In spite of regular reports of its demise throughout the Covid crisis, the office looks set to make a return in our working lives. We’ve all learnt a lot about what works online, and what fails to thrive, as the pandemic has gone on (and on …). The office will return re-animated, but in exactly what form, remains up for grabs.
Last summer, as the world emerged from lockdown 1, there was a lot of talk of never going back. Several Big Tech firms had given their workforces the option of an entire year working from home (WFH), and city-centre business districts remained resolutely empty. But as many transitioned from working-from-home rookies to fully fledged remote and flexible workers, the idea of the death of the office may have lost some of its initial appeal. Twitter boss, Jack Dorsey, was widely quoted as offering staff the option to work from home ‘forever’, but it’s become clear that the intention is for ‘hybrid’ arrangements to be sustained long-term, whereby staff work part of the week from home and part in the office. This pattern is now anticipated throughout Silicon Valley, with Google encouraging a return on-site from September, based on an expectation that staff will live within commuting distance of offices, where they will be regularly present, if not full-time.
Of course, not all jobs can be done from home. The WFH trend is a distinctly white-collar, often also a middle-class, middle and upper-management one. However, it is an influential development, with ripple effects beyond those who are able to take it up – the fact that some people can work remotely has impact. Where, conversely, staff are required in their workplace – factory, supermarket, hospital, etc. – the contrast of options for flexing is an issue in itself: people notice what is going on elsewhere. The emphasis on flexibility for well-being in the workplace, means that on-site employers may be encouraged to look at more diverse flexibility – e.g. 9-day fortnights, varied start times, or job shares. But a recent CIPD survey found that other forms of flexible working were much less widely anticipated by employers, than the option of working from home. It’s therefore likely that the choice of flexible working will remain unevenly distributed after the Covid era has passed.
Meanwhile, there’s growing awareness that the hybrid workplace itself has the potential to increase, as well as diminish, workplace inequalities. The use of technology to bring teams together has made remote working possible, and is clearly here to stay. But managers will have to work differently in order for hybrid working to be successful in the long-run. If some are in the office and others dialling in from home, it’s important that the office workers don’t hog the advantages of being in the room – visibility and side conversations that may lift them apart from their colleagues. To counterbalance these tendencies, many workplaces encourage meetings to be run with everyone using their own device – so that whole team experiences a meeting in the same way, and any bias towards ‘presenteeism’ is reduced. It’s also important that managers themselves model hybrid working, and that they look to promote remote workers, as well as those on-site. Without mitigating efforts, hybrid working could reinforce existing gender gaps, as more women may work remotely to accommodate caring responsibilities. And without some experience of office life, picking up insights on-the-job, younger workers could find their progression slowed, so that prolonged WFH can disadvantage new entrants, relative to established members of the workforce.
A transformational aspect of mass home-working in the pandemic has been the fact that many companies have reported that productivity has gone up. The CIPD survey found that two-thirds of companies reported productivity remaining the same or rising. This goes against a previously widely-held view that WFH would reduce productivity, and that workers may ‘shirk from home’. However, a ‘blurring of boundaries between work and home’ is frequently cited as a negative of homeworking, and one which is connected with working longer hours and an ‘always on’ mentality. These trends feed into the preference for hybrid arrangements. A number of studies indicate that most would prefer to work 2 or 3 days per week at home in future, with the remainder of the week back in the office. The WFH trend has also highlighted the value of coming together physically to brainstorm and solve complex problems, and to foster innovation. While the serendipity factor of the water cooler conversation, or the chance meeting in the corridor, may be overplayed, most people gain from in-person collaboration, and technology has yet to replicate all the benefits of being together in a room.
One of the players in London’s commercial real estate world has published a report showing that as companies adopt hybrid models, the actual amount of office space required may not shrink as much as is sometimes anticipated. This is because companies will have to maintain capacity for peak office occupancy – the days when most people are in. Before Covid, it was already clear that ‘de-densification’ (allowing more square footage per employee) was beneficial for productivity, and the need to allow for social distancing is likely to have amplified this trend. Most companies are tied into leases with a few years to run, meaning that any downsizing is delayed for most businesses. Overall, it is therefore estimated that with the average number of days per week in the office dropping from 4.3 to 3.1, the decrease in demand for office space will amount to 9%. While this is not insignificant, it’s rather less dramatic than is often suggested.
Another driver towards a return to the office is the effect of what one FT article memorably referred to as the ‘blancmange’ of bland working days – the monotony being oneself at home all the time. There has been a less easy separation of ‘work self’ and ‘home self’ during lockdowns, than in normal times. Perhaps the pandemic will leave a legacy of a shift to what management manuals call bringing the ‘whole self’ or ‘authentic self’ to work. Months of Zoom calls mean that colleagues often know what each other’s homes and families look like, in a way that was not the case before. This could inspire a greater long-term focus on well-being and sharing of personal issues at work; or it could be that this trend is constrained by the much-forecasted impending increase in unemployment, as government support to employers is wound down, and a proportion of businesses fail. There may then be a more demanding labour market, where personal well-being is less prioritised.
It’s important to remember that the WFH of the pandemic is different from homeworking in more normal times. Perhaps the future of work has become such a hot topic partly because of the lack of other activity in our lives – when leisure and social life kick in again, will we devote so much attention to it? Maybe we’ll just revert to our old selves, as historians tell us we’ve done so often, after previous pandemics or crises …It will require purposeful management to ensure that the office emerges from its zombie state revitalised, rather than simply ‘undead’ ….
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