Why ask employees to return to work?

The winter of 2019 wasn't much different from the preceding winters. A longingness to fast approaching Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays. A desire to take a break from the hustle and bustle of life to spend time with family and friends. A yearning for travel to never been there places. Yes, doing all the things that make life worth living while bringing an excellent closure to the ongoing activities. After all, there were commitments to meet, which provided the wherewithal to do all the fun things. There were early reports of a pneumonia-like illness affecting people in Wuhan. However, that seemed so distant and typical of the endless barrage of the next catastrophe we all have come to withstand and have become somewhat immune to.

The spring of 2020 was nothing like all other preceding springs. The pneumonia-like illness, which had begun to look like a reprise of the SARS outbreak at the end of the winter, had escalated to look like an infectious respiratory disease of a novel virus, COVID-19, for which there was no immunity. The race was on to build a vaccine, put faith in various immunity boosters as an interim measure, and avoid the infection by restricting people-to-people contact. Multiple types of shields, ranging from masks to screens, both physical and virtual, were in favor, and survival was the need that superseded everything else. Working from home was the need of the hour.

The period of the next one and a half years was yet another story of the resilience of the indomitable human spirit. All contributed as per their capacities and capabilities. All lost some, and some lost all, but humanity emerged victorious. Ready to face the next catastrophe with a renewed resolve and immunity enabled by vaccines. Working from home was hailed to be a success.

The fall of 2021 had started to look like the fall of 2019 and the falls before. Life was taking cautious but sure steps toward normalcy—two steps forward, one step backward, but still steady progress toward breaking free from COVID-induced barriers. Working from home was still a norm, but businesses were increasingly open to welcoming employees to the office at least for a few days of the week. Working from home was morphing into a hybrid work model.

By the summer of 2022, the world had moved on to new catastrophes of war in Ukraine, recession, inflation, and corporate downsizing. The hybrid work model was still in vogue but losing its shine fast.

Here we are in the spring of 2023. The corporate world has two polarizing positions on the preferred work model. In general, leadership would instead like to have employees in offices on all days but is afraid to say so for fear of appearing archaic and losing out on talent. On the other hand, in general, employees would instead work from home but are scared to say so for fear of losing out on jobs and career advancement. There is a polite pleading from the leadership to show up more. There is a polite defiance from the workers to stay put. An often-given rationale is that work is getting done, so why ask employees to return to work?

Here is why under most circumstances working from an office is superior. The views expressed here are personal and general and thus neither speak for my employer nor are taking a position on any specific situation. There will always be people, places, and situations where working remotely could be superior if not only practical, option.

As eloquently postulated by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, the environment plays the most crucial role in human behavior. The office is an environment created to promote value augmentation through individual and collective effort. It is an environment that encourages behaviors that augment value and shuns irrelevant or detrimental behaviors to value augmentation. In contrast, the home should not and cannot be an environment to prioritize augmentation of corporate value above all else. The home is an environment that provides shelter, security, and bonding to the members of a family. Yes, every once in a while, a family member can borrow the shared space from the family to augment work, but hijacking the place by anyone for any individual activity, including work, is unlikely to be appreciated by the family.

As argued by Daniel Goleman in Focus: The hidden driver of Excellence, the focus is a critical differentiator between doing acceptable or excellent work. True, offices aren't free of distractions, but the nature of distractions is work-focused, and the net effect is, hopefully, additive to value augmentation. In contrast, distractions at home should not and cannot be related to work alone. Neither is the impact of these likely to be anything other than deleterious.??

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" is a famous quote from Peter Drucker. Culture, by definition, refers to the shared values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and practices that shape how people within an organization think, act, and interact with each other and external stakeholders. These shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are built on explicit and implicit sharing that automatically happens when people are together in the time and space domain. Doing it any other way requires significant effort for only a fraction of the effectiveness.??

"Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions" by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths argues that while human intelligence and intuition are valuable, they can be prone to bias and error, whereas algorithms can provide more reliable and consistent results. The argument becomes even more valid in any activity that lasts for a while. The career is a marathon in which most will likely come ahead by cultivating and relying on habits promoting value augmentation. It's easy to form habits and keep executing them as algorithms when there isn't a flip-flop between working from the office and working from home. The rhythm of getting ready for work, sliding into work through a commute, doing your very best work, and sliding out of work through a commute is easier to repeat every day for years than greeting each work day with a custom approach.??

There is a difference between watching an experience over a screen and living it there in full glory. It's the difference between discerning an experience from your eyes and ears using the view you were served vs. having an immersive experience sampled by all your faculties. While the former can give you all relevant details at your convenience, the latter makes you pick and retain more. After all, not all communication is what you can understand from slides or can see through a camera. There is much more to it that can only be realized by being there in person with all others.

Last, much like my opinion, you must have your opinion. Please share to promote a better understanding of an effective work model.