Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Employees’ Needs Are Changing Work Spaces

Not surprisingly, traditional offices appear to have been radically altered by the pandemic, perhaps forever.

According to Grant Christofely, North American associate director of workplace strategy at M Moser Associates, a workplace design company, some organizations still design their offices the same way they did 50 to 70 years ago: static, inflexible spaces where employees perform individual, task-oriented work more than eight hours a day.

“But that’s not how works gets done, how you make money today,” he said. “You make money from ideas being exchanged. And technology has had a huge impact on the way people work, the way ideas are exchanged. The way ideas were exchanged was changing before the pandemic — people are realizing that the time to change is now.”

2. To Get Ahead at Work, Lawyers Find It Helps to Actually Be at Work

The only suspicious note was the relative lack of millennials. Near the very end, a first-year associate darted into the room, grabbed a plastic-wrapped ice cream bar and darted out again, barely exchanging more than a sentence or two with colleagues. It seemed like a rebuke to the whole affair.

Yet when I later tracked down the associate, Akshita Singh, expecting to find her disillusioned with the office return and irritated by the oldsters trying to sell it, it became clear that something else was going on: She wasn’t conscientiously objecting to the office. She had actually embraced it.

“I’ve been coming in every day,” said Ms. Singh, who turned out to be swamped that afternoon. “It’s nice to leave my laptop here knowing I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Since the beginning of the year, as mass vaccinations loomed and “return to office” became an incantation so popular it earned its own abbreviation, workers under 40 have been notably resistant.

3. After pause for Delta variant, office returns once again on the rise. Here's how to welcome workers back.

Even with the Delta variant derailing many employers' plans, September was still a big month for returning to the office.

There was a 21% increase in workers returning to the office in September compared to August, according to workplace platform Robin.

The month-over-month increase was the first since June, and Robin expects that increase in office visits to continue through November before dropping around the holidays.

4. How to Reframe What Work Means to You

When I was a teenager, I got a summer job working in a grocery store. All day long, I took vegetable cans out of boxes, hit each one with a price tag gun, and placed them on the shelf. Again. And again. And again. I felt every minute of every hour stretch to a standstill. I had no contact with customers, and I hardly ever saw a manager.

Then I got lucky: I was hit by a forklift behind the store. A bruised tailbone got me paid sick leave until the end of the summer. Since the only reason I took the job was to earn money to buy myself a new bike, I was very happy!

But of course there’s something wrong with this story. Is work really just something we must endure so we can afford to do something else — like riding a bike? Or is there more? Why do we work?

I believe this question carries fundamental implications for business leaders, as I’ve described in my recent book The Heart of Business. The answer each of us gives influences our attitude toward work and how invested we are willing to be as individuals, and thus whether we and our companies thrive.

5. Unlimited vacation days? More employers are embracing the policy.

More companies are implementing unlimited vacation policies in the Covid-19 era, but experts say implementing the policy is hardly a day at the beach.

Interest in offering unlimited paid time off is rising as companies seek to save money and distinguish themselves in a competitive labor market.

Nicholas Reiter, a partner and co-chair of the labor and employment practice group at Venable LLP, said he has noticed an uptick in employers transitioning from an accrual system to unlimited PTO — and the rise of remote work during the pandemic is one of the factors.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great and hugely impactful week!