To modern workers everywhere,
New York lifted restrictions this week on office buildings, allowing them to once again welcome workers. But I’ve gladly stayed put at the dining room table that has served as my primary workspace these past few months.
For me, remote work is not always optimal, but at the moment it’s preferable. The mere thought of plexiglass dividers and masked co-workers carefully spaced at least six feet apart—important signals of safety precautions for any responsible workplace—nonetheless makes me feel more anxious, not less, about being in an office. Plus, like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m still wary of public transit, and of elevators. (This is all just as well because, like a lot of companies, Quartz isn’t inviting people back to the office just yet.)
But I’m hopeful that in the long run, I’ll return to a better version of office life. A recent phone catchup with Prudential Financial vice chairman Rob Falzon reminded me that the new normal for offices will not be the clinical, precaution-laden prototypes we’ll see initially, and which some of us will perhaps skip altogether. “It’s not sustainable and it’s not what the office of the future needs to look like,” he said. Rather, he’s expecting a complete overhaul in the way companies think about, design, and use their real estate—a development he argues was well overdue, even before the pandemic.
“It used to be that we were in the office 100% of the time, but our need to be at the office was maybe only 20%,” he said. “It may be that in the future, people are only going to be in the office 20% of the time,” he continued, “but 80% to 100% of the time they’re there would be spent on the reasons that you would want to go back to the workplace for.”
Of course, the surging numbers of coronavirus cases in places that seem to have reopened too quickly suggests the things we want to use offices for—brainstorming around the conference table, forging new relationships, events that bring everyone together and reinforce company culture—aren’t possible in the near term. But there will be a point at which the plexiglass outlives its usefulness. And when it gets taken down, there’s a good chance offices will be redesigned yet again, this time for the future we’ve always wanted for them.—Heather Landy
+ Last year, Heather spoke with Rob about how to talk to employees about the future of work, not as a far-off concept but as something that’s already taking shape and impacting career choices now. You can check out that conversation here.
Five things we learned this week
The history of Black management reveals an overlooked form of capitalism. Quartz at Work’s Lila MacLellan interviews the husband-and-wife academic team offering some overdue additions to the management canon.
How companies can pull up for Black employees during a race crisis. Erin L. Thomas, head of diversity, inclusion & belonging at Upwork, gets helpfully prescriptive.
The solution to our Covid-19 elevator problem might be the paternoster lift. Quartz at Work’s Anne Quito notes that the single-car elevator system has its dangers, but also distinct advantages in a post-pandemic world.
Work-from-home culture could change how Indians buy homes. Anuj Puri, chairman of ANAROCK Property Consultants, lays out the likely effects.
What it means to reimagine gender at your company. If you thought millennial employees have progressive views on gender, just wait for Gen-Z to enter the workplace, says gender consultant Lisa Kenney.
30-second case study
In 2016, Massachusetts became the first US state to pass a law barring employers from asking job candidates about their salary history. Today, there are 20 US states, cities, or territories, including Washington DC and Puerto Rico, with salary-history bans. The policies are intended to neutralize one of the big structural factors in wage discrimination for women and people of color, who are unlikely to close the gap with their white male counterparts when the pay for every new job they get is predicated on what they earned previously.
A new study from Boston University’s School of Law examines finds that these laws are having the intended effect. In places with salary history bans, job changes resulted in pay bumps of 8.5% for women (including a 14.4% average increase for Black women) and 16.2% for Black men. Men overall saw a 2.1% increase, suggesting the bans are helpful across the board.
The takeaway: Information is power. In the wake of the salary-history bans, more employers started posting salary details in online job ads, giving candidates more to go on than their own potentially depressed salary histories when negotiating pay at a new job. And employers didn’t appear to suffer for it. “[W]e find no evidence of adverse effects on job turnover or job changing rates,” notes James Bessen, one of the authors of the study.
It’s a fact
Hazard pay for gig workers is about to become law in Seattle. In a first for an American city, Seattle is requiring food delivery companies to pay workers an extra $2.50 per order for the duration of the Covid-19 emergency, Quartz at Work’s Michelle Cheng reports.
A new workshop: The science of decision making
As governments slowly ease restrictions, it’s business leaders who must make massive, unprecedented decisions and plans with limited information. To understand what their brains are negotiating behind the scenes, we’re bringing together experts in neuroscience, psychology, and economics for a workshop on crafting strategy amidst ambiguity.
Join us this Thursday, June 25, at 11am US eastern time. As always, our Quartz at Work (from home) live workshops are free to attend. Simply register here and start getting your questions ready.
A quick poll
Six former eBay employees allegedly conspired to harass a Massachusetts couple whose e-commerce newsletter was critical of the company, reportedly mailing them—as Quartz at Work’s Sarah Todd recounts—live cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and other items that might have been taken to mean “stop writing about our employer.” The cyberstalking charges raise several questions, among them: How does one become so attached to a corporate employer that they would defend the company by mailing someone a pig fetus?
What would you send to someone who dragged your employer in a newsletter?
Words of wisdom
“At this point being able to develop a set of skills is way more important than the location you are at.”—Y Combinator partner Anu Hariharan, advising young professionals on how to cope with US president Donald Trump’s decision to suspend H-1B visas through the end of this year.
+ Quartz India reporter Ananya Bhattacharya explains why the new US policy is unlikely to be of much help to Americans. Follow our extensive coverage of the H-1B visa saga here.
✦ Special to Quartz members ✦
Climate change and the boom/bust cycle have made the fossil fuel industry, once a choice career path for engineers, increasingly unpopular as a job destination for young people in the US. Three numbers show the oil and gas industry’s recruiting problem:
78%: the percentage of US millennials surveyed by Pew in April who believe in supporting alternative forms of energy over fossil fuels
Two-thirds: the portion of teenagers surveyed by EY in 2017 who believe the oil and gas industry “causes problems rather than solves them”
44%: the share of millennials who told EY that they found a career in the industry “unappealing.”
Read more in this week’s field guide on fossil fuels going bust.
Our summer sale is back! Subscribers to The Memo can get 50% off the first-year Quartz membership price of $99 by using the code QZSUMMERSALE. Sign up for membership or for a free seven-day trial.
ICYMI
The coming changes in organizational design. Back in September, journalist Aimee Groth made the case that “[r]igid hierarchies prone to bureaucratic gridlock have unique vulnerabilities now, whereas dynamic entities that can react quickly to ‘black swan’ events have compelling advantages.” Will the solutions she explored be just as prophetic? In this gem from the Quartz at Work archive, Groth suggests that the next evolution of the org chart—a rubric that hasn’t changed much since the Industrial Revolution—will be far more decentralized, and just might promote human flourishing. Read the full story here.
You got The Memo!
Our best wishes for a productive and creative day. Please send any workplace news, comments, salary-history bans, or paternoster lifts to work@qz.com. Get the most out of Quartz by downloading our app and becoming a member. This week’s edition of The Memo was produced by Heather Landy and Sarah Todd.