this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the other main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. hello everybody, a very warm welcome to talking business weekly, with me aaron heslehurst. let's go take a look at what's on the show. can the golden days of the office return as some companies demand that

workers come back to base, many say they would rather quit and find a job elsewhere. i'm going to be discussing the great resistance to going back to the office with these two. doctor grace lordan from london school of economics and geoff, the big boss of the online learning giant coursera. also on the show, are greenjobs the future? well, europe's abb, one of the biggest players in green tech and robotics. i'm going to ask if they are ready to tackle the climate emergency and create those all important newjobs. a very warm welcome to the show. you know, for generations, millions of peoples around the world went into the office without even thinking about it.

then the pandemic delivered a shock to the system, expensive office space stood empty and a new normal of working from home, for many, got us used to, well, working in new ways. the pivot to remote working was a massive change to a way of professional life that had gone unquestioned for generations. as lockdown restrictions were lifted in many places, the question of whether or not to go back to the office full—time, part—time or to be totally remote has sparked a global debate. in many cases, it seems that bosses, they want people back and many workers would rather stay remote. elon musk, injune chimed in, tweeting that workers who think that coming into the office should, and i quote, "pretend to work elsewhere". apple and google are among other technology companies that are asking workers to come back to the office. but, walkouts and lawsuits have followed. a survey by microsoft of 20,000 people in 11 countries revealed

that 85% of leaders say that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive. but 73% of employees say they need a better reason to go in there and just company expectations. christian hansel, he was one of those, he is a german tech worker who want to keep working remotely but his bosses wouldn't discuss the matter. i didn't feel valued, as a team member as an employee, certainly didn't feel like i was being taken care of. the company is a very old school company, run by old white men, as you would say. they weren't planning on giving people the flexibility that we needed. i decided to leave and looked around for newjobs, for new opportunities which i have found pretty fast. after a couple of days, i went back to my manager,

handed in my notice and left the company. many of my co—workers did the same. so, what i get out of this is, as a company, more flexible at this point in time. i think this will go for the future as well, people are getting used to this. working remotely, where they see fit in their lives. and for the employees what i see is, you have to stand your ground, you have to talk about it. but you also have to calculate the advantages and disadvantages, working remotely remotely and working at the office. you have to find what is right for you. well, christian isn't alone, a uk report by the london school of economics found that women working in finance, in particular, were rejecting mandatory calls to come back to the office. i caught up with the author of the report.

grace, a pleasure having you on the show. you spoke to around 100 people for this report, some of whom were so resistant to going back to the office they said they would refuse. why? i think they understand the value of remote work. they are not resistant to go back to work, they don't want to be going into work when it is pointless to be going into work. these people in financial and professional services, it was quite common to go into the office, looking at a computer and talking to a colleague in another country or a colleague who happened to be at home. what they wanted was their employer to take seriously the idea that a remote first working, where productivity and operations are still put first, they could have more time at home. is there this so—called, great resistance? i think it is a great resistance to going back to how things were, the traditional workweek, 9—5. what is more interesting is that there is also a resistance to go back to rigid policies, that say that you have to be in the office three days a week

or you have to be in the office four days per week. what they want instead is flexibility, where they are trusted, they know theirjob. don't managers perhaps have a point because they say, look we change things because of the pandemic but things are back to normal now, so come back to work like we used to before the pandemic. managers say, you need to be in three days a week or five days a week. it is real people who are saying that we want to be removed first. i think the second is that you can say that but depending on thejob, it might not be that easy to hire again. we are in a weird economy, for some jobs you can say yes come in, you need to be in five days a week or i will find someone else to replace you. some workers are irreplaceable. especially with a very tight labour market that we are seeing at the moment. so in a nutshell, managers,

have to listen and compromise? they have to listen and compromise but employers also have to listen and compromise. we are in the uk, productivity is at an all—time low, you have people working in a sector where productivity is at an all—time low, saying to you that we are more productive in a remote first set up. why not trust them and see what happens? as part of a great experiment. you also talk about diversity, unfortunately and sadly it is women that are more impacted. can you explain that one? women still do more of a share of the household responsibilities and caring responsibilities whether it is children or elderly parents and they have always valued autonomous working much more than men. there has been other evidence that people who have disabilities and health concerns, managing chronic conditions, do much better with autonomous working. as you might expect, because they can't balance doctor's appointments with work more easily. there is also evidence that people who are underrepresented in their companies, for example non—white ethnicities in the uk, tend to be happier working from home

because they don't have to code switch when they come to the office. i think that these are groups that we are trying to get large representation of in financial and professional services. and in some other sectors for example technology. you can imagine, if these people are saying we prefer remote first working, that the companies who give that are the ones that will win in the diversity war. what about the difference between older and younger people, what did your research find? there is a kind of myth that younger people want to be in the office all the time, they want to shadow people, they want to walk around behind them. we did find a little bit of that but what we ultimately found was that they wanted autonomous working just like the older generations. but they did want opportunities in the office. that's why getting the mix right is so vital. some of the hybrid model? a bit in, a bit out. in to collaborate and spend time together, laugh together, home to do the deep autonomous working. thank you so much for your time. my next guest runs a global company with over 1000

