Are humans designed to work in the office? Or are they more productive and happier at home? The great debate on how best to design a company culture.

A conversation between Stephanie Nicolaides , European Partner, a hybrid working Londoner, and Julia Morris , Strategist, working-from-home in Boston.??

Julia: Steph! I am so excited to dive into this topic with you. It’s so interesting to me that we’ve spent the last few years with such different working structures within one company. We’re both two of the longest tenured full-time 21CBers, I joined in early 2021 and you joined right before lockdown in 2020, right?

Steph: Hi Julia! You’re right, my first day at 21CB was the first day of lockdown in March 2020. I was the first hire in Europe, so building the business from the ground up remotely in the pandemic, in a crazy economic and political climate, was challenging and somewhat isolating. So for me, when the opportunity to work from an office arose it was a welcome relief.?

The pandemic proved the negative effect of isolation on mental health , leading to one of the biggest arguments for hybrid working: the opportunity to foster connections in person. Humans are profoundly social creatures. In our business, we need a space for people to be vulnerable, creative and challenging; giving everyone greater opportunity to ‘ambush with humanity’.??

Julia: This is definitely an area where being in person has a leg up, and I couldn’t agree more about the intimacy that being physically together with other humans creates.

At 21CB, this will always be essential because of the geographic distance between our two hubs (London & San Francisco). I think our team has done a great job of creating these moments, either through “Global Hangouts” or “World Wide Wednesdays”, where we can all come together and connect.?

But there's also a macro question in my mind about the role that our colleagues should play in our social lives. While workplaces undoubtedly function better and are more enjoyable environments when colleagues have good relationships , it can be challenging for those that struggle with boundaries to carve out their own social life when work crosses into that realm.? Being physically in an office—in essence mandating social time— can be isolating or draining for people that are more introverted. When you’re working remotely, you can carve out a few minutes of alone time to recharge your social batteries. Finding that time can be a much bigger challenge when sharing a physical space.?

Steph: We should not underestimate the importance of friendship at work, not just for wellbeing but also for job satisfaction and productivity . According to Gallop , Americans also report the highest levels of happiness when they spend six hours a day socialising.?

We ran a 6-week pilot in the UK: 2 days a week working from the office in London. We wanted the dialogue between the team and leadership to be open and balanced, so we surveyed feedback from the team. Our pilot did raise questions about whether the office set up was suitable to enable people to do their best work. After so long working productively at home, it was clear there was some apprehension about returning to the office. It was a huge behavior change to re-adopt. To encourage people back, we made it social : breakfast & learns, lunches on Leather Lane in the (sometimes) sunshine, inspiration excursions to galleries and so much more.?

On the point of boundaries and recharging, for me working from home meant working more — research suggests up to two hours a day . It became increasingly hard to draw a line between work and home-life. Given our constant connectedness, work pervaded into my personal life.?

Julia: Working from home definitely adds a responsibility to the employee to carefully manage their boundaries with work, but it also provides more opportunities to use the hours in the day to suit your working style and personal needs (within reason of collaborative hours and meeting times).?

Working remotely in a different timezone than most of my colleagues, I’ve felt empowered to use my 8 working hours as they best suit my lifestyle. For example, I often have a spurt of productivity early in the morning (I’m writing this at 7am), then take some personal time mid morning to exercise or take care of things at home before the rest of the US team is online. For the most part, working from home has enabled me to adapt work around my life, rather than adapting my life around my work.

Looking to the future, WFH can tremendously benefit parents, who are more likely to take advantage of work from home policies . Being at home, or the “epicenter for everything” as one parent puts it ,? allows parents to balance their many competing responsibilities.

Steph: Convenience is not the same as balance . Sure, working from home makes it easier to manage our personal lives and life/house admin, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to more balance. Remote work has led to more household chores and increased the burden of unpaid domestic labor for women .?

Julia: It’s hard to isolate the variables when it comes to domestic labor, but I still think people should be empowered to make those choices for themselves and their families.?

Speaking of choice, flexibility on where workers can live is undoubtedly one of remote work’s greatest virtues. While some geographical regions are epicenters for certain industries, living in those regions often comes at a high expense. With remote work, it's no longer a binary choice to live in the relevant city or find a different job. For employers, remote work opens up the talent pool beyond the acceptable commuting radius. At 21CB, hiring remotely has allowed us to widen our talent pool, and support our diversity and inclusion commitments.?

