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Boston, MA
Return-to-office pushes can cause a ‘riot.’ These Boston-area companies are trying anyway.
The Boston Globe
Dave Porter was ready to bring his people back into the office on Fridays. They’d been working Monday through Thursday at the Seaport headquarters of Baystate Financial for nearly three years, but the workplace just didn’t seem as lively and collaborative as it did when everyone came in five days a week.
When Porter broached the topic at a meeting in November, however, “the body language got really bad,” he said. People slumped in their chairs. One employee did a Google search and announced “nobody is back” five days a week. A new hire proclaimed, “I wouldn’t have taken this job if I’d known I had to come in on Fridays.”
Abigale Shields, the firm’s director of financial planning, was bombarded with messages from staffers after the meeting and conveyed their dismay to Porter. “I think I used the word ‘riot,’ ” she said.
Nearly four years after the pandemic upended the longstanding Monday-through-Friday commute for many white-collar workers, most employers have settled into a hybrid arrangement. Office occupancy has been about 50 percent for the past year in major metro areas studied by Kastle Systems, and only 4 percent of CEOs said bringing workers back full time is a priority, according to a new survey by The Conference Board.
“I think that’s a thing of the past,” said Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj Choudhury, whose recent study identifies the “sweet spot” for hybrid work as two days a week in the office, on average, for optimum job satisfaction, work-life balance, and performance.
Still, a growing number of managers want butts in seats more often, citing the connections, collaborations, and innovations that in-person work can bring. State Street Corp., for instance, the Boston financial services firm, brought people back four days a week in November. Last year, 88 percent of employers nationwide said they expected workers to be in a certain number of days a week, up from 69 percent in 2022, according to a customer survey by Robin, the Boston workplace management software company.
But companies are proceeding with creativity, and caution — encouraging attendance instead of requiring it, in many cases, well aware that people have become very attached to working from home. Almost three-quarters of human resources professionals told researchers at the University of Chicago that getting workers back to the office has been an issue; a fifth described it as a “major problem.” David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, one of several major companies back in the office full-time, admitted that getting people to come in on Fridays has been a challenge.
Indeed, about half of recent US job candidates at Copyright Clearance Center in Danvers, which has no in-office requirements, have told hiring managers they are looking for new jobs because of return-to-office mandates at their current employers.
But not all RTO mandates are created equal. Employees at MassMutual, the Springfield-based life insurance provider, started coming in at least three days a week in September but work off-site the weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and July Fourth and can take an additional four remote weeks of their choosing.
At Baystate Financial, Porter listened to workers’ concerns about losing work-from-home Fridays, many revolving around their “brutal commute” into the Seaport. For Shields, who spends an hour each way to get there via ferry from Hingham, the best part of working from home on Fridays is having breakfast with her 3-year-old son. The thought of losing that left her feeling “deflated.”
So, last month, Porter announced a compromise. If the company hits its quarterly goals, which bonuses are already tied to, the roughly 300 people who work in the company’s 12 offices could work from home on Fridays for the next quarter. (The 600 financial advisers on staff have always had a flexible schedule). Employees are already paying closer attention to the firm’s performance, Porter said: “The whole company is going in the same direction now.”
But the threat of a riot still looms. “There’s going to be … another wave of anger if we don’t hit those goals,” Shields said.
Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco who examined 43 industries found that remote work has not had an impact on productivity. Still, some employers are so determined to make sure people are in the office that they’re tracking attendance. Eighty percent of 800 employers surveyed by ResumeBuilder.com in December said they planned to monitor employees’ badge swipes or Wi-Fi logins or even use sensors under workers’ desks. Google is among those tracking badge swipes for its three-day-a-week in-office policy, according to CNBC, and plans to include office attendance in performance reviews.
Some workers are finding ways around these methods. Nearly 60 percent of hybrid workers surveyed by Owl Labs, the Boston video-conference provider, said they have “coffee badged,” meaning, went into the office for a few hours to show their face.
At some companies, in-office requirements are focused on new hires. The Boston staffing agency The Hollister Group expects all new employees to come in at least three days a week for the first few months. Chief executive Kip Hollister, who has been “slow dripping” people back into the office, recently started basing each person’s in-office attendance on their individual performance and allows employees who have been doing well remotely to come and go as they please.
