Prudential Vice Chair Rob Falzon joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to weigh in on how the pandemic will change the future of the workplace.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We continue to examine the future of work here at Yahoo Finance. A lot of you are as well, and so too is Prudential. The company conducted a survey asking people about how they saw the future of work, and a full 63% of people said the way in which Americans work will never go back to, quote, unquote, normal, although I guess there's differing definitions of what normal is.

Rob Falzon is joining us now. He is Prudential's Vice Chair. He's joining us from New Jersey. Rob, it's good to see you. So as you look at that and as you look at who Prudential employs but also who you serve, how do you then adapt? I mean, what does that mean that things are never going to go back to normal?

ROB FALZON: Hey, Julie. Well, you know, the theme, I think, that comes from this survey that we did is that remote is here to stay and that the future work and the future of the workplace is going to look very different going forward as a result of that. And, you know, what it speaks to is actually-- it's been interesting, I think, the resilience of both workers and employers that have had to adopt remote models in the face of the crisis, both the pandemic and the market and economic crisis that have followed that. And as you cited, most have indicated that that's actually been a good experience.

And the other piece that's in the survey related to that is that not only have employees said that their experience, by and large, has been good and they think it's changed forever but they actually have rated their employers quite well as well, which I found to be a little surprising. You know, we're rated well by our employees, but it's sort of we were built for these kind of crises. You know, the nature of our business is we're supposed to do well during crises because we're protecting everyone else from the events that are occurring.

But 75% of the people surveyed rated their employers an A or a B in terms of how they're handling the crisis. So, you know, I think it speaks to that resiliency. And a big piece of that has been the adoption of remote and how well that's gone for different companies.

We are-- to your question, we're at somewhere between 97% and 98% remote right now. And while I think there are concerns with the sustainability of that over a longer-term basis, it's actually working quite effectively.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Hey, it's Adam Shapiro. Thank you for joining us. One of the things that jumped out to me is that 59% of people working remotely feel as productive at home or working remotely as they were in the office. So it may seem like a simple question, but if I'm a manager or a business owner, how do I take that, measure it myself, and make a determination going forward? Do I want to keep people at home if they're equally as productive or even perhaps even more productive?

ROB FALZON: Yeah, so just as an additional data point, Adam, we did an internal survey. Now we're a service-based company. You've got to remember, that survey was broad-based industries. So if you go to a company like ours which is in the service sector, 86% of our employees said that they were either equally or more productive remote than they are on site. And that's sort of worked out well for them and then obviously worked out very well for us.

I think there are lots of upsides associated with it and opportunities for both employees to capitalize on that going forward and employer. So think about concepts like mobility and hiring. So with that kind of an experience-- and incidentally, with the expectation-- let me give you one other data point. While 59%-- I think it was like, in the survey, half the individuals surveyed expected to have some significant component of remote work in their future. In our survey, we had 21% of our employees that would have categorized themselves either as fully remote or mostly remote before the crisis. Survey, 2/3 of them believed that they will be either fully or mostly remote even, you know, post the crisis. So that's a whole different dynamic and a change in sort of the workplace that will come from that, and I think it's a positive.

Employees have more flexibility. It gives them a better balance. It gives them flexibility in terms of where they can take their careers and their jobs. They don't have to move to Newark. They can stay in Connecticut. They can work from other locations and come periodically into our office in order to be able to, you know, get the benefits of what comes from direct interaction.

And from our standpoint, it allows us to hire more flexibly because we can reach into the entire country and hire people. They don't have to relocate. And we can move people around in different assignments without them having to relocate either. So I think it's a-- I think it's a benefit that should be embraced by companies going forward.

DAN HOWLEY: Rob, I want to ask what do you do when employees don't necessarily feel comfortable coming back when they're being told that the offices could reopen? So you may have some companies that say, look, we can start rephasing in. We're not under lockdown anymore. You have to come into the office now. Some employees may not feel comfortable if there's no vaccine available. How do you deal with the situation along those lines?

ROB FALZON: Well, two thoughts. One is we're fortunate as a company in that because we're 97%, 98% remote and highly effective, there is no urgency to us coming back into the workplace. So we're going to be pretty patient about it, and we will come back when we feel as if-- the primary and almost only concern we have is for their healthy-- their health and safety. So we don't need to come back in order to sort of reestablish work operations. We don't need to come back in order for them to get back to work. It's just a matter of coming back to the workplace.

The second thought is the solution is not bringing people back in where they feel uncomfortable, and as a result of that feeling uncomfortable, they need to practice social distancing at work. They need to-- and they need to essentially be remotely working at the office. If they're going to remote work at the office through social distancing and otherwise, then they might as well just stay home and remote work from there. We're going to bring people back to the office when we can do the kind of activities that are enhanced by being at the office, and that has to actually do with, you know, collaboration and innovation and the spontaneity that occurs when people get together.

The statistics I like to throw out on this is before the crisis, on any given day about 70% of our employees would be in the office. The other 30% are either working remote or on vacation or otherwise. But while they were in the office, they would spend about 30% of their time doing things together and 70% of their time doing things on their own.

Well, going forward, I think that math is going to be completely flipped around. They'll be at the office 30% of the time, but while they're there, they'll spend 70% of their time collaborating with each other because that's the whole point of being at the office and 30% of their time doing independent work. And they'll do more of that independent work remote from the office.

JULIE HYMAN: All right, makes sense. Rob Falzon, thank you so much for your perspective and bringing us the results of that survey. Rob Falzon is the Prudential vice chair. Appreciate it.

ROB FALZON: Thanks, Julie. Thanks, everyone.

JULIE HYMAN: We'll be right back.