Personal finance, Excel, practice, problem, insurance payments for medical claims, calculation. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Here we are in our Excel worksheet. If you don't have access to the worksheet, that's okay because we'll basically build this from a blank sheet. If you do have access, there's three tabs down below. An example tab, a practice tab, and a blank tab. The example tab in essence being an answer key. Let's take a look at it now. Information on the left hand side related to health insurance and a claim. And then we're going to be calculating how much might be paid by us, how much by the insurance company. Practicing a little bit Excel formatting and formula formatting as we do so. The practice tab, second tab will have some pre-formatted cells. So you can work through the practice problem with less Excel formatting. The third tab, the blank tab will basically be a blank sheet with just this information on the left. If you don't have this, you could just add the information on the left. If you don't have this, I would start by selecting the entire sheet with the triangle. Right clicking on the sheet, formatting it in the way I would like my underlying formatting to be, which I usually go to currency brackets, negative numbers, and no dollar sign. And I remove the decibels as my starting point. I'm not going to say okay here, but just X out of it because I already have the data on the left. Then enter the data changing cells as necessary, like the percent here, making that a percent format. And then we can move forward from it. So our information says we got the health insurance pays percent of out of hospital expenses after the deductible. So remember the health insurance is a little bit more complicated in some ways than things like property insurance. Because the deductible is something that you have to pay to clear oftentimes. But then you might be paying a percentage after that deductible. Say after we clear the deductible at 70%, the deductible per person we're going to say is $950. And so a doctor and prescription drugs for one family member is 4,000. So now we're going to say the claim then for that one family member is 4,000. The deductible per person is 950. So we'll have to figure out how much the insurance company might pay, how much we might have to pay. So let's do this in a couple different ways. I'm going to start off by making this column D a little bit larger. I'm putting my cursor between D and E. I'm in dark mode by the way if it looks a little bit different because it's easier on my eyes. That's what they tell me. So here we go. So this is going to be the amount paid by insurance company company. That's going to be our calculation company. And if I misspell anything, then I apologize. I might do a spell check at the end. But here we go. We're going to go to the home tab. We're going to go to the font group.  So make that black and white like that. And then I'm going to have a sub calculation. This is going to be the amount over the deductible deductible is going to be my sub calculation. Because I got to figure out how much is going to be over the deductible for the claim that we are making. So let's say that we have a claim amount amount. I'm going to put this on the inside. That's the $4,000. So we got to pay $4,000. That's the claim. And we're going to say that the deductible per person and this is for one person. So we're going to say that's going to be the 950 950 on the deductible putting an underline under that by going to the home tab font group. Let's put an underline underneath that one. And this is going to be the amount over deductible. We'll say if any.  I'll keep it there. Then we're going to put our cursor in the outer cell. I'm going to bring this into the outer cell here and I'm doing my subtraction problem. So I'm going to say equals and go up, up over to the 4,000 minus the over and up 950. That gives us the 3,050. We'll do a little bit of the format in here. I'm going to format these three cells. I'm going to do some indentation by going to the home tab alignment. Let's do an indentation making it look a little nicer. Let's do an indentation here. Alignment and indent it again. All right. And then we're going to say this is the percent percent paid by insurance over the deductible, which is going to be 70%. I'm going to say equals and point to that 70%. That's going to be paid by the insurance. Let's do some formatting on that one, making it a percent percent to find at home tab number group percentification 70%. And so then that's going to be the amount paid by insurance company is going to be equal to the 3,050 times the 70%. And that's going to give us the 2,135. Let's put an underline here, underline here. And let's do some formatting. I'm going to make this one black and white on the end font group black and white there. And let's do our whole formatting with the blue and borders.  Here's the borders. And here's the bucket for the blue. If you don't have that blue right there, you can go to the more and the standard. And then in this little wheel, I'm just using that blue right there. And okay. So there it is. So, so there we have that. Then we could make this a bit more fancy of a cell. So let's just think about this and say, well, what if this amount here that we're paying was below the deductible? What would be the amount paid by the insurance? It would be zero. Right. So how can I reflect that? Let's put the 4,000 down here just so I remember it. And let's say this amount was only like, like a 700. For example, notice my, my answer then doesn't really work because now this number really should be zero. So let's just do that in our Excel practice or Excel formatting and go, okay, well, how can I make this worksheet work? If I wanted to change my data on the left hand side and allow it to adjust automatically, I can use, I can use an if then function. I could say, well, if equals if brackets, if this number, the 750 minus this number is less than, which is shift, shift the little, the comma. And then if it's less than zero, then I don't want you to put a negative number. I'm going to say comma that goes to the next argument. What do I want you to do if it's zero? I want you to put just a zero there then not a negative number. But if not comma, meaning if it's greater than zero, then I want you to do the calculation, which I got to put in again, which is 700 minus the 950 or E3 minus E4 close up the brackets shift zero and enter. So you don't have to do that, but that makes it so it kind of works out and doesn't give you that, that false number just a little Excel practice. If I change this back up to 4000, then we should have the same calculation we had prior and then I can adjust it and be a little bit more adjustable. Now, let now I could then calculate. Let's put this down here, the amount paid out of pocket or the amount paid by us then let's say the out of pocket.  