The future of work: ‘Always on, always in’ era is over

Of all the working assumptions people have made about work and the workplace since the Covid 19 pandemic, one stands out: That things would “go back” to how they were before. Industries have indeed bounded back — but not the workers. They are done with being always on and always in.

Some of this comes down to what my colleague Matt Boyle describes as “the chaotic nature” of the return to office and some of it down to the scale and pace of change.

As the authors of a World Economic Forum paper published in May 2023 noted: “While work has always evolved, its recent transformation has taken place at an unprecedented speed and affected the workforce to an unprecedented extent.”

People across workforces large and small, blue and white-collar alike, are in no mood for the status quo. It’s what can at best be described as transitional and at worst somewhat mutinous. According to Gallup, there’s an engagement slump globally.

America’s ennui is particular and significant because the US is so influential on the rest of the world when it comes to how we work. It’s not just that American innovation and technology for over a century has been scaling up everything from the car, the corporation and the credit card to the computer and communication.

The corporate law, HR policies and management styles that dominate the world are largely American in origin. America’s live-to-work ethic fuelled this influence.

Yet today so-called hustle culture is being openly called into question. A YouTuber called Smart Money Bro dedicated a programme to it, asking: “Why does it seem like there’s a lot of Americans who don’t like jobs anymore?”

The US Bureau of Labour Statistics’ quits rate has dropped from its Covid-era highs, but it's still above the average of the decade that preceded the pandemic, suggesting that the Great Resignation didn’t completely peter out.

And they say that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold: Look at Germany experimenting with a four-day week to raise productivity, the UK admitting that “economic inactivity” is running at nearly a quarter of employable adults and in Australia over half of white collar workers are looking to move jobs.

Moving Out

People are not only moving jobs, they are moving out of cities. I urge you to look up Billy Joel’s 1977 song Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), which captures the fact that in many ways the desire to move out to move up in life isn’t new.

But the pandemic turbocharged the sentiment. Whether the individual triggers for people are inflation, childcare or commuting or simply the fact that the genie of remote-working technology cannot so easily be put back in the bottle, people are relocating because something isn’t working for them anymore.

Much greater literacy around well-being, mental health and stress in the workplace is propelling a recognition that change needs to happen. Moving away from city centres may be one route for people who simply want work-life balance.

The Economic Innovation Group, a policy centre, has declared that: “Pandemic-era moves by American families and workers are reshaping the country’s economic geography” and points to the €15.31 billion of outflow of adjusted gross income from Manhattan elsewhere in the US, notably Florida. The American Community Service Survey shows state-to-state movers in America rose from 18.8 per cent to 19.9 per cent directly after the pandemic.

Where are they moving to and what happens when they get there? I took an Amtrak from New York to Philadelphia recently to find out. Half a million New Yorkers left the city to relocate, with Pennsylvania ranking as among the top destinations.

Philadelphia’s 100th Mayor, and its first female Mayor, Cherelle Parker, recently published her 100 Day Action Plan, including commitments for a “PHL Open for Business” initiative with the inevitable promises to cut red tape.

Although Philly is the sixth most populous city in the US, and has an enormous issue with poverty, it’s also home to a vibrant local community of districts which are benefitting from a focus on traffic calming and social cohesion efforts. Philly feels local. Perception is reality.

Office Design

There has been talk for some time of the downside of working too hard: it’s a decade since an academic paper entitled ‘Live to Work or Love to Work: Work Craving and Work Engagement’.

The attractions of swapping one Northeastern corridor city such as New York for another such as Philadelphia have gained traction because of the perception that for people who work — which is more than 62 per cent in Philadelphia — having a better quality of life is in easier reach in a more walkable, community-based city than one which buzzes with intensity but is expensive and involves for many a long commute.

Which brings me to the question of offices. Are they that different in Philly to say New York? Office occupancy across America is stubbornly low.

Take the latest weekly 10-city data from Kastle Systems. It continues to show an overall trend of occupancy around 50 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. But this isn’t the whole picture.

The story of what’s happening in offices in cities is that there’s a move to refurbish them in a ‘mixed-use’ way, catering to a desire for locality and amenity in one place.

One such project is The Curtis, a 12-floor, Beaux Arts building in Philadelphia purchased by developers Keystone in 2014. It’s 60 per cent offices, 15 per cent residential and the balance retail including a tilt towards a new genre of letting: life sciences (marketed as The Curtis Biospace).

On a tour of the building, complete with the noted art work Dream Garden (which has its own TikTok fans), president and chief operating officer Rich Gottlieb told me: “Developers like us have shifted in response to the work-to-live mindset among employees by creating properties, like The Curtis, with a live-work-play balance and experiential amenities under one roof.”

The key, he said, to “future-proof” properties is to meet what are now ever-changing wants and needs of workers and residents. That’s done by keeping open and flexible floor plans and having indoor and outdoor spaces where people can gather.

It's certainly an interesting mix. While life sciences tenants like Aro Biotherapeutics Co., Vivodyne Inc., and Imvax Inc. conduct their business in customised lab spaces upstairs, kids from residents attend the Busy Bee Learning Centre downstairs and weddings are held in the capacious light-filled atrium.

But New York isn’t done yet. Huge architectural effort is going into designing spaces to re-imagine a city centre whose offices no longer feel completely fit for purpose — if purpose is happy, engaged workforces who want to come into the office.

A project I’ve had my eye on for some time is The Hive. Katz Architecture’s conceptual building with an emphasis on multi-use from doctors and daycare to roof gardens.

It too focuses on an open atrium, with a bee-inspired design. It’s a concept which could, if commissioned, become part of a new era in cities in which instead of struggling with low occupancy and fragmented attendance, could give workers and their families the right incentives to recapture some of the old energy — to work to live and live to work in one place — or nearer to one place once again.