Thank you for most likely being among the 1,700-plus people who read my March 12th post, “Eleven Brutal Truths on Office Design and Working from Home”! I’m back to that topic, looking at four pieces published since then. What did they have to say?
The oldest, “Stuck on Zoom:
How having more tech at home during COVID-19 creates longer, more
stressful workdays,” by Terry Collins in the March 22nd USA Today,
described a problem reminiscent of the early Industrial Revolution, when
employers had to learn that workers being physically able to stand and move for
19 hours a day didn’t mean that was what they should be doing. Per Collins, but not unique to him, “the
workday… doesn’t just feel longer. For
many of us, it actually is longer,” and “screens, keyboards, and computer mice
on dining room tables are now commonplace,” which “is creating a never-ending
workday for some employees who struggle to decide when it’s time to turn off
the switch.” He found people were
working between 48 minutes and 3 hours longer daily, extended by “email, texts,
and distractions,” to which I add porous personal boundaries and poor time
management. Exactly how this issue will
be resolved is unknown – as it was about 200 years ago, it could be through
labor unions, or just by enough people refusing to answer communications
outside of their negotiated availability hours – but it will be.
A week later in the New York Times, we got Matthew
Haag’s “Remote Work Is Here to Stay.
Manhattan May Never Be the Same.”
While as I wrote before the trendiness of working from home has swung
like a pendulum, this central borough may never again match its “more than 1.6
million commuters every day” which has “sustained” it throughout, “from the
corner hot dog vendor to Broadway theaters.”
As of the story’s date, Haag claimed that 90 percent of office workers there
were working remotely – that number has shrunk greatly since, but must still be
high. It is wrong to expect the share of
people working from home to settle at any approximate percentage – as it has
for over 30 years, it will continue oscillating.
That assumption of indefinitely large amounts of remote work
is at the center of Derek Thompson’s June 14th The Atlantic
“Winners and Losers of the Work-From-Home Revolution.” The author, similar to what I wrote in the
post above, started with studies showing the best and the worst views of remote
labor. His apparent contradictions, such
as “It obliterates focus and extends working hours, but people want more of
it?”, can be understood by realizing that workers don’t always want what is
best for their productivity, and that companies are hardly unified over time or
with others on its merits and drawbacks.
The article had an informative section on skills and attributes which
working from home favored, such as introversion, “being a clear and fast
writer,” and those skilled with Zoom and other tools, but does not mean they
would attract raises, promotions, or even good performance reviews, so saying that
it will “reward certain skills” overstates.
Other doubtful items are that “young people and new hires” are hurt from
remote work though it is easy to disappear in a cubicle farm, with a
“post-pandemic shift to WFH… spending in downtown restaurants, movie theaters, barbershops,
and other retailers” will drop much more than 10%, and organizations, if they
keep individual desks, will not reduce their footprints if people work only part-time
from home. As well, some business
activity, especially restaurant lunches, will not resume around employees’
houses but will, truly, “disappear into the ether.” Providing technical and other resources to
support remote work, though, is indeed a good area for future ventures, and,
yes, it will widen the social and political gap between educated people with
good jobs and everyone else.
Then we have the opposite side, with “Google’s Plan for the
Future of Work: Privacy Robots and
Balloon Walls” (Daisuke Wakabayashi, The New York Times, May 3rd). A picture here showed something far better
than possible at home offices, a semi-circular Campfire meeting room with seats
for people physically present alternating with large screens displaying the life-size
heads and shoulders of remote attendees.
There were other views of innovative office space, such as movable work
areas with heating and ventilation ducts to match, outdoor conference areas, and
lower density plans. Many of these ideas
may become the norm even when the pandemic is a decade or more in the past, but
the question remains: What would happen
to these offices if, in 2035 or 2040, Google discovers a great innovation
called “independent work” or letting employees do their tasks where they live? Then they wouldn’t need to commute, would be
more productive, would be able to balance work and life better, would like it
more…
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