The Office is Dead, Long Live the Office

At the moment, people are scared to go back into the office, and now the UK government is telling us again to only travel to work if we have to. One day, even if things aren't exactly as they were pre-Covid, we will have more freedom to choose how we want to live our lives and run our companies. Now is the time to work out what that looks like for you, as an individual and as a leader in an organisation.

Many articles have been written that say the office is dead, 'Why would I waste all of that time commuting to an office when I can be doing something useful with that time?'. On the face of it, it's a sensible point of view. The vast majority of office based workers have demonstrated that they are perfectly capable of working from home. Anecdotal evidence appears to show that people are prepared to spend some of their commute time working and, with less distractions, outputs have increased. However, it is too early to say how sustainable this is.

But what of those who don't have the space at home to work effectively; perching on the end of a bed while their flat-mate is on a conference call at the table is not something that leads to quality work.

Then of course, there is the social side of work to consider. We are, after all, herd animals and the majority of us do like other people's company. How many of us haven't made life-long friends from the people we have worked with?

At the other extreme, why can't we just go back into the office like before? Offices have been designed to allow us to work efficiently; we each have the space and equipment we need, there is someone there to sort out technical problems, check you aren't causing lasting damage to your back with the way you are sitting and to make sure the environment is optimal for work.

As with most decisions, the answer is somewhere between these two extremes. Many factors need to be taken into account and the importance of each one should influence your strategy.

Type of Work

The chart below shows a selection of tasks carried out during the working day against a scale showing the most suitable environment in which to perform them. My background is software engineering, which contrary to many people's beliefs is a group activity, hence it may reflect my bias towards the 'In Group' end of the spectrum.

Through this lens, it is clear that if your team are mainly carrying out operational tasks - reacting to an incoming task request, carrying it out and passing the results on to the next step in the chain, then working in 'Isolation' is probably the most efficient place to be.

Project work - where a series of problems need to be solved to deliver a desired outcome, is better carried out in groups. Or, at least the design and verification parts of projects are best completed in groups. The simple tasks that make up big swathes of many projects can effectively be carried out in isolation, assuming that the individual assigned that task already has all of the skills required to complete it to the required quality, in a reasonable timeframe.

Many technologies exist that attempt to address the challenges of remote group working, but these are still pale substitutes for sitting in a single room. In the non-virtual world you can lean across to a colleague and ask for help to move forward, or offer another your assistance. Ensuring that everyone is bought into a decision is hard enough when you can read the body-language of a room, it is next to impossible when you are in a virtual room.

Career Progression

This is not 'If I am not in the office, the boss won't notice me and I won't get promoted'. That situation is entirely the boss' problem and there are many ways to solve it. No, this is more about an individual acquiring the soft-skills to progress in their own career.

It doesn't matter how many courses (in-person or online) that you attend, the only way to really learn something is to get on and do it. To do this effectively, to quickly get to the same level as the senior members of the team, you would ideally be surrounded by a strong support structure. That would be a person or a group of people who want to help you get the job done while you learn. I have seen no technology that is better at doing this than simply being able to wheel your chair over to someone and say 'I am not sure I am doing this right, any suggestions?' or the opposite, 'How are you getting on with that?'

A lot of career progression is learning how to influence people and the majority of this is learning how to really listen to people and to empathise with them. In a completely remote world, how would you gain these skills? How would you build these relationships? I am sure this is possible, but I can't help but think it would be detrimental to the overall efficiency of a group.

Culture

The culture of an organisation is a delicate thing and not one that can be changed easily. Most organisations state their values to include things like 'openness' and 'collaboration', but after over 100 years of working in offices we still struggle to live up to these values. This will only get harder if we close the office.

Health

Consider the team-mate who shares a flat with two others, many of us are, or have been this person. They have a bedroom of their own, but it is just about big enough for their bed, a wardrobe and very little else. They may physically be able to work in the space available to them, but the chances are they will be hunched over a keyboard for 8 hours a day - what would our colleagues in Health and Safety make of that? These colleagues are likely to be the youngest in the team and hence their backs may not complain too much, but are we storing up a plague of bad posture and related challenges as they get older?

Then there is the mental health side of things. How would this setup affect our young team-mate mentally? They may have the positives of a 2 metre commute but they may also go all day without seeing anyone other than their flat-mates, who they may not particularly get on with and who may have no idea of the work stresses they are feeling. They have no separation of home and work, they have little outlet for stress, they don't have a work-mate who can see that they are struggling.

Alternatively, there is the parent who, no matter how much they love their family, they just need some time on their own. Time to think of themselves, time to prepare for the day, time to unwind from the day and prepare for proper family time.

There are coping methods for many of these things. Technology can help, working in the local coffee shop may be an option but these are a long way from being equivalent to the office centric environments, protocols and support systems that have been evolving over the last couple of hundred years.

Work Location Options

Having discussed some of the individual considerations for working remotely or in an office, we now need to find the right balance between the two. In the table below I have attempted to summarise the four main options available for the location of team members.

'In the office 100%' is self explanatory, as is 'Close the office'. There is a subtle but important difference between the last 2 of these categories. 'Some of the people in the office some of the time' means there are people who never come to the office, while others attend regularly or even every day. 'Everyone in the office some of the time' is the situation where all team members will be present in the office for some of the time, hence it should be possible to schedule this to ensure that those times coincide.

There is no single right answer for everyone, but there are wrong ones. I would rule out '100% in the office' and 'Some people in the office some of the time'. It has been a long time since most organisations insisted on everyone being in the office all of the time as evidenced by the ghost town that was Canary Wharf on any Friday over the past 5 years. Everyone has learned how to work remotely and how to work when others are remote for some of the time. The personal advantages of not being in the office 100% of the time far outweigh the negatives.

'Some people in the office some of the time' is the worst of both worlds. All communication has to be doubled up, one method for those in the room or round the water-cooler and one for those who are remote. It is very difficult to create a sense of team if you never meet André or Angie, and sooner or later someone will move to a different time zone and you then need to add that into the mix. If you want to allow remote working, then you are fighting a losing battle if some visit the office regularly whilst others never do.

That leaves us with 'Close the office' and 'Everyone in the office for some of the time'.

The idea of closing the office just makes me sad. I am a sociable creature, as many of us are. The thought of never being able to catch up with a colleague over a coffee or, even better, a beer, feels like we would be losing the sense of community that work has historically provided. Admittedly social events can be arranged, but in my experience the best are always the impromptu gatherings. I would also miss the ad-hoc relationships you build up in the kitchen. How else do you know who to speak to in Finance if you work in Marketing? That Shirley in Customer Service might be interested in a move into Technology? Or Sandeep is planning to run a marathon next year?

So, if it were up to me, I would plump for 'Everyone in the office for some of the time'. I would agree a rota with all members of my teams so that everybody would be in the office during pre-arranged, consistent core times. What core time means would depend on the needs for each team, type of industry and current workload. Outside core times, where people work would be left with the individual to decide.

We should also take this opportunity to re-configure office spaces. They need to be optimised for team working with options for individual working, whereas most spaces now are the other way round. If we adopt the core time approach, but stagger these across the residents of a single office, then it will be possible to reduce the total space required and hence save some real-estate costs.

Let's all benefit from the increased flexibility that we have come to appreciate during our respective lockdowns but let's not lose the many benefits of working in an office.