In this video clip from Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 7, Peter Jackson, CEO of the technology company Bluescape, answers a question from Fool.com contributor Rachel Warren about whether the transition to fully or partially remote office environments is here to stay.
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Peter Jackson: We are pivoting to productivity because of technology. We're not going back to the way things were. We did stay at 8:00 to 5:00 in the '50s. You can come in and sit in your cubicle, the people who sat on the corner offices were the managers, but there were these big multi-floor buildings with people just sitting in cubicles doing whatever they do. That was the 8:00 to 5:00 that was born out of the '20s.
Then we have the digital revolution, we have things called email, we have things called Slack now, we're starting to see the shift that says, is it really a 40-hour workweek or is it productivity-driven? Rachel, when are you going to get your podcast done? When are you going to publish it? If you finish it on time on Thursday, does that mean you're going to work on Friday and sit around till five? No. You're going to go do something maybe personal or whatever.
So it's what are you delivering and what time frame you're delivering it. I don't care when you do it. You can just do it Sunday afternoon. We have a deliverable and I think more and more things are moving that direction, but we're being measured through AI and being measured by time of project and why are you missing your deadline and doing all that stuff.
So I think we're into the shift on that. I think on the traditional side, you can't change the services industry. Waiters got to be waiters, cooks got to be cooks. We're talking about office and productivity.
I think it's a function like, we can't go with the Ivy League, MBA, CEO guy saying, you're going to be on the same floor with me, this is how it's going to get done because there's a whole set of really good employees that want to live in Provo, Utah, or want to live somewhere else and they're awesome. You can't say you can't work here. So you need to get things done. I hate to ramble on about that, but it's a function of that brain saying productivity, not time.
