Work from home or return to office
Two months out of lockdown, most of us have mentally moved beyond the virus. The Government is concerned enough to re-launch its track and trace strategy because people don't bother with it anymore. In general, we are enjoying more freedoms than many elsewhere after undergoing COVID restrictions that were tighter than most.
Life has returned to normal in a social sense, though we have a massive challenge to restore the economy. Even then, the impact is mixed: some industries like tourism have been devastated, others such as distribution and specific niches have never been busier (a local supplier of all things RV said they were 400% up on last year). The majority have seen a 20-30% impact on revenue. With the help of subsidies during the lockdown, and some layoffs, most of these will get through the financial year at breakeven or close enough to it to survive. The last subsidies finish next month, and there is likely to be a reasonable but hopefully not cataclysmic fallout of business failures.
The other interesting thing is that from here we can see how the perspective of American and European commentators is distorted by their current reality. A recent special feature in the Harvard Business Review asked, "Do we need an office?" and went through all the reasons why working from home (WFH) was going to be a permanent feature of the new ecology of work. A recent article by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic is one of the few to take a more measured approach. I can confirm the author’s conclusion that reports of the death of the office are grossly exaggerated.
Some organisations in New Zealand have been happy to let the WFH experiment run for knowledge workers, and some have forced the pace. One corporate took the opportunity to get out of its expensive CBD lease though it will apparently open regional hubs for workers to gather. For the most part, where people have had the option, they initially stayed home but have increasingly spent more time at the office. I heard about a manager being asked by their partner to go back to their office because they were upsetting the rhythm of home life for the children.
For all the reasons Mull lists in the article, people prefer the company of others at work to their own. The happy collisions that occur at work, the speed of problem-solving, the sociability, the politics and the dramas - workers at home are cut off from all of that, and as they re-entered the workspace, people began to be re-absorbed by it – it re-established itself as the norm. There are some exceptions of course: the person who wants to work from home full time because they don’t like the people in the office is a challenging case because actually they do better work at home, and they’re not a positive contributor in the office.
For employers and managers, that’s really the key consideration: WFH is great for productivity, but it’s a distant second best when it comes to innovation, which generally requires collaboration in person. The dynamic is undeniably different. We recently interviewed a job candidate on Zoom who turned out to be quite different in person – their energy and confidence was nothing like their persona on the screen.
The office isn’t dead, or even sick. We simply have more choices about how we can help people make their best contribution.
Could you please take a few minutes to help us?
We’re gathering data on your experiences with the transition after lockdown - to what extent people are working from home or in the office, how that’s changing and what’s been surprising and challenging. We’d really appreciate your help because then we can learn from and share what the research reveals.