Work from where: Marketoon of the Week

This week’s Marketoon speaks to the tortuous decision employers and their teams might have to make if the world ever gets on the other side of the pandemic.

Fishburne’s take: Separate from the obvious benefits of schedule flexibility and a barefoot commute, one in three (workers surveyed in a recent Harvard study) felt that both their overall performance and quality of work was better than the previous year and one in three were able to better focus on work from home. This return hesitancy is sparking friction as businesses figure out the new normal, most prominently in financial services.

Why we care: Marketers are innovators and adapters. Last year they were able, for instance, to change in-person events to virtual conferences on a dime, as well as manage complicated marketing tasks remotely. How does the marketing profession feel about returning to an office on a more regular basis? It would be worth it, both from a morale and an operations standpoint, for organizations to listen to their innovators and avoid sentencing large portions of their workforce to a dungeon not of their own choosing.

About The Author

Chris Wood

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country's first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on "innovation theater" at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.