How to Gameplan Your Office Days: An Guide to Hybrid Work
What days in the office will get you the most face time with senior leaders
4 min
Pre-pandemic, you were often the first to arrive in the office and the last to leave. So how, as an overachieving employee, can you make the most out of the new, hybrid workweek?
The rules for maximising office face time with the bosses are about to get more complicated as many companies gear up to reopen offices in the coming months. With Covid-19 cases back on the rise and many employees uneager to give up remote work entirely, many employers plan to let staff decide what days—and how many—they come into the office. For the ambitious worker, that means strategizing what in-office days will get you noticed the most and how to maximize the time to your career’s advantage.
The consensus among many managers and leadership coaches for companies where showing up to the office matters: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are shaping up to be peak office face time days. Mondays are for those looking for an extra jump on colleagues in getting more alone-time with senior leaders—though it isn’t a sure thing those managers will always be there. Fridays are arguably the most negligible, but a jackpot office day if it is just you and the top boss.
Or, you could follow this basic rule: “Your boss’s schedule is your schedule,” says Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Another strategy, he adds, is to simply come in as much as possible. Though many companies say they are letting workers keep some degree of flexibility, it is inevitable that employees with the most in-person access to leaders will get the first crack at promotions, Mr. Cappelli argues. In a hybrid work world, those coming in as much as possible have another advantage: Plenty of co-workers will still be away.
“It’s better that other people are not there and you’re not fighting for attention,” he says. That is particularly the case if you tend to be more introverted. “You don’t have to go out of the way to make contact” with higher-ups, he says.
Others argue the old maxims of office face time no longer apply. To show off your talent and skills in person, it is better for employees to coordinate office appearances with their teams for optimal collaboration, rather than show up on their own schedules, says Cali Yost, the chief executive and founder of workplace-consulting company Flex+Strategy Group.
“Your success should be coordinating with everyone else,” she says. “An overachiever is defined differently as we move into the future. It’s not going to be who comes on site every day but the person who can work and lead effectively across different places and spaces effectively.”
Some companies aren’t leaving what days employees come into the office to individual ambition. Apple Inc.’s initial reopening plans called for most office workers to show up Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to work remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays. Those plans, first set for September, then pushed to October, have now been delayed until at least January because of the fast-spreading Delta variant. Salesforce.com Inc. discovered, after reopening its Sydney office, that Thursdays emerged as the most popular day for people to come in.
“Thursday’s the new Monday,” says Brent Hyder, the company’s chief people officer.
Mastering the hybrid workweek also isn’t just about the days you come in, but how effectively you use them, says Tsedal Neeley, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book “Remote Work Revolution.”
“It’s not just looking at people’s calendars and trying to run into them,” says Ms. Neeley, who argues that Thursdays—as the week’s work comes to a head—are likely to become the most popular in-office day in many workplaces. “You want to coordinate activities for the week whenever you have in-office days,” she says. That means using the days to set up coffee chats with managers, power lunches and project powwows with co-workers.
Francis Ndicu, a 26-year-old product manager at marketing-and-sales platform provider HubSpot Inc., went to the company’s Cambridge, Mass., office every day but Friday when it reopened in early July. By coming in more often than some team members, Mr. Ndicu says he was able to network with more leaders from other parts of the company he wouldn’t normally work with. To maximize the office time, Mr. Ndicu says he never eats lunch alone.
“Getting that face time, it’s a visual reminder you exist in the company outside of your team,” says Mr. Ndicu, who has since cut his office days to Wednesdays and Thursdays because of the Delta variant. “The next time they are thinking about a new project, you’re closer to the top of their mind than others.”
Keith Ferrazzi, an executive coach and author of “Leading Without Authority,” recommends scheduling 15-minute coffee breaks with the boss and other senior managers each week. Use the time to talk about your accomplishments while you were working remotely or to ask about side projects you could help with, he suggests. It is also a good opportunity to ask more personal questions—such as, how the children are doing—that can be neglected in a virtual setting, he says.
“If you’re really a go-getter, you want to do this for other people around the organization,” he said. “You can just ask for career advice or say, ‘Hey I’d love to have 15 minutes with you just make sure I’m aligning my thinking with your goals for the company.’ ”
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: August 23, 2021
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Food prices continue to rise at a rapid pace, surprising central banks and pressuring debt-laden governments
4 min
LONDON—Fresh out of an energy crisis, Europeans are facing a food-price explosion that is changing diets and forcing consumers across the region to tighten their belts—literally.
