The lights are on but there's no one home - the plight of the modern office

Photo by LYCS Architecture on Unsplash

How often do you go to the office these days? It looks like many people have not fully returned to the old commuting routines and are still working from home at least one day a week. We have discovered that a lot of our work can be done just as well if not better from home and the traditional workplace set-up is increasingly being questioned. Many people have realised that they work more efficiently at home away from disturbances and irritation. Online meetings are short and to the point and no one misses the commuting. Some activities are of course best performed in person and the office reinforces a sense of belonging to a community. But if we have found better ways of working, we need to rethink the value of the office or indeed the university campus. What are the unique values of a common physical working environment and when do we have to be there?

An article on Vox, Why the return to the office isn’t working, describes how many organisations are trying to adapt. Some employers have embraced home working or at least a flexible attitude towards it whilst others are demanding on-site working even if they are struggling to justify it.

The reasons the return to the office isn’t working out are numerous. Bosses and employees have different understandings of what the office is for, and after more than two years of working remotely, everyone has developed their own varied expectations about how best to spend their time. As more and more knowledge workers return to the office, their experience at work — their ability to focus, their stress levels, their level of satisfaction at work — has deteriorated. That’s a liability for their employers, as the rates of job openings and quits are near record highs for professional and business services, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The most common argument for being in the office is the interaction with colleagues and opportunities for creative work and synergy. This can apply for some but many workers spend most of their time working individually and any collaboration can be done very well in video meetings, project tools, e-mail and instant messaging. The stock image of a team working creatively around a table with post-its all over the place simply does not correspond with what most people do in the office. The challenge for employers is to find convincing reasons to come to the office, activities that must be done in-person and with clear rewards. 

For many office workers, the current state of affairs just isn’t working out. So they’re doing what they can to make their experience of work better, whether that means renting coworking space or not showing up for arbitrary in-office days. They don’t necessarily hate the office. What they hate is not having a good reason to be there.

Many have happily returned to work, glad to get back in a routine and being able to meet colleagues, but have found that the office is often sparsely populated. As a result they stay at home more often (if possible) and a vicious circle is created, at least from the office perspective. The inspiration and creativity doesn't happen if half the staff are missing. 

“If I go into the office and there are people but none of them are on my team, I don’t gain anything besides a commute,” Mathew, who works at a large payroll company in New Jersey, said. “Instead of sitting at my own desk, I’m sitting at a desk in Roseland.”

The situation is similar at some university campuses. A recent article in the Norwegian higher education news site Khrono describes the situation at one institution where the students had returned to campus but the teachers prefer to work from home (article in Norwegian: Tomme kontorlandskap i nybygg: Bekymret for at mange holder seg aktivt borte). A new building featuring activity-based working spaces is under-used and teachers only come in to do the most essential activities. This defeats one of the main attractions of the campus: the mix of faculty and students and the academic ethos. Even in the buildings where teachers have individual offices the corridors are often very quiet. So maybe it isn't simply a matter of teachers' aversion to open office space. 

Some students are also staying at home and complaining if they have to travel to campus for a lecture that could have been recorded or conducted online. For them the convenience of online delivery outweighs the advantages of social contacts and sense of community. There are also students, and even staff, whose homes are simply not pleasant working spaces and so the campus is essential for their studies. Universities also have today two very different student groups: young campus students (18-23 years old) who want the full traditional student experience with social activities, network building and a strong community spirit and older students who already have a family, job and social life where they live and are less interested in campus life. Universities are investing vast amounts of money on new campus buildings and facilities but are spending only a fraction of that on their digital campus. How does the digital campus (learning management system, student services etc) contribute to community building and a sense of belonging?  

I don't think we're going to abandon the office or campus but we do need to some creative thinking and question some deeply ingrained traditions. We need to make it clear what the advantages are and make the events there simply unmissable. Active learning on campus is more stimulating and creative and no matter what hybrid technology may be available you are always going to be a bit detached as an online participant. It's fine to demand on-site meetings as long as they live up to expectations and are not just routine information delivery. Forcing people to come to the office or having ad hoc rules simply creates resentment. Maybe 2-3 days a week on-site and make sure they are filled with activities that justify them. Plus a consistent and negotiated policy from employers so that the rules apply to all and are respected. The debate continues ...

Commuting to a zoom meeting - back to work but not quite

Photo by Jose Losada on Unsplash

After so many months of Zoom meetings (or Teams/Google Meet etc) we are now trying to grapple with the novelty of being back in the office. The trouble is that many of the old routines now seem rather inefficient, especially meetings. Of course it's good to see colleagues again and we have all missed the social interaction around physical meetings but I suspect many people will want very convincing reasons to come to a physical meeting in future. Online meetings are generally more efficient and you don't have all the transition time of going from place to place.

