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I recently argued that return-to-office mandates arent really about productivity; theyre about control. Ironically, my article published smack-dab in the middle of a September inflection point of increasing office time requirements, a phenomenon Owl Labs dubbed hybrid creep. And now, perhaps shockingly, Ive started a new job with a team that (gasp!) has an office. When I wrote my argument against RTO, I had no inkling that I would soon be back in an office (part-time) myself. I am now basically in a live experiment. So far, its changed how I feel about the idea of going into an office. It hasnt changed my view on RTO. A lab for truly flexible work My new team has a completely flexible work-location approach. There is an office, and we can come in if we want to. But theres no requirement or badge-swiping. Those of us who are local also collaborate daily with colleagues in drastically different time zonesEurope, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). So our overall team is distributed enough that in-person work cant be our organizing religion. That makes my current situation a fascinating window into what happens when people are free to optimize their work model to their life needs, versus an imposed framework of what a workday is mandated to look like. When in-person time is voluntary, rhythms emerge instead of rules Im seeing that when location is genuinely a choice, people start building rituals. Theres a weekly team meeting for which many people choose to be in the office. There are social opportunities like an annual holiday party and happy hours. And the office itself is an uplifting, interactive place where dogs are allowed, theres a bar in the kitchen area, and people play music throughout the day. A few teammates come in more often simply because thats what works best for them. If someone is visiting from another location, the office fills up as people come in to see them. In-office time also doesnt have to be a full day. Many of us have early calls with EMEA, so we take those from home, head into the office midmorning, and leave before rush hour to finish up from home again. A main team meeting is midday, on purpose, to make that flow possible. A morning Slack thats more than a status report Another ritual I love is a deceptively simple morning Slack each person sends sharing where theyll be that day and whether theyll be offline at any point. On the surface, it sounds like basic coordination. In reality, it feels like a daily good morning and a window into each others lives. The messages arent just Ill be online 9-to-5, WFH. Theyre things like We had a loss in our family, so Ill be taking the day off;My puppy was sick last night, so Im working from home; andHeaded to a workout midday and will be back online by 2. These tiny updates are powerful because they keep us connected and normalize being a human with a life outside work. They also give us opportunities to respond and help cover for each other. How Im using the office now Im going into the office about two days a week, with my Tibetan terrier Basil trotting alongside me, eager to greet everyone when we walk in. My colleague keeps a laser pointer at his desk; Basil goes wild chasing the dot when we need a laugh break. Im trying to schedule one-on-ones for days when others are in, so theyre in-person catch-ups, not just agenda boxes checked off. We get the power of group thinking around a table, friendly greetings, and the ability to take a walking meeting instead of more staring at a screen. All of this feels like support, not surveillance. No one is proving they exist by punching a proverbial time clock. We go in by choice, which gives me gratitude for the option versus dreading going to an office. So, has this changed my view on RTO? Absolutely not. If anything, its reinforced my original point that dictating office time is a sign of poor leadership. The benefits Im witnessing wouldnt exist in the same way if they were forced rather than organic. The difference isnt office versus remote. The difference is a culture of empowerment versus a culture of control. In a control culture, leaders start with mandates such as how many days people must come in, and then try to retrofit culture. Any sense of flexibility is granted like a favor. In an empowerment culture, leaders start with trust and clarity: Heres what we need to achieve, heres how well communicate, here are your options of where you can work. Then they let people design their own patterns inside that useful guidance. In the first model, the office is a compliance tool. In the second, the office is a resource people leverage when it helps. A growing body of research on RTOs exists Were far enough past pandemic-forced flexible work to start seeing how different work-location models perform and their impacts. For example, a large study done at Baylor University tracked the LinkedIn histories of workers at S&P 500 firms and found that when companies imposed RTO mandates, turnover jumped by about 14% and hiring took longer. Even more concerning, turnover was more likely among top talent and those important to diversity (especially women, whose turnover rate was three times that of men). A separate two-year study of more than 800,000 employees by Great Place to Work found that productivity stayed stable or improved after moving to remote work; what mattered most was leadership quality and trust, not where people sat. I expect that