Home or Office? – I

What I get for not writing posts on this timely topic for eight weeks is enough material for two – and some intriguing and worthy ideas have come up.  So here are ones from August.

The first I saw was “What Remote Work Debate?  They’ve Been Back at the Office for a While.” (Emma Goldberg, The New York Times, August 1).  It shows how different the rules can be between companies, with high in-person-turnout tendencies for those based in areas with less than 300,000 people and “where Covid lockdowns were shortest,” and the lowest in the most “competitive markets where employees are more likely to call the shots.”  Although New York and San Francisco “office occupancy” had reached 41% and 39% of its pre-coronavirus levels soon before article time, in many other places it was somewhere around 75% - a huge geographical difference. 

Some people quoted in that story were glad to get out of their houses, which may be good for them, as opined by Edith Cooper in the August 6^th New York Times in “Don’t Return to the Office For Your Boss.  Go Back for Yourself.”  This business co-founder and former Goldman Sachs executive cited “the value of actually being in a room with co-workers,” because of “the shared experience, the serendipity of talking to people not directly related” to their work, “the exposure to a diversity of ideas and perspectives,” and “the chance to look up and say, “I never thought about that.”  She said if she had worked remotely earlier in her career, she “would have missed out on finding the friends and mentors who played critical roles,” and that being there in person helped her learn “how my industry works, the nature of power hierarchies and how to get along with all kinds of people.”  Only a partial view, but one with merit, and that’s all we have now anyway.

On the same side, the next day Bradford Betz told us in Fox Business that “Malcolm Gladwell says people must return to the office to regain ‘sense of belonging.’”  Gladwell claimed “he was frustrated with the inability of people in positions of leadership to effectively communicate to their employees the importance of returning to the office.”  I have read about managements insisting that their workers do that, but little about selling them on its value, which though may not be much to those less ambitious or willing to trade possible involvement and advancement for the advantages of their jobs having smaller footprints.

Turning the tables on an issue facing mind workers was Laura Vanderkam’s August 13^th New York Times “Don’t Feel Guilty about Working on Vacation – or About Vacationing at Work.”  Since we saw that “a 2022 survey of over 20,000 professionals found that 54 percent of people said they weren’t sure they could fully “unplug from work” while taking paid time off,” why not the opposite as well?  Maybe “it is also OK, however, to take little vacations during working hours,” such as “an hour outside reading a novel, an afternoon bike ride, lunch with a friend, leaving the office (or desk at home) a little early to shop for and cook a special dinner:  If you’re thoughtful and intentional about it, dispensing with strict boundaries between, work and the rest of life can make a fuller, less burned-out life possible.”  This philosophy, for some, could be just the ticket.

Most businesses would prefer employees come into the office, so is it surprising that “You may soon be asked to take a pay cut to keep working from home” (Don Lee, Los Angeles Times, August 23^rd)?  This extension of paying less for people in lower-priced markets has popped up in Great Britain, and could become common here if the “tight labor market” eases.  The differentials should not be large, as companies benefit from not needing to furnish as much office space, but workers may respond by putting in fewer hours when at home – it would be tempting for many to arrange for their employers to gain nothing on the deal.  I will watch this one to see if it becomes a trend.

Finally for August, we go back to Emma Goldberg in the New York Times, where the August 28^th Sunday Business section led with “The Office’s Last Stand,” subtitled “It’s either the end of the era of hybrid improvisation around where work takes place – or the beginning of outright rebellion.”  Goldberg started with management’s attempts “to get employees to return” to offices, moved to the “more than one-third of U.S. workers” able to work remotely who want to do that all the time, corporate concern that “if they don’t persuade their employees to come back now, the new norms of flexible work will be hard to unstick,” and confrontations where “bosses say the office deadlines are real; workers are testing just how much they mean that.”  A battle, but nothing like a last stand.  That’s a long time off.  For now, there are other perspectives – for more, see next week’s post.