I'm going to go select the home tab thought group. Let's make this black and white. And then I'm going to say, okay, well, if I do the out of pocket, I could start out with the amount paid over the over the deductible, the amount paid over the deductible. If any, let's make this a little bit longer. I'll put this over here and make this black and white to put this in the outer column because I've got room over here. So we'll make that the 3050. And so and then the amount paid by the insurance company is this amount. So the amount over the deductible then paid by us, let's put an underline here. This is going to be the amount paid by us over the deductible. So the amount over deductible paid, let's say like out of pocket. I won't put that here. We'll say this is going to be equal to this number minus this number. So that's the 915. And then we also had to pay the deductible, which is that 950. So then we're going to say the deductible. So we'll say the deductible, if any, which is going to be so this is going to be actually it's going to be what is it going to be that up to the deductible claim. Up to deductible. And so I'm going to I'm going to pull in the deductible, which is going to be now if I'm going to show you a couple ways to do this if I pull in the 950. And then I go, okay, let's do an underline here. That means that the out of pocket out of pocket is a total of the sum of these two. And that would be the 1865. I can do my check figure figure, which would be adding the amount paid equals by the insurance company and the amount paid by us, which would equal the total amount of the of the bill. Right. And so I can under I could then let's do some blue and border here home tab font group borders and blue border blue. Let's do a border blue down here to border blue font group blue and the borders. Now again, if I put the 4000 down here and I say, well, what if I change this to like 700 again? Now notice that this amount right here isn't really working because I wouldn't be paying the full deductible. Then I would only be paying the claim up to the deductible. So what I want to do is take the smaller of these two numbers, the claim or the deductible so I can make this a little bit fancier with Excel. I can say this is going to be equal to men function, the men function of these two just take the smaller of the two of those two. So it's like the sum function, but with a men instead. And then I say enter. And so then I got just the 700 that would be paying that we would be paying because we didn't clear the deductible yet. So then if I bring it back up to 4000, we should we should be back to the same spot. So that looks good. Let's just calculate it another way. This is another way that you might see it.  So I'm going to, I'm going to make a skinny column. I'm going to take this skinny seed and go to the home tab format painter format, paint it and make a skinny G out of it skinny G. And then this is going to be the amount paid, let's say paid out of pocket. So that's the first thing we'll think about. And so I'll make this a little bit larger, a little wider here. So there we have that. And then I'm going to make this a little smaller so we can have a bit more room. Maybe I can make these two smaller so I can save some space without making it too small. Okay, so then I'm going to select these three. We're going to go then to the home tab font group and we'll make this blue, no, black and white, black and white. That's our header because that is our custom. So then I'm going to do the same calculation to start off with. We would do the same thing up top, the amount over the deductible calculation. I'm just going to say equals to claim amount, same number, claim amount, same thing. And then we've got the deductible per person, which is the 950. Let's put an underline under that. And this is going to give us the amount over the deductible just like we started with before, which would equal the 4000 minus the 950. Let's do our indentation. I'm going to select these three home tab alignment indent this one alignment indent again. So then I want to take a look at the percent. I'm going to call this the percent out of pocket out of pocket. This is where things are switching up here because because now I'm not trying to calculate the amount the insurance company is going to pay, but how much we pay. So I'm going to take this is the amount that they're going to pay in percent. So if I take one minus that amount, that's the percent we're going to pay. Let's take one or one 100%. In other words, minus the amount that that comes that paid by the insurance company, which is the 70%. And let's make that a percent. I'm going to go to the whole the numbers group, percentify it. We could percentify this one 100%. But I usually don't. I usually just keep it like at one for some reason. And then I'll go to the font group and underline it. And then this is going to be the percent out of pocket. And so this will be equal to one or 100% minus 70%, which would of course equal 30%. Once we percentify the cell, which will do thusly home tab number group percentify percentify you better percentify. And then we're going to say and then recognize that you percent. Okay, we're going to select these three home tab alignment and indent and dent this one again. Home tab alignment and dent again. And so this is going to be the amount amount over deductible paid that we paid is what I'm trying to say. So now this is going to be equal. This is the amount over the deductible times the 30%. I'm just working in the outer column now times the 30%. There's the 915. There could be rounding involved here, but I'll keep it at that. So then we've got the deductible. So they got the deductible amount that we have to deal with. So I'm going to call it claim up to deductible or the deductible. I'll start just with the deductible same kind of situation we had down here. We'll adjust it a bit in a second. But if I take that 950, then we're going to say that the total the total out of pocket is going to equal the sum of those two. Sum it up. Sum it up. I'm going to go to the home tab font group and underline. I'm going to go to this one home tab font group and underline again. So there we have it. So that kind of matches this amount here. And then of course we can do kind of our check figure. Let's do our check figure again. Another check figure down here. And we'll check it out compared to to the amount paid by the insurance company. So I could say this is the total out of pocket is this number. And then I'll just pick up the amount paid by the insurance company paid by insurance was this number. We calculated over here. And that is that. And if I sum those two up, you