in the long term, companies that dont empower their team members with flexible work location will experience enough brain drain that it will be difficult to remain competitive. There must be a better way, and I believe Im experiencing a version of it. What leaders can draw inspiration from You may not be able to copy our exact setup, but you can borrow from these themes: Replace mandates with rituals. Instead of dictating fixed in-office days, anchor around events such as weekly team meetings designed for collaboration, planning on-sites, and celebratory events that people actually want to attend. Design for life needs. If you want in-person time, schedule office-based meetings to avoid peak commutes and respect caregiving schedules. Start micro-updates. A daily or weekly Where Ill be check-in across the team takes only a minute for each person and creates a real sense of presence and care. Foster inclusion. The office should be a place where everyone feels invited. Ensure that people who are typically remote feel this too. They get invites to all major happenings like holiday parties, a CEO visit, etc. And when someone from another office or region visits, others know so they feel invited to come in. Make the office earn its gravity. If your office isnt a place people want to be (no dogs, decent spaces to collaborate, or sense of warmth), fix that before you fixate on policies. Many keep asking, How do we get people back to the office? Thats the wrong question. The better questions asked by true leaders are How do we give people the autonomy to choose the best place to do their best work while making the office one of those places? and How do we foster a culture that invites people in? My current experience is proof that when you take these approaches, the in-office magic happens, no mandate required.
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E-Commerce
On the edge of Boulder, Colorado, a remarkable convergence of mutually beneficial collaboration is underway, and it could reshape how housing gets built, who builds it, and who is able to afford it. This is all happening inside BoulderMOD, a new modular housing factory built by the city of Boulder for use by the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate and powered by the labor of apprentice modular home builders from area public high schools. The students come to the factory several hours a day for hands-on education in advanced home building, working on actual modular homes that are now being installed in a section of Boulder devastated by flooding. At full capacity, the factory could produce up to 50 homes per year. [Photo: courtesy City of Boulder] BoulderMOD is a joint venture between the Boulder Valley School District, Flatirons Habitat for Humanity, and the city of Boulder, and each of the three partners is tallying very tangible returns. The school district gets to offer an advanced trade-based curriculum that prepares its students for careers they can start immediately. Flatirons Habitat for Humanity gets to streamline and multiply its housing production capabilities, and the city gets to chip away at a deeply ingrained housing affordability crisis. [Photo: courtesy City of Boulder] “It’s game-changing,” says Dan McColley, executive director of Flatirons Habitat for Humanity. “It is a complete reinvention of the way we are serving families and meeting the needs of our community.” This innovative partnership has its roots in tragedy. In 2013, devastating floods washed through the Boulder valley. One of the hardest-hit areas was the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park, a 68-unit community of permanently placed mobile homes, and though no lives were lost, many of the homes were heavily damaged. In a city where the median home price currently hovers around $1 million, Ponderosa was a rare place of affordability, and seemed on the verge of being lost completely. The city stepped in and, working with the community, annexed the mobile home park in 2017 and upgraded its infrastructure to prevent future flooding. It partnered with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild housing for any resident who wanted to stay, and committed to preserving the community’s affordability in perpetuity. Getting that done was going to require an unconventional approach. “At the time, the Flatirons Habitat affiliate was building maybe three or four homes a year and looking at replacing 70-ish mobile homes,” says McColley. “It was going to take us a long time if we used our traditional model.” [Photo: courtesy City of Boulder] New skills, new homes In 2019, the city approached the school district about following through on those commitments. Factory-built modular housing was identified as the most efficient way of rebuilding damaged homes. The city had funding for the rebuilding effort in its affordable housing fund, and a willing builder in the Habitat for Humanity. But it didn’t have the factory. So city officials reached out to representatives at the Boulder Valley School District, which had recently opened a trade-focused campus called Apex that offers career pathways to high school students. One of its programs was centered on construction. The city asked the district if that program could expand in a new direction. “[The city] had this aspirational vision of what would happen if they were able to partner with the school district, build a facility, and then in a meaningful way take moves to help with the affordable