Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Managment at Boston College. 听
Bill Gates, philanthropist and cofounder of Microsoft, has said he used to memorize the license plates of Microsoft employees so he could keep track of who was in the office. Gates spent a lot of time there, and he expected his employees to do the same.
Recent edicts suggest little has changed in corporate America. After a Covid-era interlude, many bosses are again judging people as Bill Gates once did鈥攂y time spent in the office. Amazon, AT&T, Dell, JP-Morgan, and X, to name a few, have required employees to abandon remote or hybrid arrangements and return to full-time office work.听
Their message is clear: Our ideal worker is someone willing to toil in our cubicles.
Management experts at the Carroll School take issue with this notion, which has come roaring back post-pandemic. They say research shows there鈥檚 no single paradigm for an ideal worker; employees can be productive in various ways. So the willingness to log long hours in the office shouldn鈥檛 be the only measure of employee value. Depending on the job, it may not even be the right one.
Vanessa Conzon, assistant professor of management and organization, has found in her research that some workers strive to excel but also limit extensive overtime and after-hours socializing with colleagues. She calls them 鈥渙ccupied workers鈥� to contrast them with the 鈥渁vailable workers,鈥� who stay late and then grab beers with colleagues.听
Occupied workers typically have some sort of obligation outside of work鈥攗sually kids, maybe a volunteer endeavor鈥攖hat also taxes their time. To balance that with work, they鈥檙e disciplined. They鈥檒l eat lunch at their desks and decline invitations to happy hour or golf with colleagues. They鈥檒l nudge meetings back to the agenda when people start to gossip or digress. One person Conzon interviewed even timed his bathroom breaks so he wouldn鈥檛 run into coworkers who felt like chatting.
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Assistant professor of management and organization Vanessa Conzon.
鈥淗istorically there鈥檚 been this sense that the only way to be viewed as a good worker was to just be there and be available,鈥� Conzon says. But occupied workers represent another way to do well at work鈥攁n 鈥渆fficient, focused way."
Some employers may not appreciate people who work this way because they may cling to an outdated, even unfair, ideal. 鈥淢any employers still think, if you鈥檙e at work a lot, you鈥檙e a good worker,鈥� says Conzon, whose research on the topic was published last year in , a leading academic journal in fields related to management and strategy. 鈥淏ut there鈥檚 not a lot of research support for that, and it frankly reflects gender norms. Who can do that? Typically men.鈥� (Workers of either gender without young kids also may benefit from this norm.)
Mothers are disadvantaged by those old-school expectations, but fathers can be too, says Jamie Ladge, a Carroll School professor of management and organization. Dads who take longer-than-average parental leaves can even face a stigma that moms don鈥檛, she says.
"I worked on a project on fatherhood,鈥� Ladge says. 鈥淭he newspaper picked it up and reported that fathers who were involved with their kids were happier at work. Then I was picking up my kids, and I saw all these guys picking up their kids and felt good about that. But then I overheard the conversation between two of them, and they听were making fun of a guy who took a long parental leave."
Brad Harrington, the recently retired executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family.
Brad Harrington, the recently retired executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, said the center鈥檚 research shows that employers are increasingly giving men and women equal amounts of parental leave. To that extent, the research suggests that more companies may be relinquishing gendered stereotypes about what constitutes an ideal worker and that an involved father can be perceived as 鈥渁 professional and a parent."
Sometimes companies offer mixed messages about what they want in employees, Ladge says. They鈥檒l talk about wanting their people to find fulfillment in their work, even as they continue to evaluate them based mainly on hours in the office.
The best managers try to reconcile corporate rhetoric and the reality of complicated lives, she says. They allow their employees schedule flexibility and alternative work arrangements where possible. That builds trust鈥攁nd can give people greater ability to reach for whatever a workplace鈥檚 image of the ideal worker is.听
Some managers even do something called 鈥渏ob crafting,鈥� trying to balance their needs with the employee鈥檚 skills and goals. 鈥淭he employer comes to the employee and says, 鈥楬ere are the expectations,鈥欌�� Ladge explains. 鈥溾�楴ow let鈥檚 hear about your goals and talk about how to craft the job to align with those.鈥� You want to make sure elements of people鈥檚 skill sets are embedded in their roles.鈥�
These kinds of managers also acknowledge that employees, even the best, have lives outside of work. They encourage their people to be open about their lives because that enables them to 鈥渓everage their skills and knowledge from outside of work,鈥� says Ladge, who has written a book, , on navigating the challenges of motherhood and work. 鈥淭hat helps people do their jobs better."
Professor of management and organization Jamie Ladge.
Ladge added that, even in a world of more flexible job definitions, being a truly ideal worker entails diligence. 鈥淵ou have to put in the effort. Nobody deserves to get a raise without putting in the effort.鈥� The work may not all happen at the office or during typical business hours, but sufficient time still must be devoted and deadlines met.听
Conzon, for her part, noted that one thing overlooked in discussions of ideal employees is context. Her research has been highly contextual, involving interviews with 72 professionals in three different workplaces鈥攕cientists at a pharmaceutical company, scientists and engineers at a professional services organization, and untenured professors at a university.听
As she has found, the qualities of the best worker are likely to vary with the job. A corporate lawyer, for example, might need to be available 24/7 to clients and colleagues, but a caregiver working with Alzheimer鈥檚 patients might be better judged on how empathetic and emotionally supportive they are. 鈥淒ifferent contexts have different expectations for ideal workers,鈥� Conzon points out. In other words, by holding fast to generic notions of this ideal, we might well overlook some of the most devoted workers among us.