get the total claim amount, which is our check figure. This is that 4000 once again. So we checked it out. Let's put some let's put some fancy blues and borders font group blue or border blue, border blue, border blue. And then this one let's do a border blue on that too. Border blue on that to font group border blue. And then we can do some fancy formatting over here. So let's do the same thing. I'm going to put my 4000 down here and let's pretend that this number was below the 950 like 600 this time. Notice this side's calculating properly here. So we would have to pay the 600 because we still have to pay the amount up to the deductible. The insurance didn't kick in until we clear the deductible. So I could do the same thing we did over here. I want to take the smaller of these two numbers. So or, you know, subtraction. I don't want to go below zero in other words. So I can do that by saying equals if this is one way you can do it. If this number minus this number is less than zero then comma just put a zero in. That's what this is. I'm on this. Just put a zero if that happens. Don't go negative. Don't go negative on me. Stay positive people. Stay positive. That's the theme of the presentation. So if not, then you do the calculation of this minus this and and then close up the brackets and boom. So now it's zero. But then down here you've got this claim up to the deductible. I took the whole deductible amount and it should be the smaller of the deductible or the claim if it's smaller than the deductible. So I want to take the smaller of these two amounts. So I can say, well, this is going to be equal to the men function. Let's use our trusty men function of those two, like the sum, but with a man same way to use it. So now it took the 600 instead of the 950. That looks good. And so that so that looks correct, I think. So let's go down here and then say then let's bring this back up to 4000 and we should be back. We should be back in process. So now you got something that we could do the calculation and you also got a worksheet over here. So that if you were to switch stuff up, say that this was different or you're comparing policies or you're comparing, you know, what would happen if and then we had a change to the deductible or the charges. If I made this 6000 or something, then you can check it out and that's how you should be setting up the worksheets. Let's bring it back down to 4000. There it is.


Well, welcome, everyone. We're all here together to discuss the role of the office, as the title of the session says. It's still TBC, or to us Americans, TBD. I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm the editor of Harvard Business Review. And I'm thrilled to be here today to moderate this conversation with, and I'll start at the end, with Manny Meseta, the chief executive officer of Bain and Company, which is, as you know, one of the leading consultancies. And as I just learned, the best place to work, what was the? What was the? The Glastor ratings last week. Number one place to work in the US. Fantastic. Congratulations. Next, we have Liva Mostry, the chief executive officer of Euroclear in Belgium. Next to Liva is Alan Blue, the co-founder and vice president of products for LinkedIn. So you have enormous insight into workforce matters. And next to me is Martin Kocher, the federal minister of labor and economy for Austria. So let's do a little scene setting, if you wouldn't mind putting up that slide. This is some research, just a little piece of the research that the World Economic Forum did for a future of jobs report. And you can see where some of the pain points are. The talent shortage is still a real thing. It's still a pain point for leaders across the globe. And the question on the table is, what is the role of the office? And the role of culture? And how does culture relate to the physical environment? And how will that solve the problem that you see on that bar chart? So I do want to remind you, just a little housekeeping, that if you are going to share anything from this panel, you're going to do it online, please use the hashtag WEF24. Let us start with you, Alan. So after two years of increased remote and hybrid working, many companies are telling employees to get back to the office. So what is the current state of remote hybrid in-person work? And what are the trends that you're seeing that you think are guiding these changes? So absolutely. So at LinkedIn, we base our data on the things we see happening inside the LinkedIn network. So we have a billion members, and millions of jobs are posted on LinkedIn. So we have a lot of direct data about how professionals are feeling and about how companies are thinking about hiring. Basically, right after the pandemic began and people began to work from home, we added a capability on LinkedIn's job postings to indicate that a role was remote or hybrid. And since then, we've been able to track the growth and diminishment of hybrid and remote roles. So we hit a peak in April of 2022, where 20% of all the roles being offered on LinkedIn were remote, all right? However, fast forward to last month, so end of 2023, what we're seeing now is that that number has been cut roughly in half. So we're down to about 8%, which makes sense, right? I mean, basically people are actually going back to the office and so forth. The interesting thing is that the interest among employees, people who are potential employees in taking remote or hybrid work has remained strong. So even though we've seen a 50% reduction in the number of jobs that are actually presented as remote, we still see that those remote jobs and hybrid jobs are attracting 46% of all the applications our users make to those jobs. So there's a clear interest on the part of employees to have the flexibility offered by remote or hybrid work. Alan, let me just ask about that. Are you seeing that kind of result across all jobs, across industries, across regions? We're seeing a tremendous amount of flexibility depending on where you go. So for instance, remote work was very strong, of course, when all of us basically had to be remote. But then hybrid became an incredibly important thing and in Germany, as a matter of fact, the number of hybrid jobs and remote jobs are roughly equal to the number of in-person jobs today. That is not the case in France, where almost 80% of the jobs are local. In other words, you have to go to the office full-time. And the UK and the United States and India are in similar situations where we have a preponderance of hybrid jobs. But still most are requiring people to come into the office. And then on candidate preference, are you seeing differences demographically? So we do see some differences demographically. But I do want to point out that there are among, there's interest among younger workers