Returning to the office is not for you

Examples of people cursing their bosses for being asked to return back to the office are easy to find. The Reddit channel r/antiwork thrives on people sharing their examples of how they are being forced (or “forced”) back to the office. They denounce the company and announce that this then prompts them to start looking for another job — somewhere they can continue to work from home.

On the other side, we see an increasingly vocal camp of proponents—the LinkedIn crowd: managers expressing anger at people not wanting to return to the office. Adamant in their stance that the office is better for building teams than the working-from-home movement suggests. They defend that the drive to bring people back to the office doesn’t deserve the hate it’s been getting.

"Personally, I don’t think the “back-to-the-office” push deserves all the hate it has been receiving.

I tend to agree with the latter. Personally, I don’t think the “back-to-the-office” push deserves all the hate it has been receiving. The back and forth surely creates an interesting dynamic and some engaging articles. With some people express true feelings, but there is also ample grandstanding and posturing (on both sides). To me, it seems that everyone discussing the topic misses the big point: coming back to the office is not about you and it’s not for you (If you are now climbing in your pen to jot down a response: let me immediately give away that it’s also not for your boss or perhaps even your company).

It is not about efficiency…

Early in the pandemic people started saying how much more efficient they had become working from home. Sure, I too sometimes felt like it was easier to work through my list of tasks than it would have been at the office. There were fewer distractions, fewer people asking to go drink coffee, and fewer people just loitering at my desk causing distractions. The cumulative result was that more stuff got done. But that was because, at the time, my tasks were clear enough to be performed on my own or with a small group of people.

Unfortunately, people only seemed to be able to focus on the efficiency gains and it quickly became the only thing people talked about. It struck me that this was extremely reductionist; surely the only thing an office is good for isn’t efficiency? How about inspiration, conversation, and collaboration or, if you are inclined to talk in such language: innovation?

"People only seemed to be able to focus on the efficiency gains [of working from home].

Luckily, this was pointed out too: despite the productivity gains, Google urged people to come back to the office as it would spark innovation and collaboration. Inspiration, collaboration, or innovation, of course, is much harder to measure than productivity — or for that matter to quantify exactly what it means. I deeply believe that this is one of the reasons (if not the primary reason) that people so readily jumped on the efficiency train. (Was it not a few years before that, that the conversation was about how “productivity” was a left-over relic of the industrial revolution — a stance all too quickly forgotten?). Ease of measuring and the fact that common workers enjoyed not having to spend their time and hard-earned money on the time-consuming commute.

It’s undoubtedly true that some tasks are easier performed head-down punching out the to-do’s on your task list. But I, for one, experienced more difficulty trying to improve or solve a complex problem with multiple people. “You’re on mute,” “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you… no, sorry, go ahead.,” “Your connection dropped.” In my experience, these types of problems are best solved in a room together, at someone’s desk, or, my personal favorite, in front of a whiteboard. God forbid you are trying this while have of the team has their camera’s turned off — so that everyone’s unable to gauge the sentiment, or even to know when someone is on mute.

Economists have warned against productivity pitfalls. To me, it seems that efficiency is, and cannot be, the only metric supporting either working from home or from the office. Perhaps it's the easiest to understand and refer to but there are other elements and benefits to working from the office. Elements that far outweigh the perceived productivity gains.

"There are other elements [than productivity] and benefits to working from the office. Elements that far outweigh the perceived productivity gains.

Perhaps it is about a difference in objective…

Some managers are overly eager to get everyone back in the office. In part, due to what I described above: they oversee problems and are responsible for solving the issues across employees and teams. They are whiteboard lovers. Whereas the employees, on the other hand, are responsible for the execution, and writing of code. They are the ones who are distracted by the meetings and whiteboard sessions. But too eagerly sidestep the skill and effort required to line up different teams and competing objectives that the managers manage.

Unfortunately, some strong advocates of the back-to-office movement were real-estate investors with a deep need for refilling the empty buildings.

Micro motives and macro behaviors

A book that’s been a great personal inspiration is called Micromotives and Macrobehaviors. It was written by Nobel prize winner Thomas Schelling in 1978 but holds true to this day. The main thesis of the book is that people, in various scenarios, can express their personal (micro) motives which leads to outcomes at the group level (macro) that they would not subscribe to — or even altogether oppose.

At its core, the theory does not speak about whether or not the individual's underlying motivations are right or wrong. Schelling, in his book, merely observes that when people follow their own individual freedom to choose the outcome might not be something they would subscribe to.

