As we move into a post-pandemic new normal, From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp shares the benefits of a hybrid in-person schedule, how companies are convincing employees to come in, plus why he doesn't think remote work will go away anytime soon, even if there is a recession. 

As we move into a post-pandemic new normal, From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp shares the benefits of a hybrid in-person schedule, how companies are convincing employees to come in, plus why he doesn't think remote work will go away anytime soon, even if there is a recession.&nbsp;

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Remote Work Won't End in a Recession, This Jobs Expert Says

you know Shannon for decades spending five days a week in the office, that was just the standard practice. But for a lot of companies now and their workers as well, they're all looking to change that. So joining us now to discuss is steve kept co founder and chief content officer of the corporate values conference series from day one steve. Good morning. Thanks so much for joining us. Obviously a huge debate this year was whether or not employees would return to working in person or have the ability to go remote. So what sort of consensus are you seeing right now when you talk to a lot of employees and companies? Well good morning. Um it's basically it's a it's a kind of a hybrid system, it's two or three days a week. I was just talking to the head of HR for a big tech company and she was saying people need to be in on Tuesdays and Thursdays with one other day optional, like maybe Wednesday and those, those are the three most popular days for people being in the office right now. Well, you know gallup reported that globally workers are more stressed in 2022 than they've ever seen. So do you think a more flexible work schedule would actually help release some of that stress definitely. People discovered that like for their lives they need to be able to have days where they can go to the doctor or take their kids to something or you know, and you know, fill in all the rest of their uh appointments and things like that. And so they definitely need those days to reduce their stress because there's so much in life you can't do on the weekends and people discovered that during the pandemic, when they had that kind of freedom, um Sundar Pichai, the ceo of Google said maybe about a year or so ago, the future of work is flexibility here. So, steven the hybrid work schedule catches on. How are employers prioritizing what to do in person versus what's better to sort of do at home then? Yeah, you definitely can encourage people to come into work if they're doing, you know, if they're on zoom meetings at their desk. I mean that's that's what they do at home. So there's there's a lot of creativity around HR right now in terms of having purposeful things at work that that you can't do at home like lunch and learn or or you know, you know, meetings built around innovation, collaboration things you can do, you know, together in person that aren't uh you know, team building exercises, which can be kind of corny also, 11 expert said to us, it sounds corny, but it's all about food, you know, it starts with that meals together things, things of that sort Yeah, well, you know, it's easy also for some people to assume that there would be a drop in productivity if people work from home almost half of the time, but I've heard differently. So what does the data say? It says that at first people were more productive, right, They're not commuting there, they're actually able to to get more done um at home because there's not all that kind of in between time, but but as it turns out, because there was like no boundaries, people could work, you know later. Um and you know, and earlier and on weekends and things like that, that they started burning out. So that there was a productivity curve at first people are more productive and then they became less so steve we're entering an interesting period here with a lot of companies on hiring freezes or laying off workers. I mean, they've been major layoffs in tech amazon meta just to name a few if we head into a recession or if you see companies sort of batten down the hatches to quote, Jeff Bezos, do you think benefits like working from home, those are gonna be on the chopping block as a result of this for companies that are looking to save money here? I don't think so. I think people have, you know, started thinking that that's basically um a right, you know, that they can do, that's a standard working environment that they would have a hybrid work for, you know, arrangement. And part of that is because even though they're tech companies over hired during, during the time that, you know, during the boom uh sort of late pandemic era and uh but other companies are still struggling to get workers and so they will continue to offer kind of flexible benefits, flexible work schedules. And, and that's still gonna go on because partly for demographic reasons, there just aren't enough people out there to, to fill all the jobs that, that are. Yeah, and you bring up a good point there, because in some industries, we've actually seen successful unionization efforts while off some office workers are actually quiet quitting. So how much does this worker pushback depend on a tight labor market, because it gives them a lot of advantages when they have that. Yeah, it does. Uh, you know, as long as there's just, you know, this gap between the workers, you know, and, and the available jobs, they'll still have leverage, that kind of leverage and just expectations have changed and people realize that both on both sides, the employer side and the workers side, that you can get a lot of things done remotely. And, and so there's a, there's different standards now than there were before. Absolutely. But it's gonna be interesting to see where the future of work goes from here, Steve kept thank you so much for joining us, the co founder of, from day One. By the way there. Next conferences in Los Angeles on december 13th