Is 3 Days a Week the 'New Normal' for In-Office Work?

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Seventy percent of Bay Area employers are expecting to bring their workers back to the office this month, according to a recent Bay Area Council survey. But many are asking for only three days in person, a major shift from pre-pandemic times. As businesses begin to return to in-person work, employers are looking to find the right balance of time spent remote and face-to-face. Silicon Valley is a case-in-point: Google is telling most workers they need to come into the office at least three days a week starting April 4, but Twitter said its employees can work from home permanently if they want. We’ll talk with experts about the “new normal” of work and what it means for Bay Area companies, employees, and communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:59.9	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:08.7	After two years, employers across the Bay Area and country whose workers have been largely stationed at home are returning to the office. This comes after many companies demonstrated that they are perfectly
1:12.3	capable of being at least as productive without everyone sitting at their desks eating salad for
1:18.6	lunch. So this is not going to be the same old office. Neither employees nor employers
1:24.4	expect that the new normalish will be like the old normal we'll talk about
1:28.6	what's changed how you're preparing and whether the five-day work week even makes sense
1:33.1	that's all next welcome to forum I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:45.8	So, first things first, every time we've done a show on remote work, we want to acknowledge
1:50.9	that many people's jobs have required them to come in all throughout the pandemic.
1:56.1	But, and, remote workers are not some tiny sliver of elites.
	...

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