One colleague who helps students with special needs said that her level of service had increased while working from home because she could help more students, no matter where they were, and could schedule meetings more tightly than office appointments. It also levelled the playing field for online students and this is important to remember as we move back to campus. Classes and meetings held in Zoom give all participants the same conditions (all can be seen and heard and have access to the chat) whilst hybrid setups nearly always give an advantage to those who are on-site. If we're going to normalise hybrid teaching all students must feel fully included in the session.

However, video meetings can present a problem to all who work in an open plan office. Conditions are not ideal and to get privacy or sometimes even reliable bandwidth many people prefer to take such meetings from home to minimise the risk of disturbance as in this post in Inside Higher Ed, Zooming From the Office.

I knew something was different when I had to leave work early to get home in time for a Zoom meeting.
That happened last week a few times. I had 5:30 Zoom calls several nights in a row, and I live about a half hour from campus. So I left a little early in order to be able to be online in time to keep working into the evening.
Until 2020, that paragraph wouldn’t have made any sense. Yet, here we are.

Similarly absurd is commuting to the office to take part in a succession of video meetings. I used to do that most days before the pandemic but now I will think twice. 

Another feature of tha past year has been having to experience major life events by Zoom: special birthdays, graduations, new grandchildren, weddings, funerals. Another article in Inside Higher Ed, by Leah Blatt Glasser, Zooming Into Retirement, describes the poignant experience of watching the students in her last lesson before retirement disappear one after the other on her Zoom screen. Same for her farewell to her colleagues. Somehow the closing of video windows and finally being alone on the screen says a lot about today's society.

Retiring on Zoom has been one of the strangest experiences I’ve had in all my years at Mount Holyoke College. The rituals of on-campus toasts, collegial hugs, fond farewells, expressions of mutual gratitude, even love, were all postponed indefinitely. What I had at this critical moment of parting was my computer screen. It was all so unreal that even now, several months after that last class, I find it hard to grasp that I did, in fact, retire.

The pandemic has been an emergency situation and digital media at least kept us together and allowed contact that in former times would not have been possible except by letter. However, we have also learnt that online communication can increase accessibility, equity and flexibility and so when we organise physical events in future we need to consider who is excluded and use digital media to widen access.  

Let's stop generation generalisation

"Tube/London Underground ”Mind the Gap”." (CC BY-SA 2.0) by drivethrucafe

More than ever we seem to love making sweeping and often dangerous generalisations about sections of the population. Despite a complete lack of scientific evidence, we are continually drawn to narratives that assume that everyone born between certain dates, in a certain geographical area or even the entire population of the world not born in our particular country all share common personality traits. I've written about this many times but I was particularly fond of a heart-felt appeal against simplified generalisations in an article in Forbes Austria by Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree, The made-up nonsense about generations at work.

Concepts such as Generation X/Y/Z or Millennials are often used to justify educational and corporate strategies, workplace design and even government policy on the grounds that these groups have a completely different mindset to older generations. This entire generation, according to the narratives, want flexibility, freedom, adventure, fun and personal development and don't want to be trapped into old-fashioned ideas like job security. They are said to be constantly changing jobs and always looking for new challenges. Minaar and de Morree decided to do some research into this and came up with results that largely bust the myths. So-called millennials actually don't change jobs any more today than 20 years ago (around 3%) and when asked about what qualities were most valued in any workplace the answers from all generations were largely the same: purpose, meaning, freedom, autonomy, fun, and personal development.

I suspect that the reason many young people do change jobs is due to the abundance of short-term contracts and project jobs that are often the only form of employment available. Given the choice most people have very similar ambitions and job security is probably top of the list for us all. Without that basic security, knowing that you'll still have the job next month and even next year, is essential to foster the sense of community and mutual trust that in turn leads to creativity and efficiency in an organisation. Insecurity and competition on the other hand leads often to fear and mistrust.

The article ends with a plea to look beyond these convenient and often empty generalisations and realise that the generation gap is not as wide as we would like to think. This applies as much to the workplace as it does in education.

It’s time to stop believing all this made-up nonsense of different generational needs and the blaming cultures that result from it. We better start figure out our similarities and our expectations when it comes to creating highly inspiring workplaces. It’s time to start asking employees what they want in the workplace, regardless of their age and regardless of the generation they belong to. Only then we can make a radical shift in the way we organize work. Only then we can create more human, more engaging and more thriving organizations.