The promise of being back in the office
Working from home really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
OK, at least it’s work. And during a crisis like this that’s a lot more than some people have got.
So no complaints there. I am grateful. Absurdly so. Lockdown has so far been an extremely low-key disaster experience.
Even so, there is always room for wanting more.
And mine is that I hope we can get back to our offices soon. I want to work with real people again, not sit alone in my father’s basement.
It is incredible that such a wish suddenly sounds so old fashioned.
Working together in one physical space has significant advantages over working from home. But those advantages are not necessarily efficiency and profit.
So much of our communication is through body language.
It’s not what we say but how we’re standing when we say it. Or where our eyes are looking, what our hands are doing.
A patchy video conference does not pick this up. They are flat because of it.
Then there is the frustration element as you talk over your colleague or are over talked by them.
It means communication is limited to only what is absolutely essential.
Goodbye 90 per cent of the jokes, the innuendo, the personality that makes a workplace feel like a team.
It will be unfortunate if working from home becomes a bigger part of our future.
There is no doubt it will save us all time and money. You won’t have to buy office clothes. You won’t have to commute. You’ll save a fortune on coffee.
But my fear is it will compartmentalise us even further than we are. Our temporary bubbles will become entrenched. Our world will shrink to fit inside it. We’ll become smaller. The future is impossible to predict. The outcome of this experience could be the opposite.
We could embrace physical contact with a new enthusiasm once a vaccine is available. We really could.
Fear of catching the virus is heavily influencing our decisions about the future right now.
That’s how it should be. We need that sort of thinking to get us through. But it’s not the sort of thinking we should let hang on to for one moment longer than necessary.