quarter of our total employed population. Right.

Frank Cottle [00:08:45]:
So the genies. Genies out of the bottle, babe. I mean, that’s, that’s it. The genie’s out of the bottle. And I don’t think we’re gonna do that. I think there’s an old phrase that says, what are the seven most dangerous words in business?

Melissa Marsh [00:08:59]:
Do tell.

Frank Cottle [00:09:00 ]:
Because that’s the way we’ve always done it. And so we, we are going to go forward. And I think you’re generational issue there is one of the challenges going forward is in our company, we have five different generations of worker right now. So every generation of worker in our company at least has different needs or different perspectives of their needs, different moments in their life. How do you roll all that together?

Melissa Marsh [00:09:33 ]:
Yeah, well, I’m going to go around your question again and get back to this word back, because I want to talk a bit about data and measurement and quantification in the office, which, you know, has always been an important topic to us. And one of the things that concerns me is that many organizations now have a means of measuring occupancy, whether that’s badge swipe or show up rate or desk booking, and even not just the desk booking, but did the person show up to their desk Booking and that is much more fine tuned and much more comprehensive, meaning at every location and in every building than it was pre2020. And so we’re seeing organizations with a return to office policy or a back to office policy that in the end is actually more restrictive than pre 2020when it was more of a Lassie as fair environment. The people who needed to telework did. The people that didn’t need to telework came into the office. A lot of organizations didn’t even have a remote work policy. And as you know from being a researcher and a student of workplace for so many years, we saw typical attendance rates at, you know, 60, 60, 70% of office capacity on a good day. And now we’re seeing organizations actually mandate something that never had existed, at least not since the late 90s, early 2000s when telework was pretty broadly accessible in knowledge work and in corporate America. So we were at this risk that we’re not just going back to 2020, we’re going back to 1990 or 1980 and applying a sort of industrial era or a manufacturing sensibility in the physical work environment. We’re going back even further in time than we think we are with some of these policies.

Frank Cottle [00:11:55 ]:
I agree with you. We’ve seen products come out heat mapping facially recognizing individuals and then heat mapping their movement throughout the office, Orwellian redefine and, and things of that nature. I honestly don’t think people, individuals certainly I’m not, are comfortable with that type of observation of our, of our work structure because it doesn’t really, it tells where you are, but it doesn’t really tell how productive you are. And the productivity of remote work or hybrid work is probably even more productive. Has been proven to be equal or better than a full office environment continuously. Types of work that we do that are better done quietly on your own rather than in the office place where there could be a lot of distractions. Culture can be very distracting.

Melissa Marsh [00:13:03]:
So you mention the work of my organization in making the places that we want to be sticky and making them desirable. The place that you want to go. And that’s really front and center of what we do. And we’re often looking at the places that aren’t offices as the inspiration for that. You know, how can the office be more like, you know, the yoga studio or you know, an arts and crafts project with your kids or, you know, any other place that people really want to be on their, for their own reasons. And on that point of data collection, the way we’re using data processing and maybe even some, some AI features in, in the workplace experience experience. One of the rules that we’ve always followed is if someone is getting something for the information they’re providing, then it’s going to be worthwhile. And if someone isn’t getting something as an individual for that information being collected on them, there’s going to be a legitimate point of resistance. So you would not stand on a revolt. Right?

Frank Cottle [00:14:19]:
Right.

Melissa Marsh [00:14:20 ]:
So you wouldn’t stand on a street corner, you know, displaying your location status to the world around you or to the Internet if it were not for the purpose of getting an Uber or a Lyft ride. But if by displaying your location you get a ride pickup more quickly, then definitely you’re going to do it. Right. And so I think what’s crossed the boundary in the place of the workplace experience experience technology is that more data is being collected than is being used to improve the experience for the employee. And that is what makes it feel unfair, manipulative or otherwise problematic from an employee trust perspective is because we’re not using this technology in the ways that we could to actually build a better experience experience for people within the space.

Frank Cottle [00:15:17 ]:
I would agree with that. You know, and it’s not just place that’s the challenge these days. And we’re talking about New York a lot right now. It’s a great benchmark for us to discuss sort of the extreme of all issues. But commuting. Commuting itself is a terrible challenge. You mentioned earlier the redesign of cities, the reduction of office space and the increasing of, we’ll say residential and mixed use space to support the residential. How do you think redeveloping cities is going to play out? Because then the commuting issue goes away. You live where you work. The 15 Minute City Fantasy, if you will, all of that. Do you think that that’s something that we’ll actually be able to achieve or do you think it looks good on the drawing board but it’s not really going to happen?

