There's a simple word to describe the relationship between companies and the future of work.
It's complicated.
This is one theme that instantly emerges from Microsoft's new treatise on what it's learned during the pandemic[1].
Released last week, Hybrid Work: A Guide For Business Leaders is a veritable shrink appointment of soul-baring and hope-inciting. As well as a veritably clear attempt at Microsoft product-selling.
Simply Very Complicated.
You'd think, perhaps, that allowing employees to choose whether to work at home or not would be a simple, freeing affair. Yet, in this new hybrid model of work-life, Redmond sees little that's simple.
Instead, in the words of CEO Satya Nadella: "Everything becomes more complex, not less complex."
I pored over the details and found some thoughtful gems.
This, for example: "Develop company-wide norms to create inclusive meetings –-- from configuring meeting rooms to optimize for remote participants, to encouraging onsite participants to join Microsoft Teams[2] as soon as they enter the room, so remote participants don't miss out on the informal banter crucial to rebuilding social capital and connection."
Banter is such an underrated element in the holding together of corporate existence. Without being able to make jokes about the company and your colleagues, without being able to gossip about, well, the company and your colleagues, employees become machine parts, there to fulfill processes.
I do worry that such banter will be recorded, thanks to the glory that is Microsoft Teams. Employees can only hope access to such recordings is severely restricted.
Still, Microsoft believes that the new hybrid work model can function very well with employees having the option of working from home up to 50% of the time. Oddly, Microsoft