When do we return to the office?

New York City has a special place in our hearts for so many reasons. It is more than rooftop bars, theatres and galleries, it is a symbol, a place many of us dreamed of being while growing in small towns or far away countries. No wonder, those forced to home isolation ask: when are we going back? The question comes in during my roundtables with employees, discussions at town halls, regular working meetings and catching up with other business leaders in my network. As the Coronavirus figures start looking better, and the first steps are taken by many states to return to normal, I hear hope in many voices.

But I also hear terror.

New York City is a place of one of the most difficult destinations for commuters. Subway trains, buses and trains bringing us to work are often dirty, crowded and get delayed just on the day when we need it the least. Some of its stations like Penn or Port Authority Terminal were never built for the amount of foot traffic and passenger streams they handle today. It often takes five-ten minutes of shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to get from a platform to the street. 

New York City has crowded sidewalks. On my daily walk from Penn Station to the office and back before the lockdown, I had to find my way around groups of tourists or shoppers unaware of slowing down the traffic. There is a seasonality to it too. The closer we get to Christmas time, the more midtown starts feeling like walking through airport.

There is nothing easy about the decision of bringing the team back to the office. Some of our colleagues struggle working from kitchen tables in small Manhattan apartments with roommates. They cannot wait to have some space and quiet. Others dread the thoughts of finding a childcare when all camps are closed or bringing a virus back home from a long commute. I listen to podcasts about 6-feet offices with desks separated by plexiglass or standing 6 feet apart, wearing masks in common spaces, the death of open office and the need to disinfect tables after every user. And I am deeply concerned about whether we think of everything we should to achieve the main goal: keep people safe. 

·      Vertical transportation – is a new term used broadly by city planners, real estate brokers and HR professionals. NYC is vertical, full of 25-50 floor office buildings. How long does it take to bring hundreds of employees up by elevators? Standing six feet apart means 2-3 people per elevator per ride. How long will line be? Are there enough stairs in the building to divide them by ‘going up’ and ‘going down’?  

·      Getting to the entrance. Very few of NYC workers walk from home, drive a car or take Uber without sharing it with strangers. Subways, buses and trains present an issue with social distancing. And additional measures will extend the commute time to the point of inefficiency. Getting up from that Penn Station platform to the 7th avenue may become so long, that our 3-4 hours of commute a day will turn into 4-5.

·      Quality of teamwork: who really needs to be present in the office, and why do we work in the same space? Doctors have to see patients; lawyers have to be in a courtroom. How about accountants, software developers or marketing professionals? Can you look at the same screen to review code while standing six feet apart? Get 10 people to a stand-up meeting and hear each other well from across the boardroom?  If we bring different people in on different days, as many new theories suggest, how do they get the value from collaboration across functions and silos?

·      Childcare. Many of us worked from home before. Software industry adjusted faster to the change than many others because of its tradition to use virtual meetings for a very long time. And of all of us know how difficult it is to do it with kids at home! In the past nobody had to balance two tight working schedules with setting two kids in front of their screens for school lessons every hour. Or combining multi-hour video work sessions with caring for preschoolers without being able to get a babysitter or a visiting grandparent. At 1010data we encourage team members to bring pets and kids to virtual meetings and even make an introduction…it helps for a few minutes at best. So, what happens when we ask parents to return to the offices if summer camps are closed, grandparents are still at risk and keep isolation and bringing a stranger in the house to babysit may not be an option?

Yet, while we note the success and high productivity of working from home, other questions come up as well. 

·      Keeping the culture. When everyone knows each other well, shifting to video discussions for a few months is not an issue: there is trust and familiarity with roles. Onboarding of new team members can be done successfully too: we have done a few since the company moved to work from home. The feedback from new employees has been very positive and they make a great contribution. But what happens over time, as the number of those who never visited, had a meal together, talked at a town hall or a party rather than on ‘zoom social’, gets higher? Will we be able to keep reliance on and appreciation for interesting and nice people around? Will we check on and support each other in the same way, build a relationship besides work inputs and outputs? Will it provide for the same focus on customer problems and loyalty to the team during hard times?

·      Building relationships with new customers and partners. People do business with people. They forgive glitches but not a lack of transparency, they go easier on those they had meals with and shared experiences. It is much easier to be understanding with a person you’ve met in real life, than a video image when it comes to resolving conflict.

·      Innovating. Ideas are not born in vacuum. We need the daily discussions and sharing of what is going on to spot a problem that we could fix or to come up with a totally different way to do something. If communications stay virtual , will we be able to get these moments out of scheduled zoom meetings?

·      Video-calls fatigue. A recent article  on bbc.com listed the reasons we get more tired after a day of zoom-calls than in-person meetings. Going through weeks of being on video all day some of us have already started replacing some of them with phone calls and limiting skype-socials with friends on weekends. Teachers, executives, and many others who spend a large portion of the day in front of the others start taking notice and miss face-to-face option.

How should we structure the return to the office? I envision more choice given to people to manage their own situation and to the leaders of teams and functions who know their teams better. It should not be a cookie-cutter, standard answer for all. Probably, there will be a time period allowing those who want to come back early,  to do so within the guidelines and for those who do not – a possibility to work remotely. New forms of work may emerge such is only coming in for certain occasions and events or number of days per week/\.

And I really look forward to the day, when I can walk the floor with a cup of coffee to catch up with colleagues – not to mention handshakes and hugs that may be further away.

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