housing issues in our community,” says Rob Anderson, superintendent of the Boulder Valley School District. After five years of planning, that facility came online. The city built the $13 million BoulderMOD facility using funds from its affordable housing program, with some state and federal grants and private foundation money. Construction of the facility was finished in late 2024, and the space was then outfitted with about $1 million worth of construction tools and equipment. [Photo: John Risi/courtesy City of Boulder] Flatirons Habitat for Humanity staffed the facility, and the school district created a curriculum to support the production process. Production started in February 2025, with around 30 high school juniors and seniors in the factory every week, working on every stage of construction, from framing, electrical, and plumbing to drywall and roofing. The first two duplexes were placed on the Ponderosa site in November and December. “It felt like the right thing to do for our community, for our kids. But man, it’s exceeded expectations,” Anderson says. The Habitat projects are also helping support the community in other ways, including tapping into local suppliers for energy-efficient building materials. For example, Alpen, a high-performance window manufacturer located near Boulder, is providing all the windows for the Ponderosa homes. McColley says the pace of construction will increase as the teams refine their processes and as the students gain more hands-on experience. The duplexes being built for the Ponderosa project are particularly conducive, as they use a single and relatively simple design for each three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom unit. “At full production, the house will take about eight weeks to move from one end of the factory to the other, and then we’ll have about four, maybe five weeks of site work to do before the family can move in,” says McColley. “We’ll be cutting our construction timeframe from 9 to 12 months to about 12 weeks.” [Photo: Linda Sanders/courtesy City of Boulder] It’s so fast that it’s tweaking one of the standard elements of the Habitat for Humanity building process, which requires homebuyers to contribute to the cost of their home via 200 hours of sweat equity during construction. Homes built at BoulderMOD will progress so quickly that a homebuyer’s sweat equity will likely extend into someone else’s home. McColley says building the 70 or so homes for the Ponderosa project will occupy BoulderMOD for the next few years, but his organization is already looking at using it for other Habitat for Humanity housing projects across the Boulder region. Every home built there will be sold as an affordable housing unit, and McColley expects about 90% of its production to be modular from this point on. “Everything about what we do is different because we’re doing it this way. We’re building houses faster and we’re giving them out to families much more quickly in a much higher volume than we’ve done before,” McColley says. “So we’re tackling the affordable housing crisis in the near term through a different production process, but we’re also tackling it in the long term by training a new generation of construction professionals.” The school district is already planning to expand the size of BoulderMOD to accommodate more students, even those not explicitly using it as a career path. “I see kids who plan on attending competitive four-year colleges and universities not even interested in construction signing up for this,” Anderson says. Whether or not it turns into a job, the students at BoulderMOD are doing more than just learning construction skills. “They are learning how to build. They’re not working on bird houses or dog houses to learn their construction techniques. They’re working on people’s houses, and that’s something that is not lost on them,” McColley says. “They understand at a level that I frankly did not expect the community impact that they are having by building these homes.”
Category:
E-Commerce
At a time when it seems like everything’s getting more expensive, Ikea keeps making cheaper and cheaper USB-C chargers. Its newestthe 20-watt, single-port Sjösssells for $3.99. Youd pay more than four times that for Apple’s 20-watt, single-port USB-C charger, priced at $19. Charging cables for both are sold separately. [Photo: Ikea] Ikea has moved more aggressively into home electronics since last year. The company released a revamped range of smart home products in fall 2025 and opened pilot in-store pop-up shops in select U.S. Best Buy locations, meaning the brand now shares kiosk space with tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Meta. Its strategy: selling products that are designed to be simple, stylish, and, above all, affordable. [Photo: Ikea] Ikea already sells a 65-watt charger for $25 and a 30-watt charger for $8; its newest and smallest model is also its cheapest. Priced not to break the bank if you leave one behind in the hotel room and need a replacement, Ikea’s charger comes in just one colorway: white and light mint green, but each includes colored stickers to personalize. Not content to sell us only Billy bookcases, Ikea’s push into home tech ranges from smart lights and wireless speakers to kitchen appliances and now ultra-cheap chargers. Everyone’s favorite Swedish furniture company has quietly become something of a tech company on the side.
Category:
E-Commerce
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