The Office is Not Dead, it’s different.
In most places of work, pre-pandemic office life was plagued by unnecessary counterproductive formalities. Requirements such as what time you show up, what you wear on your body, & how long you are at your desk are ultimately insignificant and in some cases detrimental to employee effectiveness. These were hold overs from the industrial age where one’s productivity was directly linked to their time on the factory line. As work evolved into the information age many companies seemed to miss that parts of office life were actually counterproductive to getting things done.
Where you physically are does not matter in most jobs. Pre-pandemic, I told our team they didn’t have to come to the office. I wanted people to feel comfortable and at ease to do their best work. However, it was almost as if I had to convince the team it was ok to not be there. I would say, “internet does in fact exist outside of this office” and they’d make fun of me by sending little wifi emoji’s on slack when someone occasionally said they’d be WFH.
The thing is, it wasn’t that I had to convince them it would be ok to work where they wanted, they wanted to be in the office. Humans are tribal, we gain energy from being around other humans, we aren’t designed to be alone. One may have their family around at home, but the best teams I’ve been on were your tribe. We are also mobile beings. I’m sure many of you are dying a slow death making the long trek from your bedroom to your “office” on the couch. Get me the F out of here.
Slack & Zoom are great tools, but think back to the natural information flow that would occur in an office. We attain a massive amount of info from unstructured office chatter. Info about the work itself, a project update, customer call, or (importantly as a manager) how people are feeling. Then there are sparks of creativity & speed to act on brainstorms. I love a good whiteboard session as much as anyone possibly could. Digital whiteboard’s like Miro are nice, but I prefer the real thing even if it means having to try a few different markers to find the one that works.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to say requiring employees to be in an expensive specific geographical place doing work they could do anywhere makes absolutely no sense. And what’s more, the supplier centric office leasing structure of commercial real estate is not helpful for a growing business. Sign up for a 10 year lease? That made sense only because the customer had no other options. Most businesses don’t know how many seats they’ll need 6 months from now let alone 10 years.
So, to the point... businesses are realizing they were wasting money, employees are understanding the freedom remote work provides them, and yet the office won’t be dead forever. Zoom out for a minute, there will be a vaccine. By the looks of it, a vaccine will come sooner than initial predictions. When that time comes companies will slowly return to having an office but it won’t be the same as before. The office will be a place for your tribe to brainstorm, get energized, and access resources. There will be less assigned seats and more investment in collaboration spaces. The scheduling will change, in some cases there won’t be one. Attendance will look more like free flowing traffic. Some engineers may be designing a new front end UI at 1am because that’s what engineers do. Ya maybe not, they’ll barely come in, but you get what I’m saying.
Resources an office provides will expand. The office becomes a destination. The biggest companies already got this. Google has chefs, gym, nap pods, outdoor spaces, indoor lounge areas, you name it. Possibly the REITs scrambling to lure back customers will take this approach. As part of their reasoning to have a lease, companies less resourced than Google can offer amenities to their employees that provide a more 360 alignment with living a good life. The office can represent access to food such as Crafty or Fooda, mental health, physical health, creativity, and a space for execution. See below, it seems some developers such as the prolific West Loop duo of Shapack & Sterling Bay are already doing it.
Who is down to hoop today? “Let’s meet at the office”
Of course, many many companies will not feel compelled to need an office. The smaller upstarts on a mission to establish themselves certainly won’t. However, a good amount of the SME’s and larger enterprises will go back once science prevails over Covid-19, it will just be a little different.
Want more discourse? Here’s a thread with additional varying opinions.
