Six Months of Home vs. Office – II

Back to the views…

Although we don’t know how strong and long-lasting the current trend toward remote work will be, it must be factored into corporate real estate matters, and so we have “The great refurb: Office design joins the conversation on revamping work” (Julia Hobsbawm, Benefit News, February 8^th).  The “seismic changes” which “have been triggered in worldwide corporate real estate” can be divided into three areas:  safety, reflecting that “offices remain targets for attack”; sustainability, the environmental kind; and social space, building “fresh, immersive offices which put social experience” in front, trying to hold off “the ennui driving quiet quitting, career cushioning and all the other white collar rebellions and rejections of post-pandemic working life.”  And yet another new expression appeared here, “pointless presenteeism,” or workers being “in an office for no reason doing work they can do elsewhere.”  If the material here takes hold, offices in another decade may be hard to recognize.

I had Fortune pegged as a conventional, management-favoring organ, so didn’t expect it would be the source of “The return to the office could be the real reason for the slump in productivity.  Here’s the data to prove it” (Gleb Tsipursky, February 16^th).  A chart starting about 2010 with output, hours worked, and output per hour showed something of a correlation between higher productivity and high-remote-work times.  The piece also cited studies by Gallup showing “as many as half of all Americans may be quiet quitters” and that “the optimal engagement boost occurs when employees spend 60% to 80% of their time… working off-site,” by the Integrated Benefits Institute connecting high employee engagement and satisfaction to working from remote locations, by Monster finding that “two-thirds of survey respondents would quit rather than return to the office full time” causing a time and effort drain if they then seek new positions, and one by Slack uncovering a surprising tendency of onsite workers to be on video calls, a “terrible use of the office” which is “the kind of thing that leads directly to quiet quitting.”  Well documented and described material, but are there also findings supporting the opposite?

Then, we had “Office Mandates.  Pickleball.  Beer.  What Will Make Hybrid Work Stick?” (Emma Goldberg, The New York Times, March 2^nd).  The title is a misnomer – perks and features like these are designed to get people happier only about reporting in person – showing that many companies have given up on anything like five-day office requirements.  All of this is reminiscent of efforts throughout the past thirty years, and I see little evidence here or elsewhere of companies having learned from that.

I’ve warned that remote work is setting ergonomics back several decades.  What else was in Jordan Metzl’s March 14^th New York Times “Working From Home Is Less Healthy Than You Think”?  Mainly two things – far less walking and moving around especially with the lack of commuting, going to lunch, and even “taking the stairs at work,” and less exposure to other physical humans.  Metzl, a doctor specializing in sports medicine, pointed out that “our bodies remain the same” and that we have innate needs less compatible with staying at home.  All of that can be compensated for, but that negates at least part of the time savings such employees enjoy.

More openness about working-hours recreation, especially involving an old corporate standby activity, seems to have fueled “Golf at 3pm Thursday?  Sure, It’s the Afternoon Fun Economy,” in the New York Times on March 16^th again by Emma Goldberg.  The article mentioned people who “can now extend their leisure time into the afternoon, and tack on extra hours of work after dark.”  Golf course employees reported that their sites were “jammed with a new group of golfers” on weekday afternoons, and many hair salon workers reported the same.  We, though, have no idea what share of employees are consistently making up that time at night or at all.

Another classic problem with laboring from home is at the center of “You Call This ‘Flexible Work’?”, by Fred Turner on April 12^th, also in the Times.  He described how homes and workplaces became opposites over 100 years ago, with one for earning money and the other for family and other life activities, and borders that would rarely if ever be crossed.  Those changes took a century to develop and phase in, from out-of-control early Industrial Revolution working hours for children as well as adults to widespread acceptance of the 40-hour week.  Now the line dividing them has been erased, and “what’s becoming clear is that we need a new compact for a new technological era.”  What it will or even should be is most likely too early to say.

I was going to present and discuss remote-work-related elephants in the room this week, but there are simply too many pachyderms – by latest count, eight.  So they will be the subject of my next post.  Be ready to open your eyes!