Bosses think in-office work 3 times a week is ‘the magical number.’ ‘It’s not,’ says CEO
By | Jennifer Liu | www.cnbc.com
Corporate bosses are getting return-to-office requirements all wrong, global work experts and remote leaders said during a panel conversation at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, recently.
A three-days-a-week requirement has become the norm at many companies, but it’s far from a “best practice” or grounded in good data, says Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work, the global research and analytics firm that evaluates corporate culture.
“Why three days a week? Why not four? Why not two?” he says. Many bosses land on three days a week as if it’s “the magical number. It’s not. You should have a reason why three matters.”
‘Every leader should listen better’
Bush says many leaders mistakenly assume that being together in-person automatically leads to better collaboration, though “there’s no data to support it, because there was a lot of innovation with people not being together over the last three years.”
