Goodbye to office life ?

With the Covid 19 pandemic forcing millions to work from home, some are predicting the end of offices altogether. Twitter being a trailblazer here.

My personal experience , being a Business Development, Sales type, is that I really miss all the face to face meetings , networking events , site tours etc

Anyways having worked home for what seems like decades now , I have been giving the future some thought, which for some reason I thought I’d share here.

Some Pros:

Costs

Clearly there any many advantages to working from home, not least for the bean counters. Getting rid of costly office space and massively reducing overheads will free up a lot of cash and must be a very attractive proposition for businesses everywhere. By the way if this really takes off , developers , contractors , FM business and energy supply companies will need rethink their business plans…

Carbon Footprint

Reducing CO2 emissions would certainly be a great move for the planet and you only have to look at the reduction in traffic to get some idea of the positive impact a shift away from office working would bring.

Online Meetings

Virtual meetings are , like the swiss flag, a  big plus. For years we have had the technology to do this and the crisis has driven massive improvements here. I have long thought that technical/project meetings should almost always be online. I mean who hasn’t come away from a project meeting with perhaps, 20 people in attendance and thought “so what did that achieve?. The general response being four fifths of seven eighths of nowt. Online project/technical meetings are, by their nature briefer and, if well manged are way more productive .

Flexibility

For some people, being able to work from home has real benefits. Examples include managing childcare and other family issues and maybe personal health problems.  Many people are very comfortable working remotely. Productivity and creativity can be significantly improved for these people, which can benefit their well-being and their employers bottom line.

These are just a few of the positives that working away from the office brings , I am sure you can think of many others.

Cons

Practicalities

Not everyone is able to work from home/remotely. They may simply not have the space to set up properly. The IT may not be so good in their part of the world and looking after the children and working efficiently can be a real issue.

Learning & Development

Let’s be clear here I am not talking about the formal stuff , this can and is easily done on line. It’s all the other things, and for my money working remotely , could , in the long term have a seriously negative impact here. In particular for people new to the workplace. When you start out on your first job , or maybe couple of jobs, you absorb things through interacting with colleagues that stay with you and shape your entire future…good and bad. You simply won’t get that in a virtual environment.

Then there’s mentoring, a key part of developing people throughout their career. You can do some of this online, but I’d say less than 10%, face to face is always going to be more effective than through a monitor.

Mental Health

One day , we all hope and pray , this will be over and then I guess we will have a body count, which will no doubt be contested for years. However , in my opinion , we will never really know the full impact of Covid 19. I suspect budding sociologists and psychiatrists will be writing dissertations and theses on the mental health impact for decades to come.  Think about it , many people live on their own. Going into the office and being part of that routine and having that social interaction may be critical to their wellbeing. Then there are people that may live in abusive relationships. It must be awful. Even people in great relationships need a different space to be in.

Innovation

Many, possibly most , great ideas , inventions and discoveries weren’t planned, some came along by complete accident. To a lesser extent , obviously, some fantastic ideas come from a chance meeting in the office or an overheard conversation. I know from personal experience that solutions to what , at the time, seem intractable problems are solved after a two minute, often unplanned, conversation with a  colleague. It would be a very sort-sighted employer indeed, that removed these opportunities.

Only just realised that most of the “pros” are about business, costs etc ,and all the “cons” appear to be about people. That wasn’t planned, but , and I realise how trite this sounds. All business , trade , everything really, is about people, forget that and you are nowhere.

Just for clarity , I am not a luddite by any stretch of the imagination. I just think  there is once in a lifetime opportunity to fundamentally change our approach to how we work (god knows we need to get something positive out of all this) but we need to get it right. This will require some creative thinking and involvement of everyone. Impose change and those that can , usually your most valuable people, will move on and take all their ideas with them.

Basically there is a balance to be struck.

In closing (thanks if you got this far) it’s going to be a long time before we get to whatever the “new normal” is . I have picked up a few things from the WFH experience which I will share with you now. Most are stating the bleedin obvious but here we go:

Working from home: ,take a break , regularly , don’t feel you’re being monitored or under pressure all the time. Try to start and stop work at the same time. Make sure you are comfortable; this old git got a really bad back and shoulder from not sitting correctly.

Managers, talk to your teams, set up regular catch-ups , especially with furloughed employees, be understanding of your people’s needs.

Online networking , technical and training events are usually very good.

All the best

Steve