Flexible work is here to stay, Adam Grant writes in The Wall Street Journal
October 18, 2021
Adam Grant
Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) Faculty Affiliate Adam Grant writes about “The Real Meaning of Freedom at Work” in The Wall Street Journal.
Grant says the taste of freedom and flexibility workers got while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has inspired what he calls the Great Resignation, wherein employees required to return to the office full-time are quitting in droves. But, Grant says, the demand for enhanced freedom and flexibility at work began long before the pandemic.
“More than a decade ago, psychologists documented a generational shift in the centrality of work in our lives,” Grant writes. “Millennials were more interested in jobs that provided leisure time and vacation time than Gen Xers and baby boomers. They were less concerned about net worth than net freedom.”
Grant, who will be CPO’s Positive Links speaker in November, says the heightened desire for freedom and flexibility at work extends beyond the option to work remotely. It also includes workers being able to choose their people, their purpose, and their priorities.
“Flexible work is here to stay, but companies that resist it may not be,” Grant says.
Grant is the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania.
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