The Return To Office Dilemma
A pandemic was an interesting plot twist in the work from home debate. In 2019 the pendulum had been swinging back towards more in-person working when suddenly the world was forced to adapt to 100% at home in all professions where that was viable. Now with an available vaccine and Covid cases generally stable employers are welcoming, encouraging, and in some cases mandating a return to the office. A recent survey showed that 40% of employees would consider quitting their jobs to avoid returning to the office full time. For those who can't quit, there is a general sentiment that employers are being unreasonable and out of touch with the needs of their people. The employee narrative stands on the idea that “we've been productive during the pandemic, so why go back to the way it was?” This is an editorial about the multiple truths of working from home and why the path forward is for both employees and employers to think differently about this topic.
Since 2008 I have worked in what we now call a ‘hybrid’ structure, a combination of working at home and in office. It has been the best of both worlds. It relieves some of the pressure around home care tasks. It gives me breathing room. It has also allowed me to be in person when it was important. The biggest challenge of this work structure was deciding when it was important enough to be in person. As I grew in my career it was a question that I was asking daily "should I go in for this?" and it was mentally exhausting. The worst was when I decided to trek an hour each way and then the meeting was cancelled or nobody else was in the office. Then I was mad and annoyed. When I finally recognized the value of being there consistently, regardless of who I could interact with or what meetings were on the calendar, I was not only released from that mental anguish but I also experienced benefits of in-person that are impossible to quantify.
Employees
There is no doubt that working from home has some major benefits. But before you go all in on your work from home crusade, consider if you are a victim of recency bias. It's been a long time since you've experienced the energy that comes with meeting in person. It's possible that you're favoring your more recent experience and discounting what happens when we are together. Last week I traveled for work for the first time in over a year to a full day workshop across business lines. I had forgotten the magic of connection and the types of conversations we can have in and around those spaces.
It's not just about the magic of the meeting. There are other hard to quantify benefits to being in-person. The mere-exposure effect is the psychological phenomenon that people tend to develop a preference for people who are more familiar to them. It has been estimated that as much as 60% of your career success is dependent on your exposure. While it is possible to be visible while working from home, it takes much more effort. My experience tells me that most people won't make that effort. There will be a large segment of employees who fade out and lose out on their potential career success because of this.
People heavily discount the intangible benefit of a casual in-person interaction and inflate the value of the incremental widget of work completed.
It's the same reason that people don't invest enough time in networking. They don't understand or believe that if they spend more time building relationships they would be able to accomplish more in less time. More on that HERE.
My plea to employees. Don't fade out. Don't discount the value of being there, even when it doesn't feel valuable in the moment. Consider that your employer's policy that seems arbitrary, helps you in ways you may not fully understand or be able to quantify.
EMPLOYERS
You are in a tough spot. It's going to be an uphill climb to sell the value of being in office to people with recency bias and a lot of mental baggage around their work-life priorities. Add in that many industries have severe resource deficits. Tech engineers and UX designers for example can confidently quit knowing that they will easily find another job. How employers handle this time of transition will impact retention of talent.
Another consideration needs to be that not everyone is in the same head space about re-entering the world. Some have chosen not to vaccinate and others continue to have fear of the virus despite being vaccinated. The same care and consideration that many employers showed during the first phase of the pandemic needs to be shown in this next phase. [If you want more on this, click here to listen to a roundtable podcast discussion about Re-entering the world]
In my experience the solution cannot be rigid one-size-fits-all policies. There needs to be more open conversations between managers and employees about both expectations and needs. These can be informed by umbrella guardrail policies, but the work from home structure that works best will be as unique as the people you employ.
The big losers of this transition will be the companies that create constrained rules and enforce them with heavy monitoring and penalties. It drives resentment. Consider instead providing guardrails and fostering much more dialogue between the direct manager, employee, and teams to come to a solution that works. Support this by finding and telling personal stories of those intangible benefits to help your people conclude that it's worthwhile and important to connect in person.
Conclusion
Something I’ve come to appreciate about complex topics is that multiple truths that appear to be conflicting often exist. We can be more productive at home and we can be more engaged and connected in the office. Both things can be true, and our job is to navigate these truths and what we know about ourselves, our work, and our companies the best we can to support positive outcomes.
Related
If you're feeling ready to re-enter the world but at the same time nervous, you're not alone. Listen to this podcast episode for a thoughtful discussion about Re-entering the world.
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