How Hybrid Work Schedules Can Result in a ‘Coordination Tax’
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Here's your money briefing for Monday, June 17th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. If you're on a hybrid work schedule, you know which days you'll be in the office and which are work-from-home days. But you might not know all of your co-workers' schedules. And that can be a drag on productivity, known as a coordination tax.
A hybrid worker may be going to the office at a different time than their colleagues or their collaborators. If there's a project that needs to be worked on, some people say that it's easier to do when you're in person. Whereas when one person is working from home or working remotely and the other is in an office, it just takes longer to get things done.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Ray Smith after the break.
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Flexible work schedules can impact productivity as well as employees' career tracks. Wall Street Journal reporter Ray Smith joins me.
How does the episode introduce the concept of a ‘coordination tax’ from hybrid work?
Ray, we've seen companies over the past few years try to find a balance between allowing employees to work from home and requiring them to return to the office. Is it safe to assume that hybrid work schedules are here to stay?
Yes. There's sort of a happy medium between what employers want and what employees want, that balance of flexibility but some in-person time.
But hybrid schedules have resulted in some workers paying what has come to be known as a coordination tax. What is that?
A coordination tax is the idea that a hybrid worker may be going to the office at a different time than their colleagues or their collaborators. And so it's hard to literally coordinate being in on the same day in advance. And so sometimes what ends up happening And maybe you've experienced this where you go to the office hoping to see this colleague or that colleague or your work best friend, and it turns out they're not there. And so you end up having to be either on Teams meetings or Zoom calls because the person you had hoped to collaborate with or that would be there to talk to is in on another day than you are. So there's a coordination tax in terms of not just seeing the person, but actually in working with that person.
If there's a project, some people say that it's easier to do when you're in person, whereas when one person is working from home or working remotely and the other is in an office, it just takes longer to get things done.
What is it about the office setup in hybrid work schedules that is posing this challenge to workers?
One of them is the fact that in some cases people don't have their own permanent desk. So sometimes it's a matter of not knowing whether people are in or where they sit. But the other thing, it's really hard to know unless you have some advanced booking software, just to know if someone is actually in the office. And especially because we're located on different floors or sometimes in different spaces and The not knowing is really the barrier if you don't have sort of an advanced calendar system or some technology that allows you to know that someone's actually in today.
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