This is also a point that's really important to me personally. When I returned to the United States in 2021 after a few years abroad, I was committed to living in Boston to be near family and in the hub for my partner’s industry. I also recognized that finding a brand strategy job would be significantly harder here than in New York or California. I was fortunate that 21CB was operating fully remotely at the time and gambled on me being an asset from the other side of the country (I think it worked out ??). It's pretty glaring that the last few years of my life, and many other people’s lives, would not have been possible without remote work.?

Steph: It’s definitely worked out incredibly well in your case! To stay true to one of our core values ‘diversity in harmony’, flexibility will always remain incredibly important to us. We want to create an environment where everyone can flourish.

As the world opened up post-pandemic, everyone needed to feel part of designing a new way of working, together. When we ran our pilot, three in four people agreed that the hybrid working pilot benefited the cultural and community side of the 21CB experience. Ultimately, we committed to a 2 day-a-week in the office routine, and voted on designated days. It’s worth noting there is flexibility in the model. If someone needs to work from home on a designated office day, then there’s trust and freedom to do so.

Julia: There are many merits of a hybrid model, but it still requires a physical space. Office spaces in major urban areas come at a high financial cost. The pandemic freed many business leaders from conforming to the norm that they had to maintain an office, allowing them to reallocate that budget. Interestingly, the data shows that our two hub locations are where the greatest delta in office occupancy has occurred.?

The cost to the business is one thing, but the cost to the community is another. When there are cycles of booms and busts, the booms often yield significant development and with that s within communities. Then when the buildings lose their original function, recycling buildings is no easy feat.?

Steph: That’s something I hadn’t thought of before and an important consideration to build with sustainability in mind.?

That said, it's a privilege to have a quiet, private office space at home to work. For those who share accommodation with others, many have no option but to work from their bedrooms, busy corridors or kitchens, which is not a designated working environment. I feel strongly that it’s important to practice healthy sleep hygiene, which means protecting your bedroom space as a sanctuary for sleep.???

Julia: I’m all for protecting sleep, but as a Gen-Zer that gets kept awake by climate anxiety, I think we should also acknowledge that commuting and maintaining office spaces both have significant environmental costs.?

Steph: Agree. The environmental cost was a critical consideration in the space we chose, both in the design and location: we share an office with Uncommon Studio, reducing waste and the office is based in Clerkenwell (central London) ensuring all of our team can travel on public transport, reducing emissions.?

Julia: While cities like London have fantastic public transportation systems, that is not a universal truth. In San Francisco, the hub of our US team, 45% of residents say that they don’t take Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) because they don’t feel safe when riding it—and only 17% of people do feel safe while riding. The reality is for some US cities, public transport systems aren’t as safe and reliable, forcing more commuters to turn to cars to get into the office. Once employees get to that office, it is another space that often consumes energy (often derived from fossil fuels), both to run the technology that most office buildings contain and regulate the temperature to keep employees comfortable. The first few months of the pandemic showed us the environmental costs of commuter pollution, with cities and waterways clearing up around the world.?

Steph: While we’re on the topic of environmental sustainability, we should also consider social sustainability. Capitalism breeds hyper-productivity: the volume of work within a certain amount of time. This is unsustainable, and often leads to unhappiness and burnout. We should consider wellbeing, social connections, collaboration and innovation , and understand how all of these factors contribute to long term business success.?

We have been very intentional about designing a work structure that harnesses all the benefits of both working from home, and working together in person. Mondays and Wednesdays we’re in the office, and plan all our project status, collaborative brainstorms and elevation sessions during these days. We also plan social activities - from celebrations for new business wins to inspiration excursions. We try to actively avoid booking any client meetings on the first day of the week, and host client workshops and global meetings on Wednesdays.

Julia: I love seeing the breakdown of how the Europe team organizes the week. In a perfect world, I’d probably thrive with a structure like that—if it didn’t come with some of the other trade offs.?

But in this non-perfect world, I prize my ability to manage my time to be more productive. Not only do I save on any commute time—time that I mentally allocate to exercise, self care, and spending time with loved ones—I also have some power to structure my day to go deeper on each task and minimize context switching .

As we both know, the ironic ending to this conversation is that I’ll be joining the Europe team in a few months. I must admit that I’m genuinely looking forward to trying out the hybrid model, but as I said before, it's really striking to me that the last two and a half years of my life wouldn’t have been possible without a world that adapted to remote work.

Steph: We can’t wait to have you! I know you’ll embrace the experience, and I'm looking forward to your input and ideas on how we can further improve our hybrid work model.