“We want that as a carrot,” she said.
The new approach will be “a wake-up call but also a gift” for those who aren’t performing well, said Hollister, who isn’t worried about it being viewed as punishment: “If coming into the office … is going to help you be more productive and have greater results, won’t you want that for yourself?”
As the CEO of a staffing firm, Hollister is well aware how hard it is for employers who require more than three days a week on-site to attract talent. But sometimes, that’s what it takes.
One of her managers recently suggested that a sales associate start coming in four days a week instead of three to learn and help boost his staffing placement numbers. The associate, Nicolas Coppolo, 23, who has been there for just over a year, acknowledged that being around more experienced colleagues is helpful, even if it’s just overhearing how they talk to clients on the phone.
At the Boston marketing automation provider Klaviyo, where employees live determines their in-office expectations. Starting this month, anyone who lives within 30 miles of a US hub in Boston, Denver, and one opening soon in San Mateo is supposed to come in twice a week — Tuesday and Thursday for most teams — a change from last year, when those within 50 miles came in three days a week every six weeks.
Commuter benefits have also increased from $90 to $300 a month.
Remote hiring, which was responsible for more than half of the company’s growth during the pandemic, has also come to an end, and some positions are now taking longer to fill, said Klaviyo chief people officer Lisa Maronski.
The twice-a-week, 30-mile policy applies to just over 60 percent of the company’s 1,800 employees, but exemptions are being granted.
Tori Shulman, Klaviyo’s senior manager of performance media, lives in Westwood and takes the commuter rail in twice a week. A new hire on her team who lives just beyond the 30-mile mark has also been coming in two days a week, but if she needs to scale back, that’s fine, too.
“Ultimately, the goal is for each individual to do their best work,” Shulman said.
To Maronski’s knowledge, so far no one has left Klaviyo over the new policy: “I don’t have anyone that specifically said, ‘I am out. I’m quitting because, you know, two days a week is just completely crazy.’”
Boston, MA
A crowd scientist is helping the Boston Marathon manage a growing field of 30,000-plus runners
BOSTON (AP) — Running the Boston Marathon is tough enough without having to jostle your way from Hopkinton to Copley Square.
So race organizers this year turned to an expert in crowd science to help them manage the field of more than 32,000 as it travels the 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) through eight Massachusetts cities and towns — some of it on narrow streets laid out during Colonial times.
“There are certain things that we can’t change — that we don’t want to change — because they make the Boston Marathon,” said Marcel Altenburg, a senior lecturer of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. “Like, I’m a scientist, but I can’t be too science-y about the race. It should stay what it is because that’s what I love. That’s what the runners love.”
The world’s oldest and most prestigious annual marathon, the Boston race was inspired by the endurance test that made its debut at the inaugural modern Olympics in 1896 — itself a tribute to the route covered by the messenger Pheidippides, who ran to Athens with news of the Greek victory over the Persians in Marathon.
After sharing the news — “Rejoice, we conquer!” — Pheidippides dropped dead.
Organizers of the Boston race would prefer a more pleasant experience for their runners, even as the field has ballooned from 15 in 1897 to as many as 38,000 to meet demand for the 100th edition in 1996. It has settled at around 30,000 since 2015.
As the race grew, it tested the limits of the narrow New England roads and the host cities and towns, which are eager to reopen their streets for regular commutes and commerce as quickly as possible.
“It would be kind of great someday to be able to grow the race a little bit more,” race director Dave McGillivray said. “The problem with this race is that it’s about two things: time and space. We don’t have either. … So, we’re trying to be innovative.”
That’s where Altenburg comes in.
A former German army captain who runs ultra marathons himself, Altenburg has worked with all of the major races, other large sporting events, and airports and exhibitions that tend to attract large crowds on ways to keep things safe and flowing smoothly.
For the Boston Marathon, which draws hundreds of thousands of spectators in addition to the runners, his models allow him to run simulations that help him see how the race might play out under different conditions.
“We have simulated the Boston Marathon more than 100 times to run it once for real. That is the one that counts,” Altenburg said in a telephone interview. “They gave me, pretty much, all creative freedom to simulate more waves, simulate more runners and — within the existing time window — they allowed me to change pretty much anything for the betterment of the running experience.