and there's interest among women workers to come and basically to have an option to do either remote or hybrid work. Yeah, anecdotally, that's what we're hearing as well. Leavitt, let me turn to you. Is hybrid work truly a productive middle ground for remote and onsite working? And what have we learned over the past three years since the pandemic about the relationship between flexibility and productivity? So we have taken a bit of a unique approach towards hybrid working after the pandemic. We have said we are not going to do a mandate across the organization because there are different type of jobs. It's different when you are in coding, when you are in client service, when you are in legal analysis. It is very different. And so we have said to our people, we want you to take a team by team approach, taking three criteria into account. The first criteria being client service that always has to go above everything. Secondly, the team's efficiency and then thirdly, your personal preferences. And we have said that we would expect just to remain connected to the company a minimum presence of four days a month. So this was allowing quite a lot of flexibility to the different teams. And we see that the reality across the teams is different and we think that is normal. And so we see, and it's for different reasons. It's the nature of the job. What we do see is that for newcomers to learn the job, it's much easier when they are in the office, when they see a number of colleagues and we facilitate and the teams facilitate for that. We see that for the very creative work, in for instance, early stages of projects where you really do definition work, it is easier when people are together to do that. But on the other hand, we find it not very constructive to say to individuals that will be coding a full day behind their screen that they have to commute for an hour and a half up and down. We don't see the value in that. And this approach has helped us in a number of elements. We clearly see a huge increase in staff engagement. We have seen on before COVID and after COVID when we do with constant methodology, the polling. We have seen an increase with 13% points of engagement. So we think that is a very important element because engaged staff productivity measures as such are very difficult. But clearly engaged staff is more productive than this grunt of staff. So that is one dimension. We have also seen maybe a bit different to what you say. So we are a 5,000 people company and we recruit a lot every year because we are growing, we recruit a lot every year. And so we have seen that to recruit young people, this is really an asset. Having this element more of flexibility, it is really an attraction point in the war for talent that we can have on the labor market. But I would add also to your comment, Alan, on the differences between countries, even within an international company like ours, we see those differences, but they're also related to something else. We should not forget that people live differently in different places. And clearly places where housing is typically much smaller, much more restricted, it is hard to work from home. And it's hard to have different people of the family working for home. And so typically in Paris, we see more people coming to the office. In Hong Kong, clearly more people to the office, but that is not only related to culture, it's also related to the physical environment. So that is for us a positive experience in how we operate. We've also heard that flexible work models really helped women who bear most of the family responsibilities, even if they're the main breadwinner, right? So how is that playing out at your organization? I think that is true, but the interesting thing is that we see also quite a lot of young men being happy and feeling in a safe place to say that they also want to benefit from this flexibility and have this possibility to contribute in the family. Because it is so much embedded in the culture and in the approach, they feel it's a safe place to also make use of that and they do make use of it. Yeah, yeah. So Martin, let's take a more macro view. We'll pull the camera back. How can flexible workforce arrangements contribute to positive outcomes for economies and societies? And how does this relate to your context in Austria? Thanks for having me. First of all, I think we should say that about 60% of all the workforce cannot work remotely. So that's important. It's always talking about the minority, but an important minority. And I think that's important to state. The first data we have on productivity in hybrid work or working remotely from home is actually quite positive. I think most companies see a positive effect or at least no negative effect on productivity, which is important because this was the fear that existed. Although I think it's also important to say that especially hybrid work is nothing new. I come from science originally, I think 15 years ago, I mostly unsuccessfully tried to work from home one or two days per week because it was very natural. So what you mentioned in terms of the different approaches, the flexibility for different sectors, for different companies is extremely important because they are very different. And for some, it's very natural to work one or two days at home. For some, it's very natural to work the entire work week at home. And for some, it's very difficult. And you mentioned, for instance, creativity and other aspects of work where it's more difficult. So I think the flexibility is important. But apart from productivity, I want to mention one more thing. Austria introduced a law very early on working from home. It's not spectacular, but the framework is very easy. There is full flexibility for companies. But it's always a contractual agreement between workers and firms. So there's no obligation, but there's no right for working from home. And many companies introduced it. It's usually hybrid form. Many people work one or two days from home. And we evaluated the law two years after it became into existence. And 80% of both workers and employers are satisfied with that setup, which is extraordinary. I tell you, I've never passed the law as a minister responsible. Of course, the parliament passed it. That was accepted so widely. And I think the reason for it, it's the flexibility and the way the companies and institutions implement it. Usually also very flexible. I think that's also one of the advantages if you have a decentralized implementation. There are some general company rules. But then the superiors, the department heads, whoever decide about the details and do that together with their workers. And that usually works because everybody accepts it. And you have a way to adapt very quickly, actually. So I think that's the experience. So I think