Perhaps the biggest legacy of the pandemic is the changes it has wrought on “the office.” The simple version of this is, “Back to the office or work from home?” Of course, it isn’t that simple. In fact, it isn’t simple at all but goes to the core many of our businesses.
During the pandemic, those jobs that couldn’t be done remotely, think retail and restaurants, were the hardest hit. The solution was typically to shut down and many of those workers didn’t come back and aren’t ever coming back.
For ‘knowledge workers,’ those who were able to work remotely, the situation has been more interesting. Let’s just say it: Remote work saved many businesses. Most businesses transformed themselves quickly and effectively. It worked and for many businesses, they thrived.
But as the pandemic has waned and the ability to go back to the office, the new choices have made things…complicated.
Many employers are calling their employees back to the office, either three-to-four days a week or full-time. This has been done for a number of reasons. Many employers feel that remote workers are less productive. There is certainly some truth to that; there are employees doing a lot of laundry on workdays and a fair number of work-from-homers who are holding down more than one job, without the knowledge of their employers.
Then there are the employers who feel that the opportunities for collaboration are missing with remote work. Mentoring and training, especially for the younger staff, are harder to do remotely.
Here’s my read on the productivity issue. When it is possible to objectively measure an employee’s output, that makes it objective and largely takes care of the issue. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of jobs that just can’t be measured objectively. But we need to admit something: Managing people includes a large element of babysitting. We assume that if a person is in the office, they are working, whether they are or not. It really is a very lazy form of management.
What about the mentoring and training issues? While this is easier in the office, I think can be done with creative and frequent use of software. I really think that Zoom and Teams have transformed the way we can interact.
Of course, there are those companies who have decided to go fully remote and give up their office and the costs of those facilities. This has mostly been done by tech companies, but the savings can be substantial.
The big issue between really remote and fully or partially back to the office, is the recruiting and retention difference. Employees clearly prefer working remotely. Companies that can figure out how to create more remote positions have a big recruiting and retention advantage over companies that have similar positions but require their people to be in ‘the office.’
But why is it that employees don’t like working in the office? The cynics will say that employees just want to be paid for not working (much). There may be some truth to that. Maybe they really don’t like their boss or being micromanaged. Maybe they just like getting their laundry done.
But a recent survey I read said the biggest thing is the commute. That’s the biggest reason employees don’t want to come back to the office. For us in the Greater Seattle area, that’s an easy one to understand. Skip the commute and many employees get back an hour or three a day. They can use that on personal stuff, or, yep, even catch up on work.
For employers, there is a challenge and an opportunity here. If you can figure out how to let people work remotely, while maintaining productivity and managing the training, mentoring and culture issues, you’ve got an advantage in hiring people and you’ve reduced your facility costs. The facility costs savings are easy to measure. Some of those other costs, not so much. One thing is certain; we’re not going back to the way it was in 2019.
No comments yet.