Reading the tea leaves on RTO

Hello, Quartz at Work readers!

RTO, or return to the office, may be an acronym you’re becoming more familiar with. And it’s no wonder, considering all the noise surrounding what workers want and what employers are willing to give them when it comes to where they work.

3 ways to negotiate your return to the office

As a former head of people, I’ve been watching workplace trends for the past three years. I’ve been rooting for remote work, but new research (pdf) from the real estate firm JLL shows trends toward this type of work are shrinking. In September, office return policies impacted 1 million people in the US, and it is predicted that from October through year-end, such policies will affect 500,000 more.

Employers are busy thinking through their current office space and determining how best to please workers with the space they have. That’s because workers have been getting more picky about who they work for and the amenities available. But this goes beyond who gets a concierge. Companies should be thinking through what happens when workers show up to the office.

Office occupancy is up Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—not far from pre-pandemic levels. To take advantage of this momentum, companies should:

📊 Focus large gatherings on company priorities (and work to shrink the list of goals)

🚪 Encourage managers to plan for when their teams will gather and scatter

✏️ Review policies and work processes to ensure they’re optimized for hybrid work

🚀 Refresh their mission, vision, and values to reflect their commitment to employees and let the workers know what’s expected of them

Whether you’re rooting for a continued decrease in remote work or among the quarter of workers who have no desire to go back, workers (especially managers) should prepare for another big push to return to the office.

PUT ME IN COACH

Increasing empathy in the workplace often seems like a lofty goal that won’t ever fully happen. So, when Canva wanted to improve its culture and processes, they moved beyond talk and put tactics into action to help them live out their values to “pursue excellence” and “be a good human.”

According to Canva’s global head of people, Jennie Rogerson, a key part of their strategy is to name and equip two types of “coaches.” The first is the manager. They partner with the employees to determine goals, align priorities, and remove barriers to success. But Canva takes this further by naming a second set of coaches that can help support its employees.

Professional development coaches offer a range of options to support employees and managers. “What started as our founders getting a huge amount of value out of their external leadership coaching quickly evolved into exploring how we could make professional coaching available to everyone at Canva to help achieve our goals as we scaled,” said Sarah Nanclares, global internal coaching lead at Canva.

Today, they have seven professional coaches, and every three months, they coach an average of 150 employees through their three-month one-on-one coaching program.

Rogerson shares more on creating a coaching culture with Quartz at Work.

AI TALENT: WHEN TO BUILD, BUY, OR RENT

Netflix made headlines by posting an AI job paying $900,000 a year. Job posts that mention “generative AI” on hiring site Adzuna have increased by over 3,300% since January. But where will we find all of the talent?

Raphael Ouzan, a contributor to Quartz at Work, outlines when to build, buy, or rent AI talent. The key to picking your path, he says, is the level of urgency for the work. Here are the pros to each option:

🏗️Build (developing internally): Upskilling is one of the nine actions consulting firm McKinsey identified as essential for CIOs and CTOs attempting to harness the power of generative AI in their workforce.

💰Buy (hiring new talent): Establishing and growing a core team of technologists is necessary for the era in which AI threatens to upend current tasks.

🏢Rent (contract or temporary employees): You can ramp up quickly and deliver an most valuable player in a matter of months—about the same time it would take to hire and onboard the traditional way.

But the pros are only half the story—there’s cons that come with each.

AND NOW FOR A BIT OF CLASS

👑Class washing (noun.): When businesses outwardly appear to be taking action to address social mobility without going further and looking inward to identify and tackle structures, cultures, and biases at the individual and organizational level, which can create barriers to people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

That’s from Helen Dallimore, a principal consultant at workplace behavior and culture specialist Byrne Dean, about the risk of class-washing in the workplace. She notes new research from international firm KPMG UK that shows that socioeconomic background has the strongest effect on an individual’s career progression—more than any other diversity characteristic.

Employers cast their hiring nets wide to ensure they’re looking at diverse candidates, but they need to take it further. They can assess hiring practices, work allocation, retention, and pay practices. And, of course, keep socioeconomic backgrounds in mind as they create career paths.

Dallimore reports on the root causes of the issue—and how companies can respond.

YOUR WEEKLY WORK HACK

Whether remote or in-person, meetings have been under scrutiny this year. The shift in the world of work has meant that more attention is being paid to how we come together, and it seems the art of gathering isn’t just for Priya Parker anymore.

Jeff Winters, chief revenue officer of Abstrakt Marketing Group, has a list of ways to bring the magic back into your meetings:

Get clear on the whyAlways put training firstFocus on value rather than regularity

Read Winters’ last tip for gathering better on Quartz at Work.

BEST COMPANIES FOR REMOTE WORKERS

“Our third annual list of the Best Companies for Remote Workers makes it simple for employees who value remote work to find employers who value it, too,” said Quartz executive editor Heather Landy. “As we move beyond the pandemic, companies are settling into normal rhythms of remote work. We’re proud to acknowledge workplaces that do this in stand-out ways; they are excellent models for how to engage with remote workers and set them up for success so that they, in turn, can help their employers succeed.”

Companies on the list are sure to inspire others to learn about what it takes to be one of the best places out there for remote workers, where real career growth is untethered from proximity to a particular office building.