employees all of whom are remote first. during the pandemic his company coursera saw a boom in customers for their online learning courses. but with more companies wanting their workers back at base why is coursera staying remote? let's find out. jeff, a real pleasure having you on, let's start with this. you have over 1000 employees scattered around the world doing remote first. how do you and your managers make sure everything gets done? i think it is a different management style. i think it is good practice but there are a number of things that we have to do differently. you have to make sure everyone has the technology to be connected. the connectivity, the security etc. but a lot of the key people processes need to change. it starts with good management,

investing more in managers. and rather than relying on the charisma and the personal touch of people, hoping that people bump into each other at the water cooler, we have had to be more intentional about the way we run the business, how we manage our teams and coordinate. it starts with recruitment, the way we recruit and on—board people is different. making sure things get done, we focus more on results than activities. we call them objectives, keys and results. be really clear about what you expect someone to produce rather than when and how they produce it. you talk about newjoiners to your companies. how do you integrate them, how do they get on? i take the positive side of this, when new employees start, every monday

we have a new group, i am the first person to introduce them to coursera. i do it over zoom and i say thank you forjoining. here is what the company is about. connecting the new employee to the purpose of the company so they feel that every day they are working, the purpose of the company is aligned with their life. what about managers who say that they want to see their employees, to make sure they are doing theirjob. don't those managers have a point? they have a point to make sure the work is getting done but what we have been more intentional about is the way that managers manage their teams. 0ur expectations is that managers have staff meetings once a week and that is virtual but everybody sees each other. and then one on ones become

very important between managers and the people they manage. the one on ones cannot just be transactional, they have to be personal. how are you, how are you doing? people want to feel that personal connection. in those meetings, we ask managers to review the status of results. manager staying on top of whether the results are being produced rather than whether someone is coming into the office, that is the key switch that managers need to make. more personal connections and focusing on results rather than activities. if the job market wasn't so tight, if the job market were booming and you don't have to worry about finding the right skill set, would your attitude be different to remote working? i don't think so. before the pandemic

i was an old—fashioned ceo. we used to allow some people to work from home on wednesdays and honestly, i despised that policy. i thought if you're not coming and you're not getting the work done. i had a personal conversion when we went remote. i thought this can be more productive, we can get more talent. i do think it is an important strategy that we have. we are excited about the way that it is working and i think even if the labour market loosens up, i think that point around the best talent, often it is more affordable and always more diverse. women in particular benefit from flexibility, if we want women in technology, which we do, and women in leadership, remote work is a important strategy for gender equity and diversity.

it is just a better way of running a business, independent of what happens with unemployment. apparently, 50% of the jobs people are applying to our ——are remote workjobs. but only 15% of the jobs that are open our remote jobs. companies offering flexibility art seeing three times the selection of candidates. i think we have a huge advantage. the pandemic isn't over, if we look at china, we see a new wave coming there. how could that impact on things? i feel that clearly the pandemic puts a premium on remote work. there are many shocks to economies and labour markets that reward the ability to have a resilient workforce. for insistence when russia invaded ukraine, we had

contractors in ukraine and we help support our partners moving from ukraine into romania. a distributed workforce, the ability to have that, what ever the change in in policies, immigration policies, having a diverse workforce across many regions provides a lot of resilience and so i think that in california, maybe we will have an earthquake. we will be much more prepared for these types of shock because we are in a more resilient working environment. looking into the crystal ball, in three years�* time, five years�* time, do you think more companies will be remote first? there is no doubt that more companies will be remote first,

they are moving in that direction. i have been travelling around the world since october, i have been to 1a countries and 30 cities and every set of human resource say that my computer scientist and data scientists are being stolen, not by local competitors but by international tech companies. it's all because of remote work. tech companies are now hiring the best talent around the world, if other companies don't offer that kind of flexibility they will lose their best people. i don't think there is a choice. companies will have to offer this flexibility in order to attract and retain talent. on that point. the big boss the big boss of the big boss of oh the big boss of oh sir, the big boss of oh sir, i the big boss of oh sir, i appreciate your time. i will check in with you soon.

remote working robots and the future of the planet, an exclusive interview with the big boss europe's green tech giant. as the world economy suffer shocks, rising prices and a pandemic recovery, the big hope is greenjobs. presidents and prime ministers are hoping that this will provide a solution to their economies and to the climate emergency. europe's abb, its core purpose is to produce a more resource efficient future through its technology. i caught icaught up i caught up with its big boss. thank you for your time. i've been talking about remote working, do you let your office workers work remotely or are they coming back in? we are a big group so we are more than 100,000 people,

we have quite a flexible policy meaning that we take each manager to make the right decisions. certain times the group needs to be together but we also encourage flexibility. you have opened a robotic mega factory in shanghai, how has china's zero covert policy impacted on your operations? it has been a challenging year especially during spring time, you may remember that shanghai was locked down for nearly one month. our large factory is in shanghai so for the first time it was totally down, we couldn't produce anything. when it eased up a little bit, people had to come in and they were actually living in the factories because they couldn't leave. we needed to monitor the coverage situation all the time.

