The Role of the Office in a World WFH

Published by Scott Jenkins on September 20, 2020September 20, 2020

In this post, I explore my attitudes towards the office and its role in a post-pandemic world.

For billions of people around the world, 2020 has turned expectations of the working environment upside down. Like millions of others, I have been working from home (WFH) as a rule, only visiting the office a couple of times in recent months.

Do I prefer my days WFH or my time in the office? As with so many other things, there is not a dominant argument in either direction as to which is ‘better’. I have broken down my thinking into 4 categories to conclude that I prefer a hybrid model of working environment.

Productivity

Whilst WFH has it’s distractions (snacks from the kitchen!), I find it allows periods of more intense focus than an open-plan office environment. With some rules and constraints in place (E.g. personal phone turned off when working), I am able to concentrate more deeply than when sat at our bank of desks.

Flexibility & Trust

The construct of working 9am to 5pm was one born out of the early 20th century by industrialists such as Henry Ford. Such rigidity made it easy to quantify labour, and offices enabled bosses to keep a close eye on employee output. Technology offers new tools to build and ensure such trust.

WFH demands more trust than having everyone turn up to a physical location. I argue that the increased flexibility allows for a higher quality of work. Whilst meetings continue to be conducted at sociable times (afternoons work best for me), being able to work when I feel most productive is a strong benefit of WFH.

Social Well-being

I see the largest draw back of WFH as the risk of isolation and loneliness. We are inherently social creatures; the typical workforce needs time for low-level social interaction and chatter in order to remain healthy.

WFH has added barriers to this, which took me a while to fully appreciate. In an absence of chatter, work communication has become more formal: 30 minute scheduled team calls have replaced catch ups in the lunch queue or dropping by the desks of others to receive or offer support. Work social circles have shrunk, and our team can no longer gather around the whiteboard.

Cost

Living in a 5 person house share keeps costs low, but is not conducive to WFH. When 3 of us battled for space on the kitchen table I knew it was time to move out. I’m now renting with a friend in Loughborough and have a permanent desk set up in our dining room looking out onto the garden. The absence of the commute saves both time and money.

Small daily costs such as electricity which would have fallen to businesses have now been ingested by individual employees. these add up. Will companies pay for employees heating during cold winter days? Will superfast broadband be subsidised on a national scale? The new ways of working raise questions which yet to be answered.

My Hybrid Suggestion

Speaking to others in my network who are returning to the office, there is a trend of a rota-like system being introduced, with the workforce being split into groups which each visit the office on a different day.

Instead, I would suggest a ‘boot camp’ approach – visiting the office for a 3 day block every 4 weeks for an intense conference style experience.

The time would be deliberately different from day to day work and there would be no humdrum routine to follow. The purpose of the time would be for brain-storming, idea sharing and cross-functional learning, along with time for catch ups and fun team activities. To test how this could work, I’ve drawn up a sample agenda for a Data & Insights team heading into the office:

The time would aim to leave us feeling invigorated with ideas and connected with our teams.

Until Next Time,

Scott