Why I Never Felt More Isolated Than When I Worked in a Busy?Office

When I made the move to being a full-time homeworker, there were lots of changes that I expected. I knew that I would be less tired without the travel to and from the office and the stress of being there in an environment that did not suit me at all. I knew that I would be less anxious without the constant worry of where I would sit when next in the office and how noisy it would be. I knew I would be more productive without losing most of several days a week trying to work in an environment as loud as a busy airport.

What I did not expect was that others would actively seek to make sure that I was not feeling isolated or excluded. This is a very kind sentiment, and I truly appreciate it. But it shows the complete mismatch between what many neurotypicals see as the benefits of office work and the neurodivergent experience of myself and many others.

Isolation is a real issue for many. I know some who have switched jobs because they could cope with working alone at home for most or all of the time. They need the human contact, the buzz, and the social aspect of working alongside others. But we are not all built that way.

I do understand the need for collaboration. None of us knows everything, and everyone brings different experiences to the table that can turn out to be the key to unlocking a problem. There are many tasks carried out in my workplace that I cannot even begin to consider being competent to do myself.

But the missing link is the idea that to make the best use of the collective, we must be collocated. For the thirty-plus years of my working life, I have been in organisations with offices spread around the UK. Sometimes, the person I needed to collaborate with was sitting just down the corridor, which was great. But at least as often, they were several hundred miles away. Even before Teams and Zoom, we managed to work together easily using telephones, email, and fax machines (if you need to google fax machine, I am even older than I feel!). I sometimes travelled quite a bit for in-person meetings, but it all worked fine.

I have often worked for a manager located a considerable distance away and who I might see in person only a few times a year. This has always been a common practice in the places I have worked, and nobody has ever raised concerns about it.

With the technology at our fingertips now, being co-located is less important than ever. I loved one of the early arguments in favour of mobile phones—they make sense because we generally do not ring places; we ring people. This approach was echoed when workplaces switched from telephone numbers fixed to particular desks to a system where you logged into the phone wherever you were sitting, and your calls followed you around.

Being physically in the same place as those you are working with is a personal preference, not a necessity. If it were anywhere near to being essential, organisations would not have teams split over different sites hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. Very few of us would have been able to continue to work from home during the pandemic if being in a room with others was essential. The genie is out of the bottle, and there should be no going back.

As I have said, some people need to be around others to work at their best and would struggle to work at home alone, as I do. I understand that. But that understanding does not seem to go both ways.

What struck me when I was asked what could be done to help me feel less isolated as a homeworker was that I had never felt more isolated than when I was forced to work in an office. That was the perfect storm for my autistic sensory differences. I have never felt isolated in my home office, where I control every aspect of the environment. But I have felt isolated when I had to endure trying to concentrate while surrounded by dozens of loud voices. I have felt isolated when I have been admonished for not looking interested in tedious in-person meetings that should have been an email, at which I can now at least switch my camera off and still work in the background.?

I have felt isolated when I was the only member of a large team left working at the office once a month while everyone else went out for lunch because I could not cope with a large social situation like that. I have felt isolated on numerous other occasions, all while I was in the office and never while working at home.?

I have felt isolated when the only in-person conversations I had in a full day in the office were to say good morning to the security guard and the cleaner. I have felt isolated when I have sat in a busy office feeling like I come from a different planet from everyone around me, no matter how kind and lovely my colleagues were.Isolation at work is a state of mind, not a purely physical situation. As someone wise once said, the loneliest place is often in the middle of a crowd. That is certainly my experience. I have lost count of the times I have sat falling apart in the office, surrounded by people, but unable to even ask for help and desperately hoping that someone would notice that I was struggling. They rarely did.

I appreciate the care and concern shown to me as a new homeworker, but I think it should also extend to those working in the office. There really does seem to be an assumption that being physically located with colleagues automatically resolves a lot of issues. Perhaps it does for some, for others, like me, the problems arise when I am in the office, not when I am working at home.

We are all different, so changes impact us in different ways. The perfect environment for me may be too cold, too quiet, or too bright for you. We can both be right, which is why giving people the flexibility to choose where works best for them is so important, considering the pros and cons of all the options. Working in the office was never good for me, even if it is vital for others. Embracing diversity and inclusion means letting individuals do what is best for them (providing that the work is done). Why is this still so difficult to understand?