Back to the Office?
#TrendingOnLinkedIn One of the editors at LinkedIn asked me to weigh in on some of the trending topics. The one that spoke to me was "Here's What's Luring People Back to Offices."
We know the story all too well. There was a time when we were all expected to make the long commute and spend hours upon hours in our offices grinding away at keeping the economic engine running. Then in a moment, we were no longer coming into our offices, but we were still able to keep the economic engine running, for the most part. So there is not one common experience of the Covid-19 Pandemic; there are many. Even in my own household, we had two very different Pandemic experiences between my wife and me, even though we both work for the same organization. So like our experience of the Pandemic, there are many responses to a return to the office.
Now, as we are emerging on the other side of the pandemic, what is luring people back to the office?
I think the need to shift the focus of this question from work, to people. In a pre-pandemic world, the focus on the office was on the work. The work was the way in which we ordered our days. In the post-pandemic world, what is luring us back into the office, although not full-time, is people.
A Move to Human Flourishing?
The time of the pandemic really pushed the question: "What does it take for true human flourishing?" When our lives came to a screeching halt, some of us adjusted well, others not so much. Our over-focus on work was out of balance and not truly integrated with the rest of life. In fact, it was amazing what parts of the work just "went away" overnight when we were sent to "work from home" or, as I like to remind folks, "to work remotely?" For me, it was those things that could have been accomplished by other means, allowing me to work at the "top of my skillset" and not continue to context shift. This focus continues to sharpen the image for us as we consider making our work more human, more meaningful, and purposeful. I think what is luring people back to offices periodically, accelerated by the pandemic, will be the answer to the question around "What does it take for true human flourishing?" This is not just an individual answer but will require a communal response.
The Great Reset of the Covid-19 Pandemic truly created a paradigm shift in how we understand the human person and the value of work. In many ways, it was a return to an earlier time; in others, it was completely new and terrifying. While this call to understand the human person and the role of work existed before the pandemic, the pandemic uncovered new opportunities, new questions, new audiences, and a pang of new hunger. Like Pre-Covid times, organizations not focusing on what makes the work more human and provides greater mission, meaning, and purpose would eventually falter or create a churn of people through their organization. However, in this new context, that timeline has been accelerated. In terms of addressing the question of "What does it take to provide for true human flourishing through mission, meaning, and purpose," there are four sectors of life that each organization must address when creating spaces for the return to the office. Each of the following areas must be addressed in human flourishing, mission, meaning, and purpose and not just work.
- Technology
The pandemic has revealed the call to embrace technology as a digital-first strategy to get our work done. It is also the digital-first strategy to build communities, culture, and ultimately an encounter. The digital strategy needs to connect to a personal reality of creating a workplace culture, connecting people, caring for them spiritually and materially. As a workplace, we need to speak as a unified voice in the digital space and not in polemics, either/or, but embrace a both/and. The technological space is not to replace human interaction but to enable it.
Motivating co-workers involves hearts, hands, and heads. Still, most importantly, it involves providing access to a way of life, not just the social but also the material and the spiritual. It involves a new way of encountering and connecting. The digital world is a visual space that reveals both the beauty of a work/life integration and work/life integration inequity. Hence, the shift to a digital-first mentality is foundational to the future of our efforts of building a more humane work environment, not simply transferring or translating our work to the digital space, but allowing it to transform our work. To allow the technology to move us from communication to connection then, ultimately, to community. To have technology enable human connections.
Use Technology to Move from Content Consumption to Making Connections.
Yes, we could post on social media, slack, jabber, Webex/zoom, and write to people through email and get our instantaneous response, but will these mediums build communion and lead us to a place of greater solitude, solidarity, participation, and community? Our constant consumption of content produces so much noise in our days that it eeks out what little room there was to hear the still small voice calling us to live our most authentic life. One thing that has been studied is that our constant consumption of content squeezes out silence. The squeezing out of silence is an ultimate concern for human existence and human communication. Speech must die to serve that which is spoken. Our content consumption leaves us as passive agents in someone else’s narrative or algorithm. To be a sign of hope, we need to move from being passive agents in someone else’s algorithm and become active actors in experiencing life in the Divine. We need to move from technologies that leave our people as passive participants to active contributors. Our content requires to provide hope, silence, engagement, and connection.
Now, I’m not a Luddite, saying move entirely away from technology; as a matter of fact, I am just as guilty of being the one on my phone while a conference call is going on and an over-reliance on technology. However, we must actively keep our digital content as a tool to create connection and community and not replace our relationship and community that moves to communion. One practice we learned as necessary in remote work was to help the workers be active agents in creating their workplace environment.
We needed to create content that would give hope and connection by engaging in a focal practice and not distracting. A focal practice is that which involves our whole being. A focal practice can become a spiritual practice that builds community and communion with others and God, thus truly embracing workplace spirituality. This spiritual practice/workplace spirituality can deepen our relationship with others, building a better community, communion, and hopefully, better communication and ultimately strengthen our workplaces.
