Why #WFH Won't Be Forever

With tech giants announcing WFH strategies, the ‘death of the office’ narrative is still bubbling away. But the ‘WFH vs. The Office’ debate is too binary. The way we work will change, but the office is too critical to be shunned.

With Covid-19 dominating news cycles, the speculation of a ‘permanent WFH’ became a much-discussed by-product. Google, Facebook and Salesforce announced that all their staff would work from home for the rest of 2020, and Twitter took it one step further by declaring employees could WFH forever.

More recently, Shopify shared its plans to go “digital first” and keep offices closed until 2021, while UBS says “a third of its 70,000 employees could go remote for good”.

These headlines have been paired alongside a ‘death of the office’ narrative, with sceptics questioning the ROI of their second largest operating cost: If my employees can work from home, why should I pay for office space?

But while working from home has its perks – like work-life fulfilment, the chance to spend more time with your family and cancel out the ever-dreaded commute – culling the office altogether ignores how much it has to offer.

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WFH vs. The Office: Why the debate is too binary

The way in which the ‘WFH vs. The Office’ debate has unfolded says a lot about how we view our working habits. When it comes to space, we think we have to be all or nothing. We either work from home or turn up to the office every day.

But that’s not the case. Both environments hold a lot of power. And in reality, the future of work includes a blend of the two.

This hybrid has already started to emerge. A survey spanning 1,500 UK employees found that three in five Britons are itching to get back to the office, but “many would like to work from home more often than in the past once the pandemic is over”.

The wheels of this are already in motion. PwC is welcoming back 15% of its 20,000 employees to its six UK offices, while Barclays hinted at utilising branches as office space for corporate staff and Morgan Stanley’s CEO says he envisions an uptake in working from home.

Writing about the changing nature of work, Tracy Brower echoes the importance of this blended approach: “The best strategies combine working in an office and working from home. It is not an all-or-nothing. It is not an either-or. Deleting the office altogether is not the best option. The workplace offers all kinds of critical value – and it simply cannot – must not – go away”.

“We can be creative anywhere, but being together physically is so much more effective for stimulating thinking” - Tracy Brower, Forbes.

Why the office cannot – and must not – be neglected

As Lee Elliott, Global Head of Occupier Research explains: “Businesses are immeasurably weaker without recourse to an identifiable collective hub. That is not to say that the form and function of the office is beyond reconfiguration but, once again, rumours of the death of the office have been greatly exaggerated”.

The office is central to the creation and maintenance of company culture. It’s vital to the innovation and creativity needed to stay ahead of the curve.

It’s the place where essential (but often unspoken) employee development happens, where we learn through proximity and where social connections become new professional collaborations.

A WFH-only approach doesn’t just cull a centralised meeting point, it lowers your employees’ propensity for human connection, creativity, innovation, team culture, accountability, productivity and the chance to feel valued. Here’s how:

1. Offices provide us with human connection

If you’ve found yourself waving goodbye at the end of video calls, you’re not alone. After the trend began circling last week, experts raced to explain why the habit was catching on.

Laura Dudley, an associate clinical professor at Northeastern University and an expert in body language explains: "We're hungering for that human interaction, that friendliness, so we're starting to do things like waving to say goodbye. It feels a little nicer than just clicking off".

We don’t need studies to prove the value of human connection. We can appreciate its value on a personal and instinctive level, and we can feel the side-effects of its absence just as strongly.

Writing in The New York Times, Jane E. Brody explains: “[A] lack of social interactions damages mental health. The emotional support provided by social connections helps to reduce the damaging effects of stress and can foster a sense of meaning and purpose in life”.

By allowing us to get face-to-face with colleagues – even at socially distant lengths – the office helps us meet this fundamental need.

2. Offices help us feel seen and valued

Employees who already feel disadvantaged in the workplace may face additional barriers to “being heard and valued virtually” when remote working.

Writing in the New York Times, Alisha Haridasani Gupta explains: “Remote meetings are starting to crystallise how much harder it is for women to be heard in group settings”.

The office, or more importantly, in-person meetings, give us a greater chance at leveraging the rhythms of conversations, making eye contact and signalling that we have something to say.

Over time, feeling unheard can erode motivation and further disenfranchise women, minorities, younger staff and introverts.

3. Offices inspire us to be creative

As Tracy Brower writes in Forbes: “We can be creative anywhere, but being together physically is so much more effective for stimulating thinking”. There’s a reason we decide to ‘get everyone in a room’ when we’re struggling to make heads or tails of a situation.

If we were to ‘get everyone on a conference call’, our conversations are likely to be stunted by digital lags, sound glitches and the uncomfortable obligation of watching ourselves speak.

Though that’s not to say creativity happens exclusively in groups – the likes of Hemingway and Picasso praised the creative powers of solitude – but for full impact, businesses need to provide both environments.

In a study, Dr Paul Paulus, professor of psychology from the University of Texas, found that the most effective way to work was to give employees alone time, followed by group time, which “still has a huge role in the incubation process, of processing [and] re-working creative ideas”.

4. Offices make us more innovative

The office is full of stimuli. We are constantly bumping into new ideas – often by accident. These unplanned encounters don’t happen when we work from home. We have to try much harder to seek them out – and even then, we’re not entirely sure what we’re looking for.

As Amanda Lim, Head of Flexible Office Solutions explains: “When all you have to think about is the work in front of you, you’re less likely to experiment with new ideas – purely because you lack the inspiration to do so.

“But in the office, overhearing an energetic brainstorm about a project – or even a challenging conversation about a failure – is going to nudge your brain down a new track. That’s the very first step towards innovation”.

5. Offices create and maintain company culture

Rob Falzon, Vice Chair of Prudential and the architect of Prudential’s Future of Work initiative says: “The longer we remain fully remote, the more difficult it is going to be to mitigate a rate of decay in culture...That should be keeping leaders up at night".

Company culture is a powerful driving force that binds, attracts and retains teams. A survey by Glassdoor found that 56% of employees deem good company culture to be more important than their salaries. But when employees work remotely, creating a company culture that extends beyond the office can be a challenge.

Trust is built through closeness, and when “physical distance can turn into psychological distance”, remote-only employees are quick to feel out of the loop.

In fact, a study which surveyed 1,153 on-site and remote employees found that 41% of remote employees believed their colleagues say bad things about them behind their backs, and 64% of remote employees felt colleagues made changes to projects without warning them.

The risk of feeling side-lined is huge. Over time, you could witness the “depreciation of social capital that can result when people don’t have access to the power of place”.

6. Offices can boost our accountability and productivity levels

As Dana Brownlee writes in Forbes: “For those amazing, high work ethic, ridiculously responsible employees, they will find a way to be successful wherever they work and accountability won’t be an issue”. But some of us need the structure of an office environment to thrive. Here’s why.

The Four Tendencies quiz, designed by Gretchen Rubin, identifies the ways in which people are motivated, listing four categories: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels. Obligers struggle to motivate themselves – their productivity depends on meeting outer expectations set by others.

So, if your WFH productivity has started to wane, it might be because you’re motivated by other people in this ‘Obliger’ way. An office environment full of colleagues will be much more inspiring for you than an empty kitchen.