I’m never going back to the office

In my corporate days, I wished for one of those offices like l saw TV shows – cool sleek glass, designer furniture and very, very shiny. Most of my offices were woeful places. Hulking concrete containers with the offices ripped out, replaced with rows of desks, dividers and beige walls. Noisy, distracting and unproductive.

I went to the office five days a week (and sometimes even six). Not because it was a pleasant or productive place but to meet the team and work together. It was my live social network, a community of people - sometimes working towards a common goal. Also, I went because that was what was expected.

Since leaving the corporate hamster wheel I’ve been working from home for 6 years, before pandemics and WFH became an abbreviation. After 6 months of home office, I knew I couldn't go back. Now I hear so many people saying as I did – I'm never going back to the office.

The post-COVID world most companies are realising they aren’t going to get everyone back to the office five days a week. Their pockets light up as they realise they could save buckets of money on real estate costs. So they’re offering the flexibility for people to have a hybrid model of working of WFH or in the office. What will that mean for collaboration and teamwork? What about focused individual work?

So what is an office really for?

What will you do? Perhaps you’ll work at home when you want to get something done, and go to the office when you want to meet people. But will is that simple? Can’t we have workplaces that let us be both focused and collaborative?

Recently I spoke with two workplace designers from different ends of the world. Susan Somerville, an Environmental Psychologist in New Zealand, and Jonas Westerlund, at that time was designing Volvo’s workspaces in Sweden. Both had surprisingly close views despite being physically miles apart.

Workspaces have multiple functions, 21 in the Leesman Index according to Westerlund, simplified down to 4 by Somerville

1. Deep focused individual work
2. Learning collectively and individually
3. Collaboration (often disguised as meetings)
4. Socializing, relaxing and taking a break

Well-designed workspaces allow people to do all of these functions, letting them choose the space where they can work most effectively. Called Activity-based working (ABW) people have the choice of spaces from quiet areas where they can focus, to large conference rooms to host customer meetings, or a café style booth for a casual catch up with colleagues. The furniture and furnishing support the purpose and energy of the space.

“So it’s an office utopia with a diversity of spaces to meet the diversity of people’s needs and cognitive style?” I naively ask. “Not necessarily..” says the psychologist Somerville ”..we are territorial animals and ABW usually means losing our own personal space….”. The competition is on to get in early to bag your favourite seat and hold it for the day. Westerlund also points out that it hard for teams to sit together, so losing the team culture. The workspace might be flexible but the way people use means a loss of community and teamwork.

Offices where people want to come to work

So ABW is not yet office utopia, but a step towards it compared to my former cubicle mazes. In the post-COVID world, where people will have the choice of where they work, work environments need an overhaul. And not meaning my former dream of sleek glass and shiny furniture. Rather a choice of spaces allow people to focus, learn, collaborate and socialize. And move between them as they need to during different parts of the day.

What an office does offer, that WFH never can, is socialization and collaboration. And this is what’s needed for organisations to build teams and community ie the “glue” that helps people stick together and work towards a common goal. A need for more spaces for meetings, formal and informal, coffee corners and many fewer cubicles.

My prediction is - in a post-COVID era that the office must become a place that people want to come to work when people no longer have to come work.

Predictions are easy, getting them right is hard. What do you think the office of the post-COVID era will look like?

Jane Piper is an Organisational Psychologist and bestselling author of Focus in the Age of Distraction. She is interested in the intersection of human and technology and challenges us to look at the impact that technology is having our work and non-work lives, well-being and happiness. After a 20 year corporate career, she now helps people and organisations to work better in a digital age. For more information see her website or Linkedin profile.