it will stay as it is. It is important. It helps a lot. It makes it more flexible. And it also increases the satisfaction of the workers with their jobs. And I think that's important. To leave this point, Manny, how can leaders reap rewards of in-person interaction and build a positive back-to-the-office culture without sacrificing benefits gained from flexible working? And we've discussed a number of those benefits. And then I want to ask you a few more questions. But let's start with that. No, thank you, Amy. And I'll just build on some of the comments earlier. We did a global survey of work for us preferences split between developing and developed countries. And flexibility was number three for both. Number one for all, by the way, is compensation. So maybe that's not a surprise. Number two is quite different. So flexibility matters. And flexibility was defined as not just where to work, which is this office issue, when to work come up and also how. And so in this world, I think the themes is it actually does play out somewhat differently by job, by country, by city. And then from the United States, San Francisco is one of the places the city's in the world that's had the hardest return to the office. And so as both a corporate, say of myself, we're in 70 countries, 20,000 employees, but guiding clients. The issue is, as you design this, what are you solving for? And the issues that are going to drive what we found, preference actually be in person together, which is the essence of back to the office. Number one is how important is actually building a company culture. So is it easier when you all go to Nike headquarters in Beaverton, a cathedral to sport? Apprenticeship for organizations. And we're an organization like that. The product is people. You're training, trying to attract, develop, and retain future partners of our firm. Can you apprentice as easily if you're not meeting each other in person? The level of collaboration, the level of race that, that varies job by job. And then one issue that's also becoming real in today's society is security of data. To be able to actually have more protection of information is that theoretically easier in a physical location than remote. And so as companies are sorting through that, us, like many others, are coming up, I do think in the end it's all hybrid. It's what definition of hybrid is. And you've said four days a month. For us, for our core consulting teams, the target is that we're together. The target is three days a week. Could be together in the office, could be together client, could be together at the third party location. It gets harder by the way when teams are now built remotely. And we're also making trade-offs between efficiency, productivity, sometimes carbon footprint for many companies because travel is going to be a source. But the net effect of all of this companies are figuring out that we can, there are best practices now in how to manage a more flexible workforce with flexible locations and flexible hours. And it's not one size fits all. And we're wrestling with that like anybody else, but so far so good. So and how did you handle it at Bain? You know, as a company that tried to attract and retain people and being a best place to work, the core was finding the right unit of team. And that can differ function by function. And have that team be together enough that you can actually build a sense of team and do some apprenticeship and do some collaboration. So for us, we've retained offices, but it's generally a three or four day a week model together. But it's not a mandate. It's not a mandate. So part of best practices, even for leadership and management is how do you get input from the teams and the people? See if you wanna attract them. How do you coach your managers that supervising people who are around the corner and building team events is very different when they're not there that often. So it's really an investment in some new management skills around this hybrid work. And I think companies are figuring it out. And what our clients would say is the ones, the companies that really prioritize having a very strong culture and attract and retain that employees that are loyal to the company. Because the target for most companies in the end is talent loyalty. And you do this in a way that builds talent loyalty. So leave it looks as if you were nodding along, it seems that what Manu was saying was really resonating with you. Well, a lot of things resonate, but I do believe first on the data security part, there are solutions. There are technology solutions. We have been working very hard on that because we are a financial market infrastructure. And for us that is very, very important. But you can manage that. It is not for free, but you can manage it. So I think that facet is clearly there. I think it also means, it is a big ask for the managers to manage in a hybrid way. I think we should not underestimate that. Some are very creative. Some really create attractive moments for their teams to be all together and to make sure that there is this bonding. We have also invested in the physical layout of our offices. We have made them very different because they were probably like many offices much more oriented to people sitting next to each other focused on their job. Now we have really made them, I would say, more cozy, more pleasant to do much more the collaboration work in the office and not the purely executing, be that of operational work, be that of administrative work or of IT work. And I think, but I do agree that I always say, but we are like in a collective social experiment here. This is changing so rapidly because of COVID. And I think we have to give it a bit of time in our organization so that everybody in their company and in their setup finds a new equilibrium. But I do believe that you can continue to have good culture. And if you take it wisely, your approach to hybrid working can even be the positive contributor to that rather than to see it as a potential downside.  