“And then we checked every aid station, every mile, the finish, every important point, (asking): Is the result better for the runner? Is that something that we should explore further?”
The most noticeable difference on Monday will be that the runners are starting in six waves — groups organized by qualifying time — instead of three. The waves, which were first used in Boston in 2011, help spread things out so that runners don’t have to walk after the start, when Main Street in Hopkinton squeezes to just 39 feet wide.
Other, less obvious changes involve the unloading of the buses at the start, the placement of the water and aid stations, and the finish line chutes, where runners get their medals, perhaps a mylar blanket or a banana, and any medical treatment they might need.
“For an event that’s as old as ours, 130 years, it allowed us to be a startup all over again,” said Lauren Proshan, the chief of race operations and production for the Boston Athletic Association.
“The change isn’t meant to be earth-shattering. It’s to be a smooth experience from start to finish,” she said. “It’s one of those things that you work really, really hard behind the scenes and hope that no one notices — a behind-the-curtain change that makes you feel as if you’re just floating and having a great day.”
Shorter porta potty lines would also be nice.
“What I loved about working with the BAA was how aware they are of what the Boston Marathon is. And they won’t change anything lightly,” Altenburg said. “So it was very detailed work from literally the moment the race last year ended to now. That we check every single option. That we really make sure that if we change something about this historic race, then we know what we’re doing.”
The BAA will look at the feedback over the next three years before deciding about expansion or other changes.
“Fingers crossed, hope for the best, but we’ll get feedback from the participants,” McGillivray said. “And they’ll let us know whether or not it worked or not.”
But keeping the course open longer isn’t an option. And the route isn’t going to change. So there’s only so much that crowd science can help with at one of the toughest tests in sports.
“I can talk. I’m a scientist. I just press a button and it’s going to be,” Altenburg said. “But the runners still have to do it.”
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports
Boston, MA
From across Boston they flock to play for Latin Academy boys’ tennis, a co-op of 29 schools – The Boston Globe
“I’ve done a lot of different things in my life, but there’s no question in my mind that the youth development aspect of what I’ve done with kids and tennis in Boston is the most important work I’ve ever done,” said Crane, who has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to youth tennis.
Once upon a time, Crane served as a sports journalist for the New York Post, the defender general of Vermont, and the executive director of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
He has been the head boys’ tennis coach at Latin Academy since 2009, and last season led the Dragons to their first Division 3 semifinal appearance in program history.
This season, the Dragons are trying to repeat that success, and are doing so with players from five Boston high schools (Latin Academy, O’Bryant, Josiah Quincy Upper, East Boston, and New Mission).
Sophomore Mayfre Moreta, a New Mission student, has never crossed paths in the school hallways with his doubles partner, Gio Waterman, who attends Latin Academy, but the pair still managed to rally from a set down to clinch the deciding No. 2 doubles point in last year’s D3 quarterfinals.
“I think [that win] speaks to our identity as a program,” said Waterman. “It’s so nice to play with all these new guys from other city schools. We share that bond of representing the city of Boston.”
Along with the unique co-op structure, Crane runs a no-cut program that carries roughly 35 kids ranging from seventh to 12th grade every year who vary from beginners to experienced tournament players.
“We don’t cut because we want to teach kids from all over the city how to play the game,” said Crane. “We want to give them a sport that they’ll play for the rest of their lives.”
Mateus Washington, a Latin Academy senior, is in his sixth, and final, year with the program. Although Washington has dueled the state’s top players at No. 1 singles this season, he is just as proud that he gets to lead his teammates every day.
Matthew J Lee/Globe staff
“It’s really cool to see how the seventh-graders of this generation look so much like I did in seventh grade,” said Washington, who has posted a 3-3 record this year. “It’s super eye-opening and enriching to be a part of their development.”
Crane recognizes that the team’s makeup is unique and oftentimes difficult to manage.
“Logistically, it’s difficult. The kids are coming from all over the city, and they can’t all show up at the same time because their schools get out at different times,” said Crane.
But above all, Crane is thankful he can give his kids — many of whom come from low-income situations — the chance to play tennis, as well as offer them summer jobs at Sportsmen’s, Franklin Park Tennis Association, and other tennis facilities around the city.