2. Culture/Community
Those of us who grew up in an era before cell phones and the internet had to find our news from printed newspapers, radio, televisions with limited channels, or neighbors. We were limited to the geographical community where we lived. Most of our news was a broadcast method and not necessarily a self-tailored newsfeed.
The move to digital, remote work and providing new ways for information, outreach, and community building also ushers in a growing cultural shift, not necessarily a more individual one. The shift that is occurring is broadening our understanding of the age-old Gospel question “Who is my brother and sister?” The shift in a community is less geographic. People build communities in new ways, some completely virtual.
The shift in culture moving to a virtual setting allows developing a more contemplative spirit. This is also an opportunity for us to help people in the journey of a life of contemplation in action.
Why be silent? Even in this moment of my writing, I realize I am creating noise. So I hope that this writing, which comes from my moments of silent contemplation, may come as an invitation for you to create opportunities for silence today. Our world has gotten so noisy that we cannot hear the depths of our hearts. We cannot hear the voice of God, the cry of the poor, the love of the beloved, or the call of our lives--our most authentic self.
To be in silence is not just to be quiet, but to also not respond to the sounds/thoughts from within. To be silent is to search the heart. In silence, there is the opportunity for God to speak in a way that we can hear. Silence and solitude will be the answer to our world’s needs, yet it is the thing our world fights most against.
“The Great Reset” is an opportunity to rethink our lifestyles. Once we have experienced the inner silence, we are drawn at the same time more closely to serve the needs of others and to increase in that silence. Issues that we have previously ignored have been there before, but our shift to silence and solitude in this crisis has forced us to confront those issues. We see this in need to confront systemic racism, LGBTQI+, and other issues of discrimination. We have also seen that this time of forced silence has created challenges in responding, and we have seen an uptick in violence. My bias is that this uptick in violence, while brought about by asking and confronting the deeper questions, we were never prepared actually to know how to address such a discovery.
A few months of empty offices have enlivened the office. We are experiencing a resurgence of people seeking deeper questions, bigger questions, spiritual questions. Increased silence and contemplation present growth in spiritual questions, spirituality, examination of meaning and purpose, and the contemplative life, increasing dramatically.
3. Family & Communal life
The continuing shift in family life saw both growth and development and major setbacks during this pandemic. Many families saw parents either work from home, lose jobs or enter the workforce under precarious conditions. Single parents wrestled with all of these challenges and many more, with greater intensity. Either way, with all other outside activities, halted overnight, life slowed down for most. Yet, as families have spent more time together, they could grow and develop spiritually, build community and work through relationship challenges. We have also seen a rise in the negative effects of family life, abuse, alcoholism, violence, etc., issues that we have previously ignored.
If anything, the pandemic has enabled families to deepen. As the world begins to re-open, what will that mean for this recent development, for good or bad of the family & communal life? Will families allow themselves the space to continue this path of domestic growth, or will they rush back to "normal?" Perhaps it is not all worth rushing back to.
This will shift the focus from being about the "work" and how the "work" contributes to the mission, meaning, and purpose. How will the work and the office address these deeper questions and related family and community issues? This will require a new way of engaging with people, families, and communities. The workplace and civic engagement must be different in the post-pandemic era. The value described here must be a value provided by the needs of the communities we serve and not by what we want them to know, do and buy.
4. Economy
This pandemic has shifted everyone’s encounter with the economy. How we provide a living for ourselves and our families continues to shift and change. What the future workforce looks like and what the future work looks like will accelerate the “gig” economy and remote work. These work shifts can be very positive in enabling people to find a better integration of work and life that aligns with their overall vision of human flourishing, mission, meaning, and purpose. Yet, one thing that continues to be pointed out is that the more we focus on just how the economy only affects me, we leave out large portions of the community and cause greater injustices to the common good.
This pandemic has shown vulnerability in our economic models. How businesses, churches, schools, and other organizations will survive and/or thrive during times of economic challenge must be addressed. What they look like on the other side of the Pandemic will be forever challenged. How we come together and support our communities is the foundation of outreach in the United States.
The Great Reset is a prime opportunity to go back to our roots, work together thinking systemically, and reset our operating and economic models for our organizations. Operating models that can invest in the growth and development of people and communities for the workforce of the future, create new opportunities to serve the community, and retain and recruit people who align with the mission, meaning, and purpose. To make human flourishing and the common good the purpose of the economy. This can be seen in the new models of operations that workplaces have already shifted to survive and, in some cases, thrive.
Focus on Human Flourishing; that is our work, not the office.
In the end, for me, what is luring people back into the office is a focus on what makes us human and human flourishing. The need for connection and community. The need to build a better work-life integration, but ultimately for a mission, meaning, and purpose. When we can build a communal mission that helps people express meaning and purpose, together we flourish. So human flourishing lifts the dignity of the human person, and it works to lift the life of family/community and participation. It is a focus on the common good. When we focus on what it takes for all to flourish, the office is not focused on dehumanizing work but on making our work more human, meaningful, and purposeful.