Good morning, rulers! Are you all listening to the new SZA album? I love it. I like F2F and Ghost in the Machine the most so far, but there are a *lot* of songs, so I'm sure new favorites will surface in the next few weeks. Thank you to Sophie Gardner for helping to put together this newsletter! One year ago, Women Rule held an Exchange meeting — a regular meeting of business executives, thought leaders and advocates, with public and private portions — about the future of work. At the time, many of the participants were enthusiastic about the transformation of work that the pandemic had triggered, and in particular about how remote and flexible work would improve work life for women. But earlier this month, it was clear that some of that optimism was gone — or at least seriously tempered by concern about the downsides of remote work. At our second meeting about the new rules of work, many participants voiced concern about what was being lost in a mostly or completely remote workplace and expressed a general desire to get closer to the old way of working — and to convince others of the value of the physical workplace. "I find that we can do everything we've been doing really well online. There's no reason you have to see each other," one participant said at a roundtable. "But if you want to make something new or innovate, it's so much faster to do that in a room together." She went on to describe a recent retreat at her company where she said her organization got more done than they had in three months. "And it made me think … someone will come and eat our lunch if we don't figure out how to get together and continue to be agile and innovative." Many of the participants were worried in particular about the prolonged effects of mostly remote work on bringing young people into workplace cultures. "I feel like they're just slipping away," one participant said. She recalled a meeting she had with a young employee who essentially told her: "I'm here to make money. I care about what you're doing … ish, and we're all going to live our lives. We don't have to be friends." "I'm not saying that's consistent, but I'm noticing that element," she said. Others agreed. "Part of it is that they've never seen the upside," one participant said. One possibility of working in an office, she continued, is hating the office and not getting along with co-workers. But part of it was loving it and taking advantage of the small opportunities for advancement it presents. "They don't have that pull, that draw of having a conversation with the senior woman in the hallway thinking, 'Ooh, I hope I run into her so I can have a conversation.' Right? 'I hope I see that senior partner and I get to talk about that project he's doing.'" And many saw the negatives of remote work for women especially. People aged 25-34 are more likely to work remotely. One roundtable participant pointed out that was also the time women were up for their first promotions into management. "That first rung into management is by far the hardest for women. And then if you're not physically in these spaces, then all of a sudden that block there is getting rebuilt again," she said. "So even though women by and large have said they prefer this hybrid or flexible model where you actually are doing a little more remote, are there unintended consequences for women's ability to then move up?" There was some discussion about how to be more thoughtful about orchestrating those kinds of connections even in remote work; one participant recalled how a former colleague brought along junior employees to pick up her kid and run errands. Another, though, was worried that leaving it to informal spaces would favor particularly extroverted personality types over others, more so than informally bumping into co-workers at the office. The participants also discussed whether women were taking on more at-home responsibilities when they were freed up to do remote work. "I now start thinking about dinner at 5:00 PM before my kids get home, which I did not do when I wasn't working at home," one said. "I'm now all of a sudden picking up all these extra duties, and I got rid of all my support during Covid. ... So I feel like the ship hasn't right-sized yet." Of course, on that and other points, there were many who disagreed. On the particular point of women being more burdened with housework as a result of more remote work, one participant reminded the room that more men were working from home, too. Husbands and partners were also able to pick up more work around the house if they were working from home. And there were some who disagreed that working remotely was actually worse for women or young people — or that we really knew yet. After Covid, "all of our assumptions that we didn't even realize we had about work are completely up for grabs right now," one participant said. "And what's super interesting for me is how much of it is not about data. It's about what people's opinions and preferences are." She argued that there was no consensus on how to measure productivity or assess if younger folks aren't stalled in their career development. "There's a lot of assumption that things are happening in the office just because people are in the office, but we know from all this other research that people are excluded from networks in the office," she said. "There isn't the same access. … There's major disparities in … assignments, sponsorship, all these things." "These are huge, enormous human resource questions. Are we basing [our answers] on Joe's preference for [being in person at] the office?" she asked. "That's crazy." One year later, if anything was clear, it was that we're far from clear about what the future of work will look like. Right now, it's anybody's guess.
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