Let’s give a famous example. Schelling came up with the checkerboard example of segregation; no outside factors are included. What the checkerboard model of segregation shows that if people show a very slight inclination to live in neighborhoods whose demographic resembles their own, given enough time this will lead to highly segregated neighborhoods. Something each individual, when pressed, might reject as a “good” thing.

"I agree, your individual freedoms are best preserved when you can choose to go or not go to the office.

Now, I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim that I am extending exactly what Schelling was saying but his theory is at the heart of my thoughts of why going back to the office isn’t for you. Perhaps it should be seen and accredited with being the inspiration.

Let’s be clear: yes, I agree, your individual freedoms are best preserved when you can choose to go or not go to the office.

My point is this…

In my view, the discussion misses the point completely. You aren’t going to the office for yourself. In effect, all you are doing when you are insisting on your own right to choose is that you are robbing other people of the opportunity to meet you. And I use “meet” here in a broad sense of the word. As in running into, talking to, overhearing, seeing, engaging, and interacting with. I’ve maintained this position since the early days of the pandemic. You might not want to go to the office… but can you guarantee that no one wants to interact with you?

"The discussion misses the point completely.

It might now also be clear why and how this is not about efficiency or bosses forcing you to come back to the office. It’s a chance for you to interact, and more importantly for others to interact with you. True, it does not have to be “the office,” it could’ve been a coffee place. But it isn’t. The office just happens to be a place with desks, a coffee machine, and an opportunity to meet with your colleagues.

"You are robbing other people of the opportunity to meet you.

It is the environment in which we can stand on a whiteboard. Where we can serendipitously run into someone. Where we can overhear a piece of information that’s quite critical to our jobs. Where others can see us breaking our heads over something that they might have already solved. A break from home. A place to make and meet friends. A place to learn and be taught etiquette and best practices. A place where contingent encounters are facilitated. Even if we don’t know to what end. I personally doubt many people will deny that’s where most inspiration and innovation come from (even if that’s rather hard to quantify or qualify).

Juniors are paying the price

While younger people are the most vocal in their freedom to stay at home trumpeting their rights to work flexibly and remotely, it is my belief that they are also the ones who’ll suffer from their own micro motives the most. While they are insisting on their right to choose, they are also the ones choosing to be left out.

For new joiners or junior people, it’s often not clear who in the company knows what, or what can expedite a request, or unblock a situation. Leading to stalled workers and a general drag on the workflow and delivery. The responsibility to “just do better education” within a company again misses the point.

Firstly, classrooms have as quickly as possible returned to real-life education as they saw the effects on mental health and problems with distance learning. But secondly, and more central to my argument, it’s what the collective ‘we’ don’t know:

• it’s what the company doesn't know to teach; and

• it’s what you don’t know to ask.

The first point is that many things are not explicitly taught but transferred nonetheless. Company culture isn’t three keywords reiterated loads of times — it’s your colleagues showing that they go out of their way to help someone who’s stuck or has a personal issue. That’s culture. It’s not so easily captured in an online course or PowerPoint. Other examples abound.

The second point is that it puts unreasonable expectations on junior employees. Rather than being seen as stuck on a problem they have to mention explicitly that it is so (making it a barrier to reach out because you have to ask for help… again…). But there is a real class of questions you don’t know to ask: how would you know to ask what the correct methodology used for a specific problem if you didn’t know the company had such a methodology — or even what a methodology approach is? Consider for yourself for a moment how hard it is to phrase a question you don’t know how to ask.

So yes, it’s not for you that you are being asked to come back. It is for your colleague who might be too daunted to talk, for the questions that we don’t know to ask, and for the information transferred outside of PowerPoints. It’s for all the little contingencies of office life, for the unscheduled interactions, for learning about your colleagues as people, for making friends, and for acknowledging that most of your time should be spent with people and not just behind a screen.

So do another person a favor, and come to the office every now and again.

In conclusion, the push for employees to return to the office has been met with mixed reactions, with some expressing frustration at being “forced” back and others advocating for the benefits of in-person work. However, it’s important to remember that the decision to return to the office is not just about individual preferences or efficiency, but also about the benefits of collaboration, innovation, and other intangible factors that can be difficult to measure. It’s also not necessarily about controlling employees or saving money on office space, but rather about finding the right balance between remote and in-person work that meets the needs of both the company and its employees. Ultimately, the decision to return to the office should be made thoughtfully and with consideration for all of these factors, rather than being driven by anger or grandstanding on either side.

This article was first published on Medium at https://medium.com/swlh/returning-to-the-office-is-not-for-you-e064858a059e