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Summary
Summary
"This book will challenge you to rethink what it takes to make remote work work--not just for companies, but for people." --Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
The future isn't about where we will work, but how. For years we have struggled to balance work and life, with most of us feeling overwhelmed and burned out because our relationship to work is broken.
This "isn't just a book about remote work. It's a book that helps us imagine a future where our lives--at the office and home--are happier, more productive, and genuinely meaningful" (Charles Duhigg, best-selling author of The Power of Habit ).
Out of Office is a book for every office worker - from employees to managers - currently facing the decision about whether, and how, to return to the office. The past two years have shown us that there may be a new path forward, one that doesn't involve hellish daily commutes and the demands of jam-packed work schedules that no longer make sense. But how can we realize that future in a way that benefits workers and companies alike?
Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with workers and managers around the world, Out of Office illuminates the key values and questions that should be driving this conversation: trust, fairness, flexibility, inclusive workplaces, equity, and work-life balance. Above all, they argue that companies need to listen to their employees - and that this will promote, rather than impede, productivity and profitability. As a society, we have talked for decades about flexible work arrangements; this book makes clear that we are at an inflection point where this is actually possible for many employees and their companies. Out of Office is about so much more than zoom meetings and hybrid schedules: it aims to reshape our entire relationship to the office.
Author Notes
CHARLIE WARZEL writes the newsletter, Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic , where he is a Contributing Writer. Before that he was a writer-at-large for the New York Times Opinion page, and a senior technology writer at BuzzFeed News. He was the lead writer of the Times ' Privacy Project and co-author of 'One Nation Tracked,' a seven-part investigative series on smartphone location tracking, for which he was named a finalist for the 2020 Livingston Award for National Reporting. Before the Times, Warzel was a senior technology writer at BuzzFeed News, covering technology's biggest platforms, disinformation, and information warfare. He was the recipient of a 2019 Mirror Award for his reporting on Facebook's privacy struggles. He lives on an island off the coast of Washington state.
ANNE HELEN PETERSEN writes the newsletter Culture Study, and is the author of four books, most recently Out of the Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home (co-written with Charlie Warzel) and Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. She received her Ph.D. in media studies from the University of Texas, and was formerly a senior culture writer at BuzzFeed News. She lives on an island off the coast of Washington state.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
While remote work "promises to liberate workers," write journalists Warzel and Peterson (Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud) in this insightful and timely survey, "...in practice it capitalizes on the total collapse of work-life balance." To dig into a shifting employment landscape in which "work has taken on such a place of primacy in our lives that it has subsumed our identities, diluted our friendships, and disconnected us from our communities," the authors explore four key concepts as they've evolved: flexibility (considering "how many days we'd like people to be in an office, and for how long, and for what purpose"), workplace culture, office technologies, and community. They discuss how the ubiquity of laptops and email, for example, have resulted in increased pressure for "performative work," such as sending emails and arranging meetings that aren't especially productive, and they make a case that remote work can be a boon to inclusivity as it takes into account individuals' different abilities, home lives, and work styles. Passages of advice for bosses ("stop thinking short term) and workers ("what do you actually like to do?") round things out. Never sacrificing meaningful analysis for easy answers, this is a remarkable examination of the rapidly-changing workplace. (Dec.)
Booklist Review
Universal workplace upheaval provides an opportunity for workers and leaders to shift expectations and establish sustainable work/life balance. This balancing act is impossible for workers without systemic change improving workforce stability and productivity. Based on a historical review of workforce expectations, journalists Warzel and Petersen focus on four key areas for strategic change to improve working conditions, employee satisfaction, and wellness. These are flexibility: workers schedule workflows to accommodate personal commitments; culture: external commitment to valuing employees matches internal experience of employees; office technologies: productivity technologies streamline to benefit employees (think shorter work weeks) rather than adding additional work without additional pay; community: work-time guidelines allow employees to participate in communities, enriching society. Prior to the pandemic, worker burnout, transience, and dissatisfaction were culminating in a call for change. The pandemic and remote-work chaos heightened awareness of the need for change, the return to work now occurring provides the opportunity, and this book provides a roadmap. Recommend for business schools and academic- and public-library collections.
Library Journal Review
This book is not solely focused on remote work as its title might imply but on a holistic system through which employers give their employees more control over all aspects of the way work gets done and where they place their jobs in the hierarchy of importance in their lives. Journalists Warzel and Petersen (Can't Even) refer to their proposal as a "work renovation project" that encompasses four concepts: flexibility, culture, technologies of the office, and community. In sections devoted to each of these concepts, Warzel and Petersen discuss ways that employers and workers in the U.S. can reform policies that give too much weight to bolstering the bottom line and shoehorning job responsibilities into more hours in the day. They recommend new practices based on trust and respect that let workers have a say in determining the most necessary parts of their jobs and how best to get those done. Warzel and Petersen's proposal is intriguing, but it will require a mighty shift in mindset among organizational leaders to bring it to fruition. VERDICT Will appeal to company leaders looking for new organizational models and workers looking to advocate for change in their organizations.--Sara Holder, Univ. of Illinois Libs., Champaign
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| 1 Flexibility | p. 17 |
| 2 Culture | p. 67 |
| 3 Technologies of the Office | p. 123 |
| 4 Community | p. 183 |
| A Final Note to Bosses | p. 225 |
| Letters to Workers | p. 235 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 251 |
| Notes | p. 253 |