What's hitting you about that? So I entirely agree there is a set of best practices which I think are pretty broadly shared, although we may talk about them here, some have certainly come up, restructuring an office to be more hotel oriented. Like people can come in, they sit in different locations, making the space more valuable for collaboration rather than sort of heads down work. One of the things which we find most difficult, which kind of makes hybrid work kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy is that going into the office without guarantee that you'll be able to find the people who you want to work with causes a real problem because it makes it less likely for me to go in if I go in and then I spend all day on Zoom talking to people who are elsewhere. So figuring out a way to cluster, not just certain days a week, but certain teams with certain kind of, I don't know if a ritual is the right word, but sort of some regularity schedule behavior where they're supposed to come together so that every trip to the office is in fact worthwhile for me. And we tend to find that to a certain extent, and I certainly wouldn't want to speak for everybody and your point is exactly right, this does not apply to all kinds of work. But we've gotten the habit of all working together in an office up until the pandemic hit. And in a lot of cases, that was a fairly artificial environment. And we now have to think about, well, why would somebody want to come into work and how do we make sure that's a real thing for them? And that's something which I think is a challenge to everybody who's managing and is unique to each culture. One thing if I could jump in is that there is a, there is a critical mass of activity if you are going to go in, which often happens at the office level, the neighborhood level, the city level. Because even if it's hybrid and not to dwell on the city of San Francisco where the last commercial real estate building was just sold a couple of weeks ago for 30% of what it went for pre-COVID. If it gets below that critical mass, then the attraction of actually coming into the office and there's not many restaurants and there's not many people. So hybrid has to have enough volume and it can influence designs of cities and neighborhoods. And for our part, we had several buildings at our main campus. We closed down 90% of them and pushed everybody into one building. And it meant that was an incredibly busy energetic building and worth visiting. So what you're saying about the sort of the neighborhood, the ecosystem around office work and making it appealing, is there a role for government there? I don't know. I'm not sure. I think there's a, of course there's a role in terms of building cities and organizing cities the way transport works. But it's mainly I think a role for the companies and the institutions to find their equilibrium. I want to point out one more thing that has been mentioned but I think it should be re-emphasized. You have certain trade-offs and one of the trade-offs is really important in my view. People, and you said that Ellen, people want to work remotely. So they respond to a job ads where you offer them more remote work. But at the same time, we know that it reduces identification with the employer and it makes it more likely that they leave soon, actually. And on the extremes, we see that very often because if you work remotely the entire week, it doesn't matter who your employer is. You can just switch. Coders do that very often, actually. So companies have to find this equilibrium between actually offering attractive workplaces, remote work and other flexibility and at the same time make sure that people identify with the companies. And that's a difficult task in terms of organizing the workplace physically. But it's also a very difficult management task and it of course applies at the same place to public institutions like a ministry. We have exactly the same task to solve. It also implies, you know, real emphasis on the relational skills, the leadership skills that are very hard to train and develop. Liva, have you had to think about your professional development efforts differently? Well, very clearly we see that different managers have different capabilities to organize for that, to accept that, to change themselves because this is also a big change trajectory for management. And so we have been giving support to management on a number of things there or HR department has been very active on it. And indeed, you still see some people that continue to have difficulty with it. But what we have refused to do, to the despair of some, we have refused to change an overall rule. As we really wanted to be team by team and we really want to be adjusted to the team dynamics and the team logic and the work logic within those teams, we've said, okay, if you think that you have a good reason, you will be able to convince your team, you will be able to have that dialogue and you will divert from this overall rule, but you don't need an overall rule to organize your own team. So it's a lot to do with empowerment on the one hand, but accountability on the other hand, and we see some managers coping better with that than others, but it is management maturity as well. Does it also involve embracing the idea that culture takes place team by team? Is there still an overall organizational culture? Oh, I think there is perfectly possible an overall culture, because what we talk about is about team organization. It's not the culture that we make. It's about team organization that justifies one way to fill in the setup or another one. That is about organization. Culture is something different. Culture is much more to do with how do you adopt the purpose of the country, of the company, how do you adopt the values? Do you speak the same language around that? I hope not the rules about how we behave around here, right? Yes, but behavior and organization is not necessarily the same thing in my view. Right, okay. So before we go to questions from you, let's go down the road, down the panel, and just in a few sentences, just say what you think the role of the office is going to be in the future. I'll start with you, Manny. I'd say for organizations that will continue to try to build strong culture that creates talent, loyalty, and that's not for everybody, you know, the role of the physical location of the office has to be a key enabler for that. And there's certain jobs that you don't need to do that, and there's certain organizations that aren't going to try to do that, but for those that do, the office will continue to be an important role. I would say that I see the role of the office really as the port where the team comes together, where they rebond, they reconnect, they recheck the priorities, they recheck the way they organize themselves, so it's really this point of connection of coming together at a number of intervals that can be different, but I see it as this point of connection across the teams, and I believe that it is for management and for organizations to create these good opportunities where people come together, because I'm fully with you. If somebody comes on his own to the office just to sit behind the screen to do the video calls from there, it makes no sense. I think that one of the things that's fascinating to me about this entire thing is that it has caused management to be innovative about the way they think about things. So I look for new innovations about how to use the office and much more how to make it into a place which emphasizes dynamic human interaction. How do you make