Melissa Marsh [00:16:16 ]:
Yeah, I mean, certainly some places are able to achieve it. We’re certainly more accessible cities in Europe and other places around the world. I think a lot of the concern has come, it’s not just the design of the city from an accessibility perspective. When I was younger, had an opportunity to live in London, lived in New York, walkable city that I could walk to work and everywhere else was job one in my decision making. And you know, once you need a, once you need a apartment, that’s for four people instead of one. Person, the, the math changes on that 15 minute city opportunity. So I think it’s important to keep in mind that, that that 15 Minute City is both a geometric criteria as well as a financial criteria. And one of the problems of our cities is the centralization of office space in relation to the centralization of residential space. And you can’t have, you know, any space you’re using for one thing, you’re not using it for another thing. And so it’s, it’s a real, it’s, it’s a real bare to cities to have this profoundly under utilized space. In the case of office that is sitting on real estate that literally could be used for other things. But in terms of what’s possible and can we get to this mark of a new type of city or a reinvigorated type of city that has this blend? I think places like maybe New York and London, for example, had something in the 90s that was much more diverse than what they had in the 2000s or 2010. 20. This summer I had the pleasure of having my son as an intern in my organization. We did a couple of business trips, including a trip to Seattle, trip to Chicago for various real estate events. And it was so wonderful to see some of these cities through his eyes. And one of the things that occurred to me was the potential impact of e bikes and e scooters in changing the shape of our cities in relation to public and private transportation. So where we used to think of a 15 minute city being what we can walk to in 15 minutes, and if you didn’t have a public transportation infrastructure, meaning buses and trains that could also get you places in 15 minutes, you really didn’t have a viable city. And now, at least for people who are young and physically able to get on that e bike, to get on that e scooter, you’ve just changed the 15 minute city by three or seven or tenfold in relation to the geography because a 15 minute scooter ride is a totally different distance than a 15 minute walk.

Frank Cottle [00:19:28 ]:
And so I agree with that fact. It’s funny, during the pandemic, my wife, who’s, my wife and I are ardent cyclists and my wife’s gym closed down. She said, well, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta work out. I, I and she’s a real workout freak. And, and it, and it really irritates me. We’ve been together since 1969, she’s gained six pounds. It was ridiculous. But so working out is like her thing. And so she said, well, I’m gonna buy An E bike and she bought one that’s a pedal. Like you have to pedal it to make it work. It doesn’t have a throttle.

Melissa Marsh [00:20:15 ]:
Not a motorcycle.

Frank Cottle [00:20:16]:
It’s not a motorcycle. No, she had to pedal it. And we live on the beach. And so riding one way is great, but riding the other way when the wind is in your face at 15 miles an hour in the afternoon is entirely different. Well, it was a 21 mile commute each way, so she was commuting 42 miles a day on her bike. Okay, she loved it. She never better in her life. She looked forward to going to work, but because she enjoyed that commute. So her 15 minute city was a little longer commute than that. But it proves your point and I think it’s really, really true. I started doing the same thing on a smaller radius around town. I would go to my gym, I would go to the grocery store, et cetera, writing in order to get the exercise I missed because of it. So we do that. Not everybody has that luxury weather. You know, New York has interesting weather. Let’s.

Melissa Marsh [00:21:14 ]:
There is snow on the ground right now. Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:21:17 ]:
You know, it never stops raining in Seattle. So you know, you do have weather considerations. But people do get used to that because I know there’s a big commuting change on cycling in particular in London where the weather, you know, kind of damp overall. So that’s, that’s certainly it. If the future is flexibility. And I know one of the major HR companies in the world that does contract work, for every Fortune 500 company that exists, they get a five times higher return on an employment ad when they include the remote work opportunity within that offering times as many people look at that ad. So if I’m going to win the battle for talent, what do I want to do? If I want the smartest, brightest, most enthusiastic workforce, aren’t I going to create a hybrid environment at least or have some sort of remote or flexible work program? Doesn’t that just make sense if I’m going to be the most productive company possible and have the best return to my stakeholders and shareholders?

