Back to the Office - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 3
In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about several assumptions I hear concerning distributed workforces and the importance of addressing them. In Part 2, I covered some of the magical thinking about working in distributed environments. In today's post, I want to call out several of the benefits to working in a distributed or hybrid environment followed by a few examples of how the removal of many of the in-office negatives have enhanced the appeal of working from home.
There are several clear benefits to organizing work environments around distributed knowledge workers.
Companies are able to hire talent from a bigger pool of candidates and for less, if the local cost of living allows. While I'm generally in favor of salary transparency, this isn't a particularly good idea - currently - when just the raw numbers are shared. The media - being professional shallow thinkers - excel at flaming outrage about the fact a software developer working in San Francisco, for example, is earning $225K whereas a software developer working in Fargo is earning $75K. However, adjusting for the cost of living, the two locations are of the same parity. The overall cost of living in San Francisco is 173% more expensive than living in Fargo. Comparing salaries in different locations would only be useful if a derived number were shared such that many objective variables were considered.
The ability to build a more diverse work force also has an impact on innovation. Face-to-face trust-building isn't the only important factor for amplifying innovation.
We're underestimating how well the younger generations are able to collaborate and communicate within a distributed work environment. In my experience, even when working in-office, the younger knowledge worker includes asynchronous communication channels more frequently than older workers - particularly those in management positions. It's common to see team members who sit within 50 feet of each other communicate with each other throughout the day via the chat program du jour. It's also common to hear them describe how virtually any in-office meeting ends up being a drain on their collaboration owing to how poorly in-office meetings are run. And a thirty-something psychiatrist friend of mine described how follow-up/wellness telemed check-ins and chat integrated with electronic medical records have improved the care he and his colleagues are able to offer patients.
Knowledge workers who are working in a distributed environment aren't commuting to an office. Even if they are commuting to a local coffee shop or shared office space, they are likely driving less. This in and of itself is a net plus for the natural environment.
Distributed or hybrid work environments offer an opportunity to reset the work-family-play balance to something more conducive to mental health. The not too subtle goal of big tech companies to essentially erase the home life part of the equation was accomplished by offering unlimited access to food, dry cleaning services, sleep pods, massages and yoga class, daycare and gyms, and just about anything - much of it offered on-site - an employee could need that would normally be centered around home life. This strategy, meant to keep employees focused on adding value for the company, came at the expense of the social aspects of home life activities.
That is a short list of what's offered by distributed or hybrid work environments. What about the advantages of what's not there, the gains from subtraction? We are indeed social creatures. However, there is a tendency - by people who need the company-supplied tribe for more than collaboration - to romanticize the office experience. There are certain personality types that actually do better with less social interaction than current office space designers seem to think. Not all social interactions are helpful to productivity and innovation. A recent WSJ article had a rather nice collection of the kinds of collocation conundrums that can diminish concentration and therefore productivity and job satisfaction:
Mr. Ross, on working from home: “I control the sound level. In the office, there’s literally no sound control.”
Thermostat wars.
Mae Tila, a customer-care manager: “Everybody walks by me to get to their designated area,” she said. “I get everyone’s life story.”
Destiny Palmerin, a sales and marketing coordinator soured on collocation work once she started hearing her boss clipping his fingernails at work. “I know what that sound is,” she said. “I should not hear that.”
Ms. Palmerin has been unhappily reminded of what it’s like to work after someone burns popcorn. “You can smell it everywhere,” she said.
The sales manager for an auto dealership found himself having to break up a spat between two employees over a large container of apple juice. “Any little thing that happens they come to me,” said Mr. Bush. “It’s like I’m a babysitter.”
It's interesting that the ages noted by the people in the WSJ article are in their 20's and 30's. Other annoyances - small and large - that have been removed by distributed work include:
The stress of commuting and finding parking.
The anxiety of having to look busy, not having the ability to simply think through a problem in silence.
No control over time or the order in which things can be done.
My friends an colleagues who are software developers, attorneys, CPAs, electrical engineers, and writers have all complained about the myriad of pan-sensory distractions spawned by overcrowded offices. (Not everyone gets a door and if there is one, that doesn't fix everything. In some ways, it can be worse, particularly if there is no window and florescent lights. It's depressing to realize you're being paid to work from a prison cell.) This needs to be brought into the conversation, particularly for high-focus dependent types of knowledge work.
Just the reminder of these "annoyances" and the though of going back to the office to work in any type of cube provokes a cold sweat. Same for managing people. Perhaps Sartre was right. "Hell is other people."
In the final installment of this series, I'll write about, the cultural elephant in the collocated workspace, what knowledge workers have discovered is really important, and ways we can work to satisfy those needs.
Back to the Office - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 1
Back to the Office - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 2
Back to the Office - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Part 4 (Conclusion)
Back to the Office - Delayed Effects from the Lock-downs
Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash