Back to the office

Last week I made a post to collect feedback on how to get back to the office, thanks to all of those who responded!

Here I'm sharing the results and my interpretation, to open up for a dialogue and together create the best ideas to put in place when going #backtotheoffice. It turned out to be a long but very interesting analysis, let's jump in!

First, I explored what were the main productivity problems and perfect moments for both working at the office and from home, these are the results ordered by how much they affect both working at the office and wfh:

1. People conversations next to my place (60% office, 33% wfh): this one is clearly the top issue when considering both office and wfh. Looks like the open spaces/offices we're getting used to have go against our ability to do (some of?) our work. Many times I heard about complains because of other people's conversations close to peers (and sometimes I also do complain!). Now, we have to be careful when proposing solutions for this issue, as it sometimes is the other of the same coin for the issue "team members not around"; the solution must avoid conversations that don't hinder the ability to interact with our team members. Are "cones of silence" coming at home? The library-rooms-like at the office?
2. Team members not around (13% office, 66% wfh): this one is also clearly identified as the top driver for productivity problem, but for wfh. Looks like this one may not have an easy fix, especially when combined with the expectation of flexible time when working at the office. I'm setting myself for experimenting here, anyone wants to join? Already have ideas? I think this one will rely heavily on technology, are "augmented team members" coming?
3. Having a fixed time shift (66% office, 0% wfh): I didn't expect this one to become the highest driver for productivity problem at the office, to me it's an eye opening insight. On the other hand, it's not even existent for wfh so people were able to accommodate when doing work from home. As Josh Bersin keeps describing, flexible time shift is extremely appreciated by employees after pandemic. Flexible times also at the office are coming!
4. Interruptions by meetings and managers, and others (47% office, 20% wfh): I have to admit that I thought this would come first, but it didn't (great learning!). Actually, this whole researched was triggered after I re-saw (for 10th times) this ted talk on "Why work doesn't happen at work" where Jason blames interruptions as the top problem when working. Probably what happened is that during the pandemic we learned to deal with interruptions much better, as we had the ability to "disappear" from the chat whenever we needed to concentrate. Will the reading rooms also help with this issue? I believe so... what else can we do?
5. Uncomfortable setup (13% office, 33% wfh): this option came last from the combo proposed in the form, I want to believe that companies have done a decent job at helping employees set up their home offices. Although it came last, this one is key for productivity, so we should keep asking each individual how they're doing wrt the environment setup. To me, having the right chair is extremely important, then the desk, a separate screen, wireless headsets, external keyboard and mouse... and the list goes on. What's important for you?

Ok, so we kind of know what problems to resolve and start proposing some solutions to avoid losing productivity; now let's understand what works well for offices and what for wfh.

First thought is that offices shine for what wfh doesn't, and vice versa. But then I thought, probably these results tell us that we have to learn what works well at the office and find a way to do it right when wfh, and vice versa. So let's get into the results and check the learnings:

1. Individual work (7% office, 100% wfh): this is the only question that has unanimity in the answers, everyone said that when wfh, doing individual work is perfect, period. There's luckily one person (7%) who said that she/he also does individual work perfectly at the office. So, what can we learn from wfh to adapt it in the office so more people can enjoy doing individual work? I get it that we have to work as teams and that we need to interact, but we have to do our work as well, so... I think we really need to make individual work, work. Would the "library-room-like" help here as well?
2. Occasional conversations (67% office, 20% wfh): this one is clearly the best developed ability when considering office + wfh. By design offices favor occasional conversations that help identify issues or opportunities, "what if" and "why not" seem to happen more often in the office but they seem to be taking some traction when wfh as well. I think that having periodic conversations increases chances to make these occasional conversations valuable; so go check your agenda when wfh and make sure you have sufficient diversity of audience over a period of a month or quarter. What do you do to make valuable occasional conversations when wfh? And at the office?
3. Problem solving with the team (73% office, 7% wfh): to me, this answer shows why companies still hesitate to increase the wfh. I think this is a great growth and innovation opportunity for managers, scrum masters, architects, devs, QAs... everyone in the team should improve and learn on remote-team problem solving. I'll post a few activities I've developed to make remote-teams more effective, such as defining strategy, goals, dailies, etc. Do you want to join and describe yours?

The 3 items above were the options for the combo, but participants could also add other options, and here a list of them:

• When working at the office: Off-work interactions to know your team better than remotely, Long term planning, WarRooms on big issues, and there was an answer I love which said that "there's no activity at the office which can't be done remotely with the team, except for big announcements or team building".
• When WFH: Meetings, and videoconferences specifically 1:1 to resolve issues by sharing the screen.

Then, I also asked about the duration of the perfect working moment at the office and wfh... and again I was surprised.

When working at the office, more than 50% perceived that a perfect working session lasted no more than 60. Then, 20% of people feel like office based activities have the right length. This is a huge call to action to managers and meeting organizers! Please consider the art of leading meetings, reduce them in length and frequency; but make them a loving experience for all attendees!

And when working at home the analysis I do is different, for some people, doing individual work/session can last much differently, so you should know how long you can stand and balance with re-charging activities that help you get to the next session.

Finally, I opened for suggestions that the environment for work should have, and the message is that work should have: flexibility, freedom, blended office and wfh, better wfh brainstorming, resources for people equality (bandwidth, gadgets, devices, etc); and avoid commuting, noise and distractions.

To me, this is a great "backlog" of improvements to experiment with my teams. Thanks for your help in building this analysis and look forward to getting your feedback and ideas!