A Discussion with Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. of SHRM on Return to Work

Burton Goldfield: Hello. I'm Burton Goldfield, president and CEO of TriNet. In today's talk with Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO of SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, we are addressing issues related to returning to work. He recently provided testimony to the EOC on this topic and provides an important perspective that I think you will find very interesting. Johnny, welcome. I'm thrilled to have you join me in today's discussion.

Johnny Taylor: It's so good to be here. Thank you.

Burton: I am seeing encouraging signs that U.S. businesses are coming back. And in fact, they are hiring. Most companies are looking at a hybrid return to work. At the same time, there are certain issues that need to be navigated. What type of guidance would you provide employers relative to vaccination requirements, COVID testing in the workplace, employees who wish to continue to work remotely and reconfiguring the workplace for social distancing?

Johnny: I got to tell you, thank you again for having me here. Gosh, that was a mouthful, because things have changed so much. If you had asked me these questions six months ago, I'd have different answers. In fact, we're conducting research at SHRM, like literally weekly, to figure out what's the mood and sentiment of employees along the way. And employers are trying to respond to it, because after all, if your employees won't come back to work, then you've got a problem. So, no matter what you want to do, if the workers don't come, then you can't get work done.

Burton: Correct.

Johnny: So let me tackle the first. The big question over whether you mandate vaccines or you encourage them, strongly encourage them. It's interesting. Strongly encourage is what most companies, it's almost Americans don't like to be told what to do. That's just the bottom line. And so, what we have found is that strongly encouraging people, giving them more information, giving them comfort that they are safe is working. And so, a few employers, until recently, just have said mandating is the right thing to do. But what we're now seeing is now that we have experience, especially in companies that have B2C businesses and they are people who are actually frontline, interfacing with customers. What we're seeing is Delta Airlines, for example, announced the other day, "We won't make our current employees take a vaccine, but everyone coming on in the future must be vaccinated." And that's what we're seeing. I think, I predict, and our research is indicating that toward the first quarter of 2021, we're going to see more outright mandates.

Burton: Interesting. Interesting. And when do you see people returning to work when they have to return to work?

Johnny: I'm going to take this point to point out that a lot of people always worked throughout this, and it's something we have to be mindful of. It's easy to think, and I've seen this, especially in places like Silicon Valley, knowledge, economy-based operations where you say, "Oh, everyone's working remotely." Well, think about a Walmart, 2.2 million employees. Their people work every day. Think about many of your clients, frontline, and they had to work. So it's just important for me to point out a lot of Americans, between 38 and 45% of them never had the luxury of working remotely.

Burton: Yes. Great point.

Johnny: But for the people who are going to come back to work and were allowed to work remotely, what we're seeing is September. So there were some employers who said July 4th was going to be the magic moment, you can come back, and that's it, because now you can't use the excuse of kids not being in school, because it's summer. That was one of the reasons that we allow people to work remotely. So, September, most school systems, every indication will be back in school, and so you won't have the parenting issue, the question of the kids being at home, teaching themselves and providing for themselves. And so, employers are saying, "After Labor Day, we want employees back in the workplace."

Burton: What does it look like to reconfigure the offices for back to the workplace? Do you see that being a radical change, a subtle change, or what?

Johnny: Subtle. Subtle. We're already seeing. So the CDC started out with six feet and then it went to three feet, and now they're saying no mask inside. So we are clearly, and SHRM predicted this, that for all of the people who said the workplace in the future will be so drastically different—not so much. It's going to be more like it was. It will be different. And we will see a larger number of people who will work remotely. Let me be clear, before the pandemic about 10% of the workforce was allowed to permanently work remotely. And we think that number is going to go up to about 30%. But still 70% of the people are going to be in the workplace. And then the new workplace, it's going to be sensitive. We're not going to stack people on top of people, so density will be different, but it's not going to be the three feet and the tall walls and all of that and PPE, because now that we have proven, we're getting real close to herd immunity. And people are more confident that there are not allowed to downsides to this. And so, every indication is that we're going to be more normal than people predicted a year ago.

Burton: And that's thanks to the incredible scientists that came out with the vaccine, they are the real heroes in my mind.

Johnny: That's right. That's right. But now we've got to go a step further as employers. The worst thing that could happen is if you bring people back in, then you have an uptick. India, as a classic example, they brought people back into the workplace and then they had another spike. Then employees will lose confidence. And so, it's our job to provide the PPE and the other protective measures are less about what the science requires and more about giving employees confidence.

Burton: Comfort.

Johnny: Yeah. That their employer has their safety as paramount in their minds.

Burton: Speaking of that, we saw many clients, furloughing individuals, which was good because they kept their medical benefits, but certainly they want to come back to work. Are you seeing companies starting to bring people back off of furlough, as well as hiring new employees? What do you see there?

Johnny: Oh gosh. Everyone. Right now, that unemployment rate went from 3.5% in March of last year up to 16, 17% unemployment. And then quickly came back down. So we are now sub-6% unemployment and employers are looking and scrambling to get people back to work. Now I got to tell you, until we solve this government payment thing, as long as you're subsidizing employees, it's going to be harder to get people back to the workplace. But come September, when it's planned to end and some states are already eliminating their unemployment benefits, then we're going to see a different story.

Burton: Well, that will be wonderful and interesting and give people a lot of opportunity for the future.

Johnny: That's right.

Burton: What are your thoughts on working remotely and how does it impact the culture of the company?

Johnny: Tough one. I think we've obsessed and almost taken so literally that people want to work remotely. What the research at SHRM is telling us is that people want flexibility. You'd be surprised. Human beings like to interact with other human beings. There were some people who are not people-people, right? But by and large, people want to interact with other people. What they were struggling with is pre-pandemic, you came from 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, you have 30 minutes for lunch, those rules of engagement. Now, it's like, "Give me flexibility. If I want to work in the office for five or six hours and take the afternoon and work remotely, I can do it. I've proven that I can do it for a year and a half." So that's what we're seeing, is there will be less more work from home and more flexibility in work.

Burton: I appreciate these valuable insights. This is wonderful. And I look forward to the fall and getting some level of normalcy back to work for all the people who want to be back to the work and an environment and a culture that's inclusive and productive for everyone.

Johnny: Here, here.

Burton: Thank you.

Johnny: Thank you.