Melissa Marsh [00:22:47 ]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, I’m an advocate for flex as well as a cup more than half full kind of person. And you know, we were working with organizations 20 years ago, long before COVID or you know, mass telework or any of these hybrid things were the reason. But really just because even without that, there was already a very significant logic to expanding your marketplace from a human capital and from a location perspective, it also aligns with so Many things that are part of our modern families, right? We, several generations ago, you typically had one person who was the breadwinner of a family or you had one primary and one secondary, right? You had one person who was a scientist who had five different cities that they could potentially work in in the entire country. And you had one person who was a teacher or a nurse or something that could, could go anywhere and be transferable and applicable. And now you have a generation with Gen X who are in their family making years and their center point of their earning years one of the most educated generations. And when you have an education that has gotten you to a certain kind of career expectation, it’s pretty hard to find one geography that is going to serve two people’s career trajectory. And so if, if you’re not prepared to live across the country from the other side of your couple, you need at least one of those people to have the option of a work anywhere strategy. And maybe even better if it’s, it’s two people that could have a work anywhere strategy. So I think again to your point about going back to how things were, it’s so important that we, we remember all of these other things that have continued to change meantime, right? We have that workforce that is five years younger. Our zoomers and our boomers are all five years older. And in another five years all of that has going to be evolved another 10 years since 2020. So I think it’s really important to think about all of the aspects of the life and the livelihood that we want to support for our employees that are also served by this flexibility. It simply not a conversation of do I want to be in the office or do I not want to be in the office.

Frank Cottle [00:25:42 ]:
That said, how does, how does a business plan for that effectively aside from say whatever, you know, I know in our own company we have almost a whatever we have with offices and people come to the office, but we also allow for flex and complete remote really comes down to an agreement, almost a social contract between the worker and the management of how they’re going to be the most productive. And we also assess, we say, well you know, we can make this person hyper productive if we force them into the office every day, but then their lifestyle is going to suck and we’re probably going to lose them in two years. So we have to balance out productivity against longevity because losing your corporate knowledge brain drain is terribly costly. Yet people will leave a job today if it doesn’t meet their lifestyle requirements. It’s not just their career requirements, their career is part of their lifestyle, not their lifestyle is part of their career. Seeing that transition generationally, how does a company plan for this?

Melissa Marsh [00:27:03 ]:
I think that planning is one part of it. I think that building up this culture and the personal connections is really the thing that matters. So if you retain that employee that has significant organizational knowledge, but they’re not connected to a community of people they want to share that organizational knowledge with, it’s not going to matter. So, as we all know, relationships are number one. And it really does take a different skill, different kinds of work to build relationships digitally than to build relationships in person. I mean, you can even think of how our dating world has changed since you might meet a future romantic partner partner at the office or at a restaurant or at a bar, or at a, you know, blind date with a friend versus, you know, online dating. And it’s a completely different skill set. It’s different ways of connecting people with people. It’s shifting some of our, our physical activities to, you know, more of a brain stretch on emotional sharing, finding ways to ask deeper, more interesting questions, making sure to get on the call early and talk to people before you ju into the business. I think there really hasn’t been enough time spent on transferring our physical cultural components into digital cultural components so that we really are able to build those connections. And I think that many organizations may be doing exactly what you observe, holding onto that tenured person to avoid brain drainage. But the brain drain is actually coming from lack of engagement and interconnectivity with the people who could benefit from learning from them. So I think we need to push much, much harder on making those connections and not to forget that while returning to an office in a traditional capacity is not the trajectory we recommend, being in person together, going on hikes or retreats or runs in the wood, or, you know, goofy trust falls or, you know, having a drink on a dance floor. All of these things are things that are really important to connecting humans to one another. And we need to have these shared experiences. Maybe just not in a traditional form of the office.

Frank Cottle [00:29:47 ]:
Well, you know, it’s funny. We’ve always said for decades, I guess now, that you don’t know your client well enough or your co worker well enough, unless you know the name of their dog. And it really comes down to that, you know, trust. You’ve mentioned trust several times in all of your conversation today. And building a relationship of trust, no matter what it is, whether it’s selling something, a personal relationship, business relationship going both directions, is probably the hardest in its pure form the hardest thing that we as humans can do. You can do it digitally. I sent you some information before this, this, this call. I said the information said, here’s what we’re going to discuss. You said, oh, I didn’t get that. But I trust you, Frank. Okay. We’ve never, we’ve never met in person. We’ve met digitally on and off many times, but we’ve never met in person. And yet we’ve created a relationship of trust. Absolutely. And that is so important. I think people do need to recognize, though, and you and I are perfect examples of it. You can do that digitally?

Melissa Marsh [00:31:13]:
Certainly.

Frank Cottle [00:31:14 ]:
You really can do that digitally. It can actually be an enhancement because you, you’re, you’re able to see, to really focus on what you’re, you’re, you’re doing sometimes as opposed to what’s going on around you. A trust fall, really? I’m not there. Two reasons.

