The office is dead. Long live the office.
Even in the big-money world of banking, it seems like there is confusion as to whether we should be reopening our offices completely or remain working from home.
I guess that nobody could have foreseen the drastic changes the pandemic brought upon us over the last 12-months. We’ve scrambled with words like agile, furlough, the initials WFH and flexible working replacing the more traditional ideas of a working lunch and commuting.
There is no doubt there have been positive gains from people being able to be more flexible, looking after the environment with less travel, and the acceleration of teams learning to use technology to their advantage.
Some of our colleagues on day 1, at the thought of having to use Microsoft Teams rather than sitting in the office with their colleagues was completely anathema. By day 30 they were as regular on the evening virtual social as anyone else!
Managing the balance
Do we think this is how it will be from now on? I don’t think so, I think the office brings a lot more than just a workspace to everybody.
Not everyone has the luxury of a study or a spare room where they can go and escape with a decent working set up.
Having your office in your bedroom isn’t a long-term fix for anyone who is no longer a student.
Particularly younger people, who may be living in shared housing, the thought of spending your entire working week with your desk at one end of your room and your bed at the other must seem a pretty grim prospect.
Even people with the extra space have more distractions when working from home. Whether that’s lingering by the kettle making an extra slice of toast or pets making noise (or even partners making noise!), kids returning from school. There’s an endless list of things that can make WFH more difficult.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t accept flexibility, and I know there are some times when people can really benefit from working from home, particularly if they have something they want to concentrate on.
As we’ve gone longer into the pandemic, what I’ve experienced is people wanting to come back to work. The corporate culture starts to fray at the edges because it is not being re-enforced by being together and people crave that social aspect of work.
I think there are a number of benefits from a mixture of home working and office working, but that’s nothing new, what I do think is that people will return to the office, primarily because they want to and but also because I think it is better for business.
Why is office working better for business?
Firstly, for collaboration, it’s much harder to collaborate with groups of people virtually than it is in person.
You can’t read body language. It’s hard to tell if someone is interested or feeling ignored.
Particularly if you’re normally a good chair, you can tell if people are not engaged. You make sure the quiet person gets their say.
This is much harder to do virtually.
Secondly, creativity.
The formal type, where you come together to discuss ideas, and also the spontaneous creativity that just happens when people are in a room together. Being able to bounce ideas off of each other.
Thirdly, the social side of work.
Most people spend more of their waking hours with their colleagues than they do with their partners. If that’s the case, then as human beings we yearn for that social contact.
When that’s taken away from us it’s a bit like taking away the sunshine. It drains us. I’m not saying work should be a party, but it certainly should be a heliotropic environment.
This is key for new starters. Without being immersed into the office new starters have little hope of picking up the company culture.
What I’ve witnessed in our own office as people have slowly started to return, is the increase of the impromptu solving of problems. It’s really hard to help someone if you don’t know where/when they are struggling.
People by their nature aren’t going to keep ringing their supervisor for help for things they think they should know.
This means they will guess!
Some of their guesses will be right, others will be completely offbeat. It’s hard for people to rally together to help each other when you can’t see them.
A lot of the feedback we receive from clients is that our team are really helpful. That’s because we have created a culture where we actively seek to help each other out (aka pronoia).
Is a company culture possible when working from home?
There is something to be said about the distinction between home and work. Being able to shut off from work and relax when you get home is beneficial for your well-being and mental health, as well as enabling you to be fully focused when you are at work too.
You can work at home when you get back in the evening if you want to. But that is your choice.
That’s very different from working at home all day, wearing the same clothes, sitting in the same room, and feeling like the separation between work life and personal life is blurred.
An organization’s culture is in my view more powerful than it’s strategy.
Peter Drucker once said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” – I think that’s true.
Some of how this culture is formed is formal, through the company’s values, processes, and procedures.
Others are informal, the communication style, the visibility of senior management or the leadership team etc.
This is all part of office working which supports this type of culture, being able to talk about something you care about and be heard, rather than having to set up a meeting to do so.
Do I believe we should be driving the miles we used to for a one off half an hour meeting? No, I don’t.
I think we can save a lot of money and protect the environment by making use of the technology we have available.
Do I think that we should be home bound for the rest of our lives? No again, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned above.
“If you find a job you love to do, you’ll never have to work again”
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