Want to get people back into the office? Give them offices!
As the Covid-19 pandemic becomes the COVID-22 pandemic, it seems increasingly unlikely that we may ever return to the office full-time. For many people, that’s great news! However, a recent New York Times article, “Zooming from the Office” got me thinking… how could we return to the office? What would make people want to go back? And why would anyone want us to go back anyway?
For many people, working at home is great: freedom, privacy, snacks, sweatpants, dogs; it’s all great! For others, remote work is difficult: distractions, isolation, endless zoom calls, burnout.
Personally, I like working from home, but I do feel an increasing sense of isolation these days. I miss the office. I can’t believe I just wrote that. I miss the office. As weird as it feels to write that, it’s true. I miss the energy, the hallway chats, the “let me pick your brain about something” instead of “let me set up a Teams meeting.” I miss getting to meet new people and eat lunch with other humans. Heck, I even miss my commute (kinda). Having that separation between work and life has some value — at least I get some time with my boy, Roman Mars.
The problem that many of us have with offices, though, is that we work in open offices. The open office is a fraud that has been perpetuated on us in the name of collaboration, communication, and energy. I suspect it has more to do with real estate than real benefits. Open offices are noisy, chaotic, and lend themselves to constant distractions. I’ve long felt that to get any real work done, I’d take a WFH day. Open offices have one other problem in a world where we understand how quickly a respiratory virus can spread through the population: they are open petri dishes for sharing germs.
The solution to getting people back into the office, then, is simple. Give people real offices! With walls! And Doors! And windows!
Offices allow us to have the privacy we’ve grown accustomed to, they reduce noise and distraction, they probably reduce the spread of airborne pathogens, and with reduced numbers of people in-office, they won’t take up too much space.
It seems that most people won’t want to come back to an office full-time one way other the other. Some people want to work from home indefinitely, or go remote and work from some random forest (that’s a data science joke). Some people want to come into the office for special meetings, and some want to come in a couple days a week to see their teammates. Still others want to work from the office all the time. And you know what, that’s cool, too. Let’s just estimate that on any given day, 30% of the employees of a location want to be in the office.
There’s just no reason to have everyone cheek-by-jowl in open offices when only 30% of the workforce is in the building, so why not use the space from a workforce that’s 30% in-office to give everyone a little additional separation? Building offices isn’t hugely more expensive than buying cubicles, and the additional private space might actually improve collaboration.
So, to get people back to the office, we should give employees offices. Not their own personal assigned office, but one they can “check out”*. People can come in, have an office for the day, have some meetings (in person!), eat lunch with colleagues, pack up and head home. Minimal distractions, while still fostering the connection and collaboration that comes from being in the same room with peers. It’s perfect.**
Naturally, there will have to be other interventions like mask-wearing in common spaces, lots of sanitizer stations, vaccine mandates, and other good-hygiene measures to reduce the spread of viruses like colds, flu, and the ‘rona. The office door can do a lot to help minimize the spread of airborne pathogens, though.
We have to face the facts that: the world of work is changing, rapidly, and people don’t want to be stacked like cord-wood in open offices; WFH burnout is real and getting worse as people feel more and more isolated in their homes. The only way to get people back into the office after the past two years is to give people actual offices, so they can work from work when they need and want to, without the drawbacks of open offices that are keeping them at home.***
*Yes I hate hoteling, as its called, but in this case the tradeoff is worth it.
** Mostly
*** Like Coronavirus