Melissa Marsh [00:31:35 ]:
First, when we get together in person.

Frank Cottle [00:31:37]:
I’m a tall guy. I’m sure they’re just not going to get all of me. So I think really, you’re coming on trust and you’re coming on relationships, how they’re created. This is ultimately how we’re going to decide who determines the future of work. And that really is the big question is who is going to determine and how are we going to determine the future of work? To stay on a path of improved quality of life, relationships, sustained relationships digitally and in person, and keep our productivity at the top of the game without hurting ourselves. Who’s going to make this decision?

Melissa Marsh [00:32:33 ]:
I mean, I come back to the point of trust that you’ve mentioned. I highlighted, and I think there’s this. You mentioned the sort of like the Sprint versus the marathon. Are you here for productivity or are you here for retention? And I think that so often we forget this most basic way of understanding what people want and what would serve people in their own career objectives, which is ask them.

Frank Cottle [00:33:10 ]:
Or try.

Melissa Marsh [00:33:12 ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:33:14 ]:
Be willing to try things out. We have a goofy company, as you know, and we’re in the flexible workspace industry. And so we live and breathe this stuff every day. But in our own little company, we say, well, not everybody knows who they want to be or where they want to be when they take a job with us. So we have a. I don’t know, we haven’t really even named it. I don’t want to call it a street three chances or three strikes or this or that. But if somebody is not performing well and you can tell that they’re, they’re just not synced in. You don’t say, well, you got to bone up, you got to get this, you got. No. He said, what would you rather be, you know, the company now, what would you rather be doing? Oh, well, I really, you know, I thought I wanted to be in this department, but I’d really rather be in that department. And then we say, okay, we move people back and forth all the time because as they grow they’re finding what their own path is and it gives us tremendous stability and a lot better lunch hour. I mean everything is just nice. And I think no one knows when they take a job or when they create a job, how it’s going to work out. But if the person has worth and the company have worth and you do pay attention to each other, you form that trust in your relationship, you can redefine everything very easily and do it with comfort. So I think that’s an important issue on the mandate back and forth. Honestly, I think the companies are going to prove to themselves we do better one way or the other. And their shareholders, if you will, or their stakeholders are going to end up defining what they do, not management. They’re either going to succeed or fail at these various experiments that were going on. Ultimately, I hope we’ll end up in a continuously better and better place.

Melissa Marsh [00:35:25]:
Yeah, like, like I said about the 10 year trajectory, we’re still in this awkward kind of toddler or puberty moment.

Frank Cottle [00:35:35 ]:
Not fully, I like toddler.

Melissa Marsh [00:35:38]:
Not fully evolved into the thing that we, we want to be. But I also want to get back to this question that you asked. You know, how does an organization plan for this? And I think in 2019, 2020, even you know, just before that, there was a tremendous amount of energy around co working and shared offices and flex offices and the sort of fallout of the office market and the under occupancy has meant that it just not as heavy a lift for an organization really to potentially have too much space at the moment. But I do think that flexible office is a very effective long term planning instrument in that you can get in and out of something quickly. One of the ways that coworking and flexible office was able to set an example of what good look looks like in terms of office experience is because they were building new stuff every day rather than like a traditional corporate who only builds something new every 10 years. And so in the co working marketplace, the product itself of the workplace experience was able to evolve much more quickly. And so I think the, the relevance of that today is to not forget that we, that we don’t have to be just an office company or just a remote company, but we can have what we need when we need it in a wide variety of ways. We can have a conference center at a hotel, we can have a retreat space, we can have a co working environment for two weeks, two months, two years, whatever is needed. And I think that we want to make sure that we’re using the full repertoire of options. You know, right back to the the idea of your commute. You know, a commute doesn’t make sense. If your only option is a car, you need a commute that you can take the train one day and walk another day and take a bike the next day and hitch a ride with a friend the following day and mix it up. And I think we need to remember that our real estate options, thankfully are quite the same now.

Frank Cottle [00:37:58 ]:
No, I agree. Just in time. On demand as needed. That’s the future.

Melissa Marsh [00:38:05 ]:
Absolutely. Wouldn’t want it any other way.

Frank Cottle [00:38:09 ]:
Thank you very much, Melissa. I really enjoy talking to you as always, and I’m very grateful for your thoughts today and we’ll look forward to the next time.

Melissa Marsh [00:38:17 ]:
Of course. I think you bring out the best in your conversationalists here, so really appreciated the opportunity.

Frank Cottle [00:38:25 ]:
Take care.

Melissa Marsh [00:38:26 ]:
Absolutely. You too.