“What motivates me the most is getting to know these kids, building relationships with them, and figuring out how I can be of help to them. I want to help them grow, help them succeed on and off the court, and help them get ready for the rest of their lives.”
▪ Emily Cilley has yet to lose a match as the head coach of the Swampscott girls.
In Cilley’s first year with the program, the Big Blue (4-0) have put last season’s second-round loss to Dover-Sherborn in the rearview mirror.
Key to their success have been sophomore stars Nikki Carr and Ginger Gregoire. Carr has been dominant at first singles, posting a 4-0 record without dropping a set, and Gregoire has been a great option at second singles, logging a 3-1 record and securing the deciding 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory in the season opener against Bishop Fenwick.
“They are both very disciplined players who understand the balance between being cautious and being patient,” said Cilley. “Their technical skills are on point, and they aren’t intimidated by the person across from them.”
The Big Blue’s strong start has catapulted them to the top of the Northeastern Conference. They’ll look to continue their unbeaten streak against St. Mary’s next Saturday.
▪ The girls of Central Catholic are off to their best start in program history.
The Raiders boast a 6-0 record after taking down Lowell 5-0 on Saturday morning. The win was their fifth sweep of the season, with the only non-sweep coming in a 4-1 victory over Notre Dame (Tyngsborough).
Morgan Bateman has looked unstoppable at second singles, as she is yet to drop a set, and Ella Asmar has been just as impressive at third singles, posting an undefeated record.
Although Haley Wolters was responsible for the only loss by a Raiders player this season, she has logged impressive victories at first singles, such as a 6-2, 6-3 win against Chelmsford and a 6-1, 6-1 triumph over Lowell.
The Raiders have a chance to extend their winning streak to nine with matches against North Andover, Lowell, and Haverhill on the horizon, before they clash with undefeated Andover on April 30.
Webb Constable can be reached at webb.constable@globe.com. Follow him on X @webbconstable.
Boston, MA
Practice Report: Bruins Have Last Skate in Boston Before Leaving for Buffalo | Boston Bruins
“It is a division team, we’ve played them enough to know kind of what they’re about. They’ve had a great season. They’re a high rush team, a lot of speed and a lot of skill. It is going to be a fun matchup,” Lindholm said. “It is a fun challenge for us, coming in a little bit as an underdog and prove people wrong.”
Lindholm has also been quarterbacking the second power-play unit, which is primed to feature James Hagens. The 19-year-old forward signed his entry-level contract on April 8 and played in the final two games of the regular season. The B’s, however, did not get on the man advantage in either game, so Sturm has yet to see Hagens on the power play outside of practice. The coach thinks it is one of Hagens’ best assets, though.
“He doesn’t have to play or make special plays. He has some really good players on that unit. As long as he’s going to play fast and keep it simple – I think that is something that might be different from college and NHL,” Sturm said. “I think it will be fine because Buffalo, they will come, they pressure hard. So you don’t want to be surprised. You want to be quick, you want to be fast. That’s something that has to be in his mind.”
Hagens has been skating on the third line with Fraser Minten and Marat Khusnutdinov, and that stayed the same in Saturday’s practice. The three youngsters will all be playing in their first NHL postseason.
“Every night you have to give it your all. You have to give everything you possibly have. This is playoff hockey – you want to win every single game like always. Nothing changes, but there are a lot higher stakes,” Hagens said. “This is something you dream of. Something you grow up watching and praying that you could be in the moment one day and be playing in. Now that it’s reality, it’s something that is really surreal.”
After having a whirlwind start to his pro career, it has been helpful for Hagens to get full practices in with the group.
“It’s been great to be able to be out there, practice with these guys. Not only to learn the systems but to be able to talk to teammates, get feedback from coaches,” Hagens said. “Just the repetition, being able to do reps, try to learn day by day.”
The energy is palpable for Boston, but the team knows the work has just begun.
“Everyone is equal in this room. We’re a tight-knit group here, we’re all good buddies…Just go out there and play with that joy that we have in the locker room,” Lindholm said. “It is a really serious time of year, but I think within this room here, just go out there and enjoy, too. Play for each other – I think that’s how you win this time of year.”
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