This is happening even though inflation as a whole is falling thanks to lower energy prices, presenting a new policy challenge for governments that deployed billions in aid last year to keep businesses and households afloat through the worst energy crisis in decades.
New data on Wednesday showed inflation in the U.K. fell sharply in April as energy prices cooled, following a similar pattern around Europe and in the U.S. But food prices were 19.3% higher than a year earlier.
The continued surge in food prices has caught central bankers off guard and pressured governments that are still reeling from the cost of last year’s emergency support to come to the rescue. And it is pressuring household budgets that are also under strain from rising borrowing costs.
In France, households have cut their food purchases by more than 10% since the invasion of Ukraine, while their purchases of energy have fallen by 4.8%.
In Germany, sales of food fell 1.1% in March from the previous month, and were down 10.3% from a year earlier, the largest drop since records began in 1994. According to the Federal Information Centre for Agriculture, meat consumption was lower in 2022 than at any time since records began in 1989, although it said that might partly reflect a continuing shift toward more plant-based diets.
Food retailers’ profit margins have contracted because they can’t pass on the entire price increases from their suppliers to their customers. Markus Mosa, chief executive of the Edeka supermarket chain, told German media that the company had stopped ordering products from several large suppliers because of rocketing prices.
A survey by the U.K.’s statistics agency earlier this month found that almost three-fifths of the poorest 20% of households were cutting back on food purchases.
“This is an access problem,” said Ludovic Subran, chief economist at insurer Allianz, who previously worked at the United Nations World Food Program. “Total food production has not plummeted. This is an entitlement crisis.”
Food accounts for a much larger share of consumer spending than energy, so a smaller rise in prices has a greater impact on budgets. The U.K.’s Resolution Foundation estimates that by the summer, the cumulative rise in food bills since 2020 will have amounted to 28 billion pounds, equivalent to $34.76 billion, outstripping the rise in energy bills, estimated at £25 billion.
“The cost of living crisis isn’t ending, it is just entering a new phase,” Torsten Bell, the research group’s chief executive, wrote in a recent report.
Food isn’t the only driver of inflation. In the U.K., the core rate of inflation—which excludes food and energy—rose to 6.8% in April from 6.2% in March, its highest level since 1992. Core inflation was close to its record high in the eurozone during the same month.
Still, Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey told lawmakers Tuesday that food prices now constitute a “fourth shock” to inflation after the bottlenecks that jammed supply chains during the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise in energy prices that accompanied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and surprisingly tight labor markets.
Europe’s governments spent heavily on supporting households as energy prices soared. Now they have less room to borrow given the surge in debt since the pandemic struck in 2020.
Some governments—including those of Italy, Spain and Portugal—have cut sales taxes on food products to ease the burden on consumers. Others are leaning on food retailers to keep their prices in check. In March, the French government negotiated an agreement with leading retailers to refrain from price rises if it is possible to do so.
Retailers have also come under scrutiny in Ireland and a number of other European countries. In the U.K., lawmakers have launched an investigation into the entire food supply chain “from farm to fork.”
“Yesterday I had the food producers into Downing Street, and we’ve also been talking to the supermarkets, to the farmers, looking at every element of the supply chain and what we can do to pass on some of the reduction in costs that are coming through to consumers as fast as possible,” U.K. Treasury Chief Jeremy Hunt said during The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London.
The government’s Competition and Markets Authority last week said it would take a closer look at retailers.
“Given ongoing concerns about high prices, we are stepping up our work in the grocery sector to help ensure competition is working well,” said Sarah Cardell, who heads the CMA.
Some economists expect that added scrutiny to yield concrete results, assuming retailers won’t want to tarnish their image and will lean on their suppliers to keep prices down.
“With supermarkets now more heavily under the political spotlight, we think it more likely that price momentum in the food basket slows,” said Sanjay Raja, an economist at Deutsche Bank.
It isn’t entirely clear why food prices have risen so fast for so long. In world commodity markets, which set the prices received by farmers, food prices have been falling since April 2022. But raw commodity costs are just one part of the final price. Consumers are also paying for processing, packaging, transport and distribution, and the size of the gap between the farm and the dining table is unusually wide.
The BOE’s Bailey thinks one reason for the bank having misjudged food prices is that food producers entered into longer-term but relatively expensive contracts with fertilizer, energy and other suppliers around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in their eagerness to guarantee availability at a time of uncertainty.
But as the pressures being placed on retailers suggest, some policy makers suspect that an increase in profit margins may also have played a role. Speaking to lawmakers, Bailey was wary of placing any blame on food suppliers.
“It’s a story about rebuilding margins that were squeezed in the early part of last year,” he said.
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