Remote work’s crucible, next steps for DE&I success, and more

Hello, comms pros and messaging maestros.

We hope you enjoy this week’s stories—along with practical tips and takeaways—for the week of May 17-21, 2021.

1. Our looming remote work showdown.

Are you ready for a battle?

Micro managers and aloof execs the world over are eagerly plotting how to best rope workers back into office. Why? As one boss put it in The Atlantic, remote work is “suboptimal.” Hmph. The same piece states:

“Remote workers deviate from what researchers call the ‘work-devotion ‘schema,’ an idea in American work culture that ‘reflects deep cultural assumptions about work that call for intensive allegiance and undivided attention to work and the expectation that employees will minimize time spent on personal and family demands or else risk career penalties.’”

After all this time, despite rafts of research that says remote work lifts productivity and morale, many leaders still won’t rest until everyone schleps across town to trudge back into their cubicles. Not even a horrific pandemic can quite smite the yearning for the performative charade of office life, it seems.

In the meantime: