The Work From Home War Rages On, The Right Kind Of Failure And Hiring Managers Who Lie

This is the published version of Forbes’ Future of Work newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief human resources officers and other talent managers on disruptive technologies, managing the workforce and trends in the remote work debate. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday!

Last weekend, we published a story about the battle raging between bosses and their employees over remote work, taking an in-depth look at what the data on remote work really says. There are some clear answers, such as that a remote workforce can help build diversity. Or that hybrid work—with some combination of remote work and office time or in-person gatherings—is likely to win out as a compromise.

But reporting for the story was also a reminder that there’s more nuance in this debate than the headlines or the CEOs calling people back or some WFH fans let on. It depends on the context. The type of work being done. The people involved and their experience, roles and job function. Productivity may suffer in some contexts and for some groups when people are working entirely remote—but it could be boosted in many others. Creativity may at times be helped by people having the focus and lack of distractions they can get at home—but go up at other times if groups are together.

It’s been one of my most-read stories of the year, a reminder that people can handle nuance and appreciate subtlety. Whether you’re a CEO, a journalist, a head of HR or a remote work expert, let’s keep this debate going with data and facts rather than opinions—and what we really do know about what works in the future of work.

Hope it’s a great weekend.

Jena McGregor, Senior Editor, Leadership Strategy & Careers | @jenamcgregor

HUMAN CAPITAL

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice sued SpaceX, Forbes’ William Skipworth reports, alleging the rocket company helmed by Elon Musk discriminated against refugees who have been granted asylum in its hiring processes. That news came the same day Musk claimed that X, the site formerly known as Twitter, could one day become a trillion dollar company, Forbes’ Robert Hart reports.

Forbes’ layoff tracker continues, even as job cuts appear to have slowed somewhat. In a Thursday regulatory filing, Forbes’ Brian Bushard reports, T-Mobile said it will cut some 5,000 employees in order to spend more money attracting new customers.

Mask mandates in the workplace may feel like a thing of the past, but they’re returning in some places as Covid cases rise. Morris Brown College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, and Lionsgate, the Hollywood studio, both announced the reinstatement of mask mandates, Forbes’ Molly Bohannon reports.

POLICY + PRACTICE

Contributor Alonzo Martinez writes about the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, also known as the “Death Star” law, which “aims to eliminate the varying set of regulations that are inconsistently enforced throughout the state.” That includes “pre-empting” laws like Austin’s fair chance hiring or “ban the box” law, which prohibits private employers from asking job applicants about their criminal histories until after a job offer is made.

Researchers at the University of Southern California, the University of Maryland, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the job site Indeed studied job posting views and Glassdoor reviews and found that employers’ travel benefits following the Supreme Court’s decision last summer to overturn abortion rights may help recruit candidates, contributor Kim Elsesser writes.

WHAT’S NEXT: HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR AMY EDMONDSON

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson is well known for her research on “psychological safety”—the workplace conditions where employees feel safe to take risks, speak up or disagree with colleagues that can help build innovative, healthy cultures. Among the leading management thinkers, Edmondson spoke at the Forbes Future of Work Summit in June and has a new book coming out Sept. 5, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.” Excerpts from our discussion have been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been researching this topic a long time. What is the key message of your new book?

The biggest take-home message is that all failure is not alike. It is really important to understand and be able to discern the different types of failure. … Psychological safety describes the culture or the interpersonal climate in which innovation happens, in which high reliability happens, in which things like patient or aviation safety happen. It’s a means to an end, but it doesn’t give you very much information about what people are doing. This book is moving to more of the substance of work. What does work look like and what are the ways in which failure shows up as an inevitable part of work in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world.

How does the move to remote work impact how organizations think about failure? It must be easier for employees to hide things, to cover things up.

I think many organizations are trying to figure out what good hybrid means. Is there a minimum number of days together or should it be based on particular kinds of tasks? Should people still have private offices or spaces or should it all be hoteling?

We have to be really scientific about this and we have to be honest with ourselves about what we know and what we don’t know yet. What’s been problematic about the hybrid and remote work conversations is there’s been a lot of all or nothing and a lot of us versus them—bosses want X and employees want Y. It just very quickly gets stuck in an antagonistic and not very productive dialogue.

The point is to be very thoughtful about what’s working—to be honest and attentive to the data of our own experience. … If we are approaching this journey of reinventing work and the workplace dynamics and routines, I think we need to be scientific about it. To think of what we’re doing as hypotheses rather than as policies. As a hypothesis, we understand that as more is learned, it will change.

A lot of tech companies have been having layoffs, sometimes for the first time. How will that fundamentally change their cultures, especially around innovation?

I believe it is 100% dependent on good leadership. If you have a layoff and it’s not well-managed, chances are really good that it will have a huge inhibiting effect on innovation. By definition, innovation takes risks and taking risks—if they’re any good—some of them will result in failure. If you are not explicitly overriding the natural tendency [to avoid failure], you’ll be inhibiting your innovation.

So what makes a good failure?

[It should be] in pursuit of a goal in new territory, informed by existing knowledge, and as small as possible. That’s what makes a failure intelligent. Your experiment is just big enough to learn from and not much bigger. If you’re betting against the stock market, you don’t bet your entire life savings.

[It’s really important to be] teaching people and making available support for smart experiments. The strategy for smart experimentation is the same as the strategy for smart failure. It’s being clear about the domain that our organization is trying to innovate in, and training people in thoughtful experimentation strategies.

FACTS + COMMENT

A survey by Resume Builder found it’s not just job candidates who lie to hiring managers. Potential bosses lie to candidates, too, with the most common lies being about the the role’s responsibilities, growth opportunities and career development opportunities:

36%: The percentage of managers who say they’ve lied to candidates about the role or company during the hiring process.
75%: The percentage of hiring managers who said they lie in the job interview. 52% said they have lied in the job description, and 24% said they have in the offer letter.
“Nobody who’s ever interviewed for a job will be the least bit shocked,” senior contributor Mark Murphy writes.

VIDEO

The C-Suite Interview: Cisco’s Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer Fran Katsoudas

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STRATEGIES + ADVICE

It’s common wisdom to “be yourself.” But there are popular misconceptions about authenticity you should know.

Some bosses create an army of “mini-mes.” Here’s how to stop controlling and start leading.

Check out these essential tips for navigating the “messy middle” of hybrid work.

QUIZ

A new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the median minimum salary Americans report they would need to accept a new job—a figure known as the reservation wage—is now what amount?