it a truly amazing place to be? I think that the office is going to be in competition with working from home, and I think that's a good thing for the office. It's a very good point that I think there will be a hybrid form, for sure for many workers that can work remotely. And I think if the office succeeds in offering this fascinating and interesting environment, it will become even more important, because people in their leisure time are more and more socially disconnected, physically disconnected, because they use social media, they use online tools and everything else, they play computer games, they are in the virtual space. So they will long for the meeting of people, but the office has to offer this interesting environment, then it will be successful. All right, let's go to the really great questions from you. If you want to raise your hand, we have someone with a mic who will come to you, so you can speak. Yes, sir, in the third row. Thank you, Walter Mead with the Walt Street Journal. And one of the things that interests me about the discussion is at least is I haven't heard much about the climate implications. I think it was mentioned by one of you, but it does seem of all the ways to reduce emissions, reducing that daily office commute is perhaps the most popular and certainly one of the most efficient. I just wonder what your thoughts are about that. Go ahead, Mr. Higel. I just wanted to mention one thing that is important. The daily commute is the aspect of life that creates most dissatisfaction with life. So it's not only about climate. It's also more about that. About climate, it depends a bit, of course, of the organization of the city. If my child care is close to my office and I have to go there anyway, so it depends a bit. I wouldn't overestimate the effects, but it has, of course, an effect on climate. Yeah, I think what I'd add is that most people are looking at this at the same time as from a cost standpoint, what practical realities, generally with everything we've done, there's less office space than there used to be. And then people are looking at, well, from a climate standpoint, holistically, buildings are greener, there's a lot of work there. What is the cost of the commute? But also, if you're going to not have as much office space, we have some clients that are actually flying people together, because sometimes they're remote periodically so that they can have this magic in collaboration and teaming. You know, there is a carbon cost there, too. And so what's the net balance of this? I think, I still think in the end, it'll be lower cost and lower carbon than the old model. Maybe it'll be better public transportation, too. The differences between the cities that have good public transport, first the ones that don't, is one of the key. Ways to get variable performance. Liva, I'm sorry. No, no, I was just going to indeed say so. And I think for all companies that have a good way to measure their scope, one, two, and three emissions, we have seen that. We have seen how much they drop over the COVID period. And we have seen that in hybrid working, it doesn't move up to the same extent. So you're certainly there. It's one of the contributing factors. And it's probably one of the factors that also resonates when you recruit young staff, because they're very, very focused on that dimension as well. Yes. Third row. My name is Andrué Bois. I'm an oncologist in the U.S. Run and Cancer Center. So we cannot do a lot of remote work. If you're a patient, maybe in the future, two common questions. One of them has to do with the perception of the human factor. And because you mentioned really well on how the office has to compete with online life at home, but how people reconnect to the human level, how we quantify that, this is really important because people go from, when you're physically there, they go from one cubicle to the other, resolve a small problem, and that we tend to organize more meetings. And we have an inflation of meetings because we can invite anyone on those meetings. The second question is a little bit more general. How do you think this is gonna change the way people sort of phase out in their retirement? Are they gonna try to look at it more progressively and take a part-time job because it's remote? We're all looking at you, Alan. You have most data, yeah. So I don't have any exactly recent data regarding changes in meeting behavior, but there absolutely is an increase in meeting behavior because you do have access to everybody and because in order to be able to get things done, you can't just pass some on the hall in order to make it happen. You have to set time in order to make it work. It's actually something which is damaging to management as well. Managing people has a lot to do with sort of being in the same environment with them, but when you're managing remotely, you set a fixed time to have that conversation so the management is more difficult in that time. I will say that they're upsides to the online meeting culture. It turns out they're far more inclusive. People tend to get excluded from meetings when they're happening in person and then they're disconnected from their colleagues. I can't speak to the retirement question now. I would maybe make two comments. I think what we have seen by doing our meetings over Zoom is the following. We were an international company and so most of our meetings even before COVID were a number of people in the rooms and a number of people calling in from other locations. And typically in that situation, the people calling in didn't felt that much included. And when everybody is in the same setting of being behind the screen, it becomes much more even because we typically had head office people sitting in the same room, locations calling in, and that has changed when everybody's behind the screen. So I think that is an important takeaway that we have to take into attention when we do hybrid meetings as well, that we don't have those that are in the room versus those that sit on the screen that you have an us and them dynamic. On the retirement, again, I don't think this has already been explored, but I think it is a good thought because we will all need across most of our geographies people to work much longer just because of the demographics. And it may be indeed a way to make work but there's a lot of attention on workable work and that might certainly be something that could contribute to that. Yeah, on retirement specifically and we're observing this in our own company, I said people value flexibility and people have been valuing hybrid. Well, the last few years you've learned, the old model if you work in the office five days a week and then you have to retire slash cocked in a world of more flexible work models. You can work 80%, you can work 6%, you can gig