Are we all going back?

At some point this Covid interruption will end – but the big question is whether we’ll all go back to how we were….?

We’ve discovered Zoom, we’ve discovered that we hated commuting and that we can work just as well from home, though we do miss some aspects of teamworking at an office.

The obvious solution is to move back?partly, so we work 2 or 3 days at home and 2 or 3 at the office.??There will be a few issues with coordinating who is in when, especially if there isn’t enough space for everyone (and companies will want to save on the cost of office space) since we will want to see all of the others in the team when we are in there, but we won’t all be there at the same time.???But other than that, it’s a no-brainer….

BUT – I met with a bunch of managing directors recently, from all sorts of different industry sectors, and they were unanimous in wanting?everyone?back in the office 100% of the time.??Maybe a few exceptions, but the general feeling was “We can’t control people when they work remotely, there is much less synergy / team communication between people so different areas don’t have a feel for what’s happening in the business, and home working may be nice for the employees but it is less efficient – "they are surely stroking their cat or answering the door to amazon or making lots of coffee instead of working all the time…"

I notice Apple have said they want everyone back in the office soon – and you’d expect them to be relatively forward thinking compared to most employers.??So maybe this really IS the feeling of management generally.

By the way, for what it’s worth, my opinions are:

• “Can’t control them” – rubbish!??Management is not about control anyway, or shouldn’t be.??It should be about inspiring people to give their best.??
• Also if you can be measured by results rather than activity, this whole problem of control and working hours disappears.
• “Reduced synergy and team communication” – true.??But coming in once or twice a week would fix that.
• “They do less work at home” – might be true for some people but not for me.??Yes I do answer the door and make coffee, but I work much harder here at home than I do in a noisy office.

Anyway, the question is: What will happen when the?managers?want people back in the office and the?employees?don’t want to go…..

I suspect that management will enforce a return to the office, and then the best employees will gradually leave, moving to organisations that let them work in the way that suits them.???And it’s a good sign if an employer is flexible about working methods – they’ll probably also have an enlightened management style that will show in other ways too.????So the closed-minded employees will lose their best people, and this will reduce their longer term competitiveness.??

It’s always been the case that better employers attract better people, but it only ever seems to be quite a weak correlation for some reason.??Many terrible companies have no problem getting enough workers.??Perhaps employees don’t realise how employable they are, or maybe they would rather put up with less-than-great management in order to avoid risk, so bad managers and bad cultures can get away with being like that.??But maybe the new pull towards remote working will strengthen the resolve of employees to seek better places to work, which is something I am fully in favour of, because it will force management to improve generally.

If you’re an employee, then find out what your boss wants, and then put your case to your boss: you can work better and more productively from home, you'll be happier, you can be contacted easily by Zoom, you'll still be in the office for 2 days a week, etc. The hope is that if lots of people all ask for partial remote working, perhaps managers will realise that it’s an important issue. And if you don’t get any joy, if you feel strongly about it, then prepare to leave: get your CV up to date and start looking…??

...or consider going self employed – then you don’t even HAVE a boss and the problem is solved!??(You get a whole lot of new ones instead, but that’s another story!!)

Onwards and upwards

Chris