we had one or two months that was very tough for our employees working in these factories. today is different situation, all our factories in china are up and operating, even though we are monitoring the situation all the time because there could be shut down. at the moment it is working pretty well. you are very involved in eco—technology, is it realistic for governments to pin their hope in this sector, it is their answer to economic growth. our purpose is to enable a move to a more sustainable future. we do it through our technology and automation. if you look at abb our whole

future is dependent on this. do you think governments are right to pin their hopes on this sector for economic growth? i think so, yes, governments are afraid that they won't be on the front line. in europe we want to make sure that europe is leading the transformation, we also see that the us, ira act which has been launched will stimulate investment in north america expressly for the transformation to a more sustainable society. i think that will be a big challenge for europe. for many places in the world, the government is driving these and there is a bit of competition as to where the investments will go in the future.

i think at the moment the us package is more tempting for european companies especially as we have the energy crisis. you pulled out of russia after the invasion of ukraine, what did that mean for your business? it was not an easy decision, we support ukraine and we see the devastation that is taking place in that part. with the legislation and restrictions when it comes to all kind of deliveries into russia. also, saying no to russia, this is not acceptable. we decided to follow all the restrictions but also to take the step to fully pull out. we have a lot of colleagues who have been part of abb

for many years so it is not an easy decision. not everyone is supporting the government in russia and the war. some people are against that but they are like victims in their own country. it has been tough to reduce our operations and people are losing theirjobs. we are in the middle of the process still, even though we are coming closer to the end in russia. it is only losers are no winners. the company you run has paid over $300 million after being accused of bribing high ranking officials in africa. what happened there? this is a legacy project from 2016, a power plant in south africa and we had some employees that did not live up to our code of conduct.

we self—reported and we have now taken the consequences after making a deal with the department ofjustice and the company in south africa. it is, of course we have zero tolerance for that kind of behaviour and it is devastating for the abb brand and financially. we are now training all our people, we have implement a new control systems in the group and we are spreading the values of the group and making sure that all employees are up to standard when it comes to the code of conduct and conducting fair business globally. you say devastating, i am wondering if you are concerned that this tarnishes abb�*s reputation. this is not the first time that this has happened. the us department of justice described a decade old criminal history.

it is true that they have been cases before, that is tragic and i think if you look at abb, it was running large projects in difficult countries, today abb looks different, we have sold off our power grid business and we don't do projects in the same way and we are more a product and service supply company then we are these large projects. i think that the change in structure, in line with implementing a strong culture and a code of conduct is important for the future. you know, there can always be people in the organisation that are breaking rules. we need to make sure that we have zero tolerance for this and make sure this will not happen again. on that point, thank you very much.

i appreciate your time and i will talk to you soon. that is it for this week. don't forget you can keep up with the latest on the bbc website or our app. you can also follow me on twitter. thank you for watching. i will see you soon. goodbye. hello there, for many of us, the cold weather will last for the of this week and we had some sunshine on monday, but it was a really cold start to the day, temperatures

in royal deeside, braemar got down to —15.7, the lowest temperature recorded in the uk for over a year and after such a cold start to the day temperatures only got on to —9.3, that made it the coldest day for over a decade according to provisional data from the met office. the cold weather has been brought in by an area of high pressure over greenland, losing its grip. heading into the weekend there are signs of something of us seeing a return to milder weather. before we gather, over the next few hours we could have a few issues around with ice patches around particularly for northern ireland, northern eastern scotland, down the eastern side of england, mist and fog also causing problems in north—east england, the midlands, wales, lincolnshire, visibility down to 100 metres in some places. lowest temperature at about nine o'clock this time of year, the temperature overnight low, record is under threat, it has certainly been over recent hours of.

through the day there will be a fair bit of sunshine, generally through east anglia and south—east england but still some further showers falling as snow across northern cold to watch out for, cold for just about everyone but we are watching the weather system just move into the english channel, we might even see a bit of menace from this, something we are keeping close eye on. looking at the weather picture into the middle part of the week we will continue with this cold northerly winds, northern areas of scotland and as the winds pick up here we are looking at some blizzards and drifting up over the high ground, and elsewhere wednesday will bring a largely fine and sunny day, a future was coming down our coastal areas, and it could be wintry, but the most it's a sunny but really cold kind of day with temperatures not sending a great deal through the rest of this week. we are looking ahead later in the week and moving on into the weekend for that change to my other weather conditions, the transition might bring some rain and some snow for one or two of you for a time and eventually

south—westerly winds will bring milder air. it looks like the change will head in its over the weekend, you can find out more on that by looking at the bbc weather app on android or apple.

welcome to bbc news. i'm rich preston. our top stories. police in the bahamas arrest the former head of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, ftx, at the request of the united states. more than 30 years after the lockerbie disaster, the accused bomb—maker is charged at a court in washington. the european parliament's president says the institution and european democracy is under attack, following a bribery scandal. and could we be one step closer to abundant clean energy? reports of a major breakthrough in nuclearfusion.