We do need offices!
I miss the office environment. I speak for myself, not for my colleagues.
The recent Google announcement that staff can work from home until July next year will reignite the debate about the end of the office culture and it makes me a little sad.
So much good has come from the office environment. Sure, it wasn't perfect and came with some downsides, but on the whole, it worked because of one simple thing.
We don’t want to spend our lives perched on the sofa, or on the edge of the dining table, or in the smallest room in the house and for the most part, we don’t want to be alone.
Offices at their core are social places where us humans thrive off social interaction. Something that is usually lost in the desk v WFH debate.
So what does need to change? We need to optimise working from home v's working in the office.
Pre-Covid-19, many people were starting to talk about four-day weeks. Could they work? What is the upside, the downside?
They could not have seen what was about to strike us all, but perhaps they were already understanding that the commute was the issue – the wasted time spent in hours of travel every day, the delays, the cancellations, the rigidity.
Perhaps what was needed was more flexibility. A not-so-rigid start time or being able to work from home a couple of days a week would have helped them – and all of us – a lot.
We made our lives so hard with that rigidness – all forced to travel at once, pay crazy prices and stand on trains.
At my company, this was recognised last year and where is where the actual transition has to occur – less rigidity, more trust, but always with the ability to come together when we need to and being able to look forward to coming together.
Some are pointing to the concept of online communities and how powerful they are. But all online communities have a "real" element to them, whether it’s around events, meetings, concerts, get-togethers, coffee mornings or drinks – they all have some support mechanism in the real world.
I think I would enjoy home-work more if I knew I could go to the office tomorrow and meet up with colleagues. I would then enjoy that video conference even more as it avoided an early commute on a packed train or unnecessary expense.