Also: Bob Iger's extension, Google's A.I. contractors, A.I. spam
Good morning from Geneva.
The war over remote vs. in-office work is over, and hybrid has won.
That’s the conclusion of a new McKinsey report, out today; CEO Daily got a sneak preview.
“Three and a half days in the office. That’s where we think the convergence will roughly happen,” Jan Mischke, one of the report’s authors, told me. “There will be a lot of movement still” before we settle on that number, he added, and it could be 3.9 or 3.2. “But it’s unlikely to be five days and unlikely to be two days.”
This surprised me, since corporate leaders—from Wall Street to Silicon Valley—have been so vocal in calling their workers back to the office full-time. But according to Mischke, that’s more a reflection of where these companies are coming from than a sign of where they are going. “[These firms] have the lowest attendance today,” he said. “They are the epitome of remote.”
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, for example, may go back to five days in the office, but the rest of us won’t. Credit the segment of the population that is “extremely adamant” about being hybrid, Mischke said. The biggest advocates of the model may not be who you’d expect. “It’s the senior executive that comes in three to four days a week. They think they are more productive at home one to two days a week.”
The consequences for superstar cities like New York, San Francisco, and London are profound. “We’re going into a world where city centers will become much more mixed-use,” Mischke said. For central business districts, building conversion won’t be easy, nor cheap, “but it has to happen for 10-20% of the properties.” Companies, for their part, “will need to upgrade the quality of the office space” and “make it much more adaptable.”
 McKinsey The primary function of an office, Mischke concluded, should be to meet other people. I would agree. And I’d even venture to say that’s true about shared spaces in general.
Separately, have a read of this opinion piece by Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work, titled, “‘It’s time to acknowledge why diversity makes us uncomfortable.” “Facing issues related to race in this country is very hard, or perhaps, impossible,” he writes. But if companies want to build trust, they need to address it.
More news below.
Peter Vanham
peter.vanham@fortune.com
@petervanham
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Iger extension
Disney CEO Bob Iger will stay in his role for an extra two years after the entertainment company’s board unanimously voted to extend his contract through 2026. Iger returned to Disney last November replacing his erstwhile successor, Bob Chapek. Disney is struggling with high streaming costs, disappointing releases, and blowback from conservative politicians. CNN
Google training
Thousands of contractors, making as little as $14 per hour and with minimal training, are trying to keep Google’s chatbot Bard accurate. These Google contractors sometimes have to judge the accuracy of Bard’s answers in as little as three minutes. "People are scared, stressed, underpaid, don’t know what’s going on,” one contractor said. Bloomberg
A.I. spam
Spammers are inundating digital publishers with low-quality, A.I.-generated articles as chatbots make it easier to generate copy. Other websites are using A.I. to write news articles—often including errors—to make a quick buck from digital advertising. Researchers now worry about “model collapse,” as A.I. models trained on A.I.-generated writing produce even worse writing. The Wall Street Journal
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The future of workforce well-being The concept of workforce well-being has grown beyond an organization’s current employees and now prioritizes long-term human sustainability, according to a Deloitte survey. And while 89% of executives said their company is advancing human sustainability in some capacity, just 41% of employees agree. So how might leaders take action to improve the well-being of their workforce? Explore insights here.
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