It's not about right or wrong when it comes to working in an office

There is no right or wrong when it comes to working in an office or at home. This year there has been a trend of big voices and big brands shaming others about workplace location choices; office or remote.

It seems that if you have decided that working in an office is better for you and the organisation, it’s wrong. The message is that you should be shifting to a fully remote model because that shows you trust your people and you treat them like adults. After all, if we did it in the pandemic (which was a crisis), why can't we do it all the time?

Firstly, what works in a crisis doesn't always work for the every day - the very nature of a crisis means we need to work differently. Secondly, this noise about trust and adults is nonsense. It’s a message that is completely false, harmful and damaging for individuals, leaders and organisations as a whole.

Working remotely requires a significant culture shift for an organisation and it needs investment in tools and communication to support the operational change. It also requires a different leadership style with an understanding of how to communicate with digital tools.

“To do this [remote] well, you have to be always on, always working to keep culture fresh and sticky – that is, keep it so interesting and engaging that no one will want to leave…we both found that being the CEO of a remote company is exhausting.” Chris Dyer and Kim Shepherd

Not having an office fundamentally changes the culture of your organisation and will need time and investment in communication tools, and skills, to get that right.

We have to remember that when the pandemic happened there was a response to send people home. There was no discussion about how long that was for, if people could do it, no investment in tools to help (at the start) - it was a response to a crisis.

It has fundamentally changed how we work but if we continue to focus on location then we are missing the opportunity - one that I called the Pandemic Revolution back in 2021.

Shaming people and organisations about the decisions they are making about their culture and ways of working isn't fair. The data shared about the benefits of working remotely, like a lot of things, is questionable and there is as much data about the benefits of being in an office - it just depends what story you want to tell.

But really, it's the wrong conversation and the wrong fight. Saying one is better than the other isn't accurate. Because wherever you work, it's the experience, the relationships and the culture that matters.

We seem to focus on four main things when it comes to this office/home debate: Trust, productivity, wellbeing and inclusion. I'll cover each of these areas in turn:

It’s not about trust

‘Letting’ employees work remotely is not about trusting them more. It’s probably more likely to do with a cost saving on office space, and a belief that work hasn’t stopped since people were forced to work away from each other, so why change it back?

Trust is an easy message. We trust you, we don’t need to see you. That’s the hook. But it’s a lie. Because you can see people on platforms like Teams and you know if they are online or not. Tracking software has grown in use since 2021 and cases of bullying and pressure from managers and leaders has increased by more than 40% since the pandemic. Trust is one of the biggest issues in organisations today so something isn't working.

Remember that organisations are people. People in relationships, working together to achieve the collective goal of the organisation.

Trust has to be built and maintained in relationships across the organisation, continuously. It’s not a tick box and done. Research from Karian and Box tells us that face-to-face is the best way to build trust - much more than video, much more than written communication.

As a leader, it's also important to remember that trust and engagement are entwined. If you’re not trustworthy or perceived as trustworthy you’ll have low engagement scores. And if you don’t have integrity, people will distrust you.

Productivity is not something we can actually measure

Can you define productivity for a knowledge worker/someone office based?

Probably not. We see productivity as 'the more you create the more productive you are' but it’s nonsense for those in an office. We can’t define it for knowledge based work because we haven’t taken the time to figure it out. We currently talk about how you can ‘get more done’ and that there are less distractions at home than in the office but this is also unfounded.

What does 'more' look like when you’re not packing boxes or seeing patients? And why is more better in this situation of office / knowledge work? I'm not convinced it is when you consider the amount of noise and pressure on people in the workplace.

If you ask people, they will say they are more productive at home - there is more time and it feels like we might be. Research says otherwise with data showing that we are 20% less productive at home.

And this ‘there are less distractions’ is bizarre as a reason to be at home. We can distract ourselves with anything, usually when we are doing something we don’t want to do. Actually being with other people, helping them and working together will improve our ability to get stuff done that adds value.

If we just sit at home and work we are literally ticking off tasks. We might as well be robots.

Work was never just about the tasks, it’s about community, contributing to something and being part of something.

Our wellbeing is impacted by the things we don’t realise

For some of us, we like being on our own and we like the quiet. For others we like being around people. There is no right or wrong but, we are a social species who relies on each other for survival and growth.

Managing our time and energy so we have space in our diaries for deep work on our own or space to think is important for knowledge workers but it doesn’t mean we should all work physically away from others.

Loneliness is one of the biggest health problems (it was declared a global health concern in 2023) and it comes from being isolated from others. This is why working remotely, at home, isn't the best solution for everyone. If you live alone and then work from home alone, loneliness is likely to become a factor.

For many, home is a safe place and I know from speaking to people during the pandemic, home started to feel unsafe because people from work who bullied them were now in their homes through their screens. It's one of many reasons people will have for wanting to have a boundary between home and work, and that boundary can be physical (which is ok).

The lack of movement when you work from home makes it an unhealthier option, get up, sit at a desk, sit on a sofa, go to bed. Unless you build in time to walk and move and stretch you will move a lot less than when you did the commute and worked in an office. People feeling overworked, stressed and burning out is happening more and more because there isn't the physical friction of going to and from work.

Not everyone can work remotely

Throughout the pandemic I spoke to lots of people who were working from their sofa, their dining table and other places that aren’t set up for work every day. The impact on their health was significant because they don’t have the right space to be able to work from home. There seems to be a belief that everyone has an office at home or space to be able to work there - it's not the case for everyone.

Not only do some people not have space, a lot of people don’t want to. They want the separation of space from home and work. They want to go somewhere and have a different mental state to work than the one they have at home.

There are also a lot of organisation who employ a blend of people who work in an office and those who have a site or location where they have to work. Because of this, the organisation might choose to bring everyone back to the office because the majority of the team have to travel to their place of work too.

Organisations and leaders need to give people choices and they need to make decisions based on their culture and values. There is no right or wrong.

I know companies who have brought people back three days a week, the same three for everyone. This is because they wanted people to work together, use that time to get together as a whole team and live their values around community. Some people left as a result, some people joined as a result - that is to be expected and it is also ok.

There are others who have stayed in the hybrid world of choosing which days to come in and gradually folks are coming in more and more as the needs of the work dictates - but they are given the flexibility to work where it suits their day and tasks.

It's not the right fight

There are arguments for working in an office and working remotely. There are benefits for both. But this isn't a fight that anyone needs to win. There isn't a need to persuade everyone that remote is best - because it won't be for everyone and again, that is ok.

Not everything needs to be a fight and for organisations and leaders, trying to shame people who have made the call for their organisation and saying they are wrong is just not helpful when it comes to improving the world of work. ?

But if we want to fight, let’s fight for investment in the employee experience, the communication tools and manager skills. Let's fight to create the sort of culture and experience where people thrive, feel supported and included and have the ability to balance their whole life to achieve organisational success.

It's not about where you work, it's about the relationships of the people who work there. Let's focus on investing in that.

Book Resources

Remote Work by Chris Dyer and Kim Shepherd

Slow Productivity by Cal Newport