economy across multiple companies if you want, you can work from home. The step down from the traditional full-time job has actually been easier. So we're seeing more in our senior people more part-time allocations, more will be an advisory partner and not a regular partner. And the rest of the organization is now more comfortable with that model. So I do think it makes the end of career slope a little bit easier. Easier on the individual and easier on the organization. That's a lot of knowledge not running out the door on Monday, yeah. Might still be difficult for oncologists though. Yes, second room. Su Chan from The Telegraph. Can you talk about any generational differences between sort of attitudes towards being in the office and just on young people in particular, I mean, many of them are used to in the past learning on the job. Is there an extra training need? Because a lot of them, you know, they can't learn from superiors in the office now. Well, I can speak to one finding we had from research we've done around this is that young people who are taking their first job do not want remote work. They want hybrid work because they want the flexibility to be able to spend three days in the office and to kind of ease into the world of work or whatever other things are caused upon their time but they need in connection with the people who are around them and they feel the lack of it very strongly. So in general, hybrid is highly attractive and remote is not attractive at all. It was one of the things which we discovered when we were basically all fully remote. So yeah, at least that is 100% true. So typically from our experience, we recruit people I would say kind of in cohorts and indeed in the first months there's a whole lot of training and then they come much more to the office and we encourage that and we make sure that the people that give the training are then also in the office. So indeed for training and for learning and for getting I would say on the rails of the company so there the physical presence has its value and it has its advantages but even then when we leave a bit of flexibility during the week if there is something it is highly appreciated. But it is true that for training there is a more attention to the physical presence. Substantially more. Manny, do you see anything that you'd like to share? Well, I candidly in the early days of going from everyone remote back into the offices for organizations where training and really certain apprenticeship matters. Yes, the young college grads wanted to come into the office and interact with the more senior people they could learn from. It was harder to get the senior people back in because there are the ones that they have nicer homes, they have more real estate, et cetera. So to actually build the management systems that encouraged, there has to be a balance. That took a little bit of work and we're in much better space now than when we were all coming out of the remote period. Oh, I'm sorry, over there. Brad Olson, I'm an economist from New Zealand and one of the global shapers. I just wondered, does the physical location of the office change in the future? Do you always go back to the CBDs where space is expensive and similar or do you start to see offices because they're not as well populated and move out to the fringes in New Zealand? During the pandemic, we saw massive shifts of population from our urban centres to provinces and I just wonder if you think that not only will that happen with peoples working from home but also does the office location shift? Probably I can say a few words to that if I may. So we see, and I think that's similar in other places of the world, pop up community offices, for instance. So people don't want to work from home because conditions are not perfect but they don't want to install everything. Security issues might matter. There might be other amenities close by, whatever, childcare, restaurants. So I think we will see also some developments in terms of office space that is not at the headquarters or at the traditional premises of a company or an institution. I think that is something that happens but it takes some time, the laws are not very clear but sometimes the question is who pays for it. Sometimes even in Austria, sometimes even villages pay for it because they want people to stay in the village because of course there is an advantage because they spend the money and they don't go to a larger city close by commuting every day. And I will just one quick thing. One of the things which the last three years has been great for has been small communities which weren't actually able to retain highly paid talent. So in the US, I know that people who wanted, for instance to be software engineers had to leave wherever they lived in order to go do that in a city center someplace. That isn't the case anymore. You can set up like a little storefront in your downtown and four engineers who work there. So the diversity of types of working has grown and I think the kind of effect you're talking about which will be of specific value to small and medium enterprises, maybe not to big companies where getting a thousand people together in the same place really matters but if it's 25 people or even a hundred people then I think it's a great option. For us it's maybe a bit different. I would say what we did in the past and what we continue to do. As we want this to be the place where people connect, where we bring more people together at the same time in order to have purposeful interactions in the office, we continue to privilege because we are looking for a new office as we speak but we continue to privilege proximity to public transport for the biggest part of the population because otherwise if you accept hybrid work but you don't look after that, you have even less chances to bring them together for the things that really matter. Any other thoughts? Well, unfortunately, we have to draw this to a close. Thank you so much for the conversation, for helping us see the physical office as a shaper and a reinforcer of culture, for helping us understand that now the office really has to compete with working at home and so we all have to think differently about how we use our physical space and then some of the best practices that really help to make work in the office work for everyone. I should mention that this discussion is an effort of the Good Work Alliance, a cross-country alliance of leaders working to improve job quality worldwide and provide flexibility and protection as part of one of the pillars of the Good Work framework, which is created by the Alliance. I think that that QR code will take you to more information about the Good Work Alliance. Thank you so much and thank you for your wonderful questions and thank you to the panel. Thank you, Amy.