"FaceTime" isn't.

Life imitates art, and just as deus ex machina (?π? μηχαν?? θε??, to be faithful to the original) saved the day in Euripides’ tragedies 25 centuries ago, technology saved the day during the pandemic.?As in-person interactions came to a screeching halt, class lectures, company meetings, doctor’s appointments, movie releases, happy hour and visits to grandma went on virtually.?We limped along, with kids home from school, roommates always around, dogs barking during our PowerPoint presentation, as we grappled with a year’s worth of cabin fever.?And then there was an epiphany: If we managed to do our job from home, why ever go back to the office??Why deal with traffic, pay for parking, miss the Today Show—when we can just stay home and get all our work done??Why not work in Chicago, but do it while living in Key West??Here’s why:??

If we define our work (and our value-added) as a series of tasks, they’re easy to complete from anywhere.?If collaboration is about Zoom meetings devoid of small-talk, where we stick to the agenda and have a hard-stop at 9.30, we’re no longer tethered to the office.?It’s efficient, the work gets done, productivity wins the day, so what difference does our physical location make? ?Alas, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other; we went from frantic, high-pressure, live-at-the-office daily routines to why-bother-going-at-all—and extremes are rarely the best option.?Perhaps in trying to avoid driving off the road, we over-corrected and crashed into the opposing guardrail.?Let’s tally up the damage.

Our company is pretty banged up: Many people have left in the name of work-life balance (even though zero days at the office is hardly balanced), and we’re struggling to replace them.?Those who are back see a lot of empty desks, dusty shelves, and not enough familiar faces to make the office feel inviting anymore.?The chance to talk about Giannis setting Fiserv on fire, a great new TED talk we saw, our kid’s birthday party, an app that can automate our KPI reports and save hours of work; that chance is gone.?We used to call work “a home away from home,” and we felt close to our co-workers; we grabbed lunch, we recognized their kids, we knew their stories.?In time, they’ll become little more than near-strangers whose names we know, like LinkedIn connections we’ve never really met.?We won’t trust them enough to ask them for advice on a personal problem, or open up about how we can get through to a boss who just won’t listen.?We won’t soak up the wisdom that comes from their decades of experience or be inspired by their youthful energy and optimism.?The company’s culture will still be called that, but it will pale in comparison to what culture used to mean, and what culture used to feel like.?Our innovation, sense of identity, pride, will slowly wilt—perhaps too slowly to notice for a while, but wilt just the same.?As an organization, we may never fully recover.

We’re a little worse for wear as individuals too—though we may not be fully aware of it quite yet.?Having gone through a taxing time filled with uncertainty, a sense of helplessness, coping with personal and professional challenges affecting everyone we knew all at once, we’ve decided to reassess what matters in life.?We’ve reacted emotionally, like someone who steps on a scale, weighs in at 300 lbs., is appalled, and decides to go on an outright fast instead of just making some healthier choices moving forward.?We want to stay home, do our job remotely, and “live our life.”?As a result we’ll miss out on finding formidable mentors, and becoming formidable mentors ourselves.?We’ll never be as intimately known to our boss as someone who does come to the office will be—and leaders support, promote, and rely on people they know, like, and trust.?Our career will suffer regardless of whether we stay at our present job or skip around while the labor market’s hot.?Worse yet, our professional and personal development will suffer too: A great deal of it happens when we come in close contact with people. We learn how to handle conflict, solve problems, generate ideas; we learn how to teach, become more confident, and more resilient.?Many valuable experiences will never happen, and many worthwhile traits and skills will never develop as much they could have.?As individuals, we’ll be giving up too much.?Zoom calls are not the same as relationships at work, any more than FaceTime is the same as spending time with a parent, our best friend, or our date.?It may be called "FaceTime," but it really isn’t.??

There’s a happy medium.? Returning to the office, being surrounded by colleagues, thriving off each other’s experiences, energy, and ideas, doesn’t mean letting ourselves be consumed by work.?But everything fits, as long as we set priorities and boundaries.?Let the aftermath of the pandemic make companies more flexible towards employees dealing with challenging personal, family, or health situations, more generous with off-the-grid vacation time, and more focused on providing a rich, stimulating experience worth showing up in person for. Let the aftermath of the pandemic bring us, the employees, back to a common gathering place, closer to colleagues—old and new—who are not squares on a Zoom call, so we can build even stronger, meaningful relationships with them.?Technology will still be a valuable tool that makes the happy medium work, but we’ll have a new appreciation for real-life face time—and we won’t just “return to the office;” we’ll return to a workplace transformed by lessons learned and filled with the promise of new beginnings.