For some craving the office, it’s back to ‘isolation bubble’
SAN FRANCISCO — Before the pandemic, Roya Joseph’s days at the office were defined by interaction. She looked forward to casual conversations with co-workers, mentorship sessions with managers and periodic, freewheeling chats — known as “teatime” — in the office kitchen.
All that was swept away when Joseph, a water engineer for Black & Veatch, an engineering firm, was sent home from her Walnut Creek, California, office along with her colleagues as the coronavirus began spreading through the country last year.
She jumped at the opportunity to return when her office reopened in June.
But two weeks ago, the rug was pulled out from under her again. Black & Veatch shut its offices as virus cases rose nationwide, driven by the contagious delta variant.
“It’s depressing,” Joseph, 32, said. “I feel like we’re being pushed back to that isolation bubble.”
While workers who want to stay at home forever have been especially vocal about their demands, a silent majority of Americans do want to get back to the office, at least for a few days a week.
But as the latest coronavirus surge has led employers to delay return-to-office plans, that larger group is growing increasingly glum.
In a national survey of more than 950 workers, in mid-august by Morning Consult on behalf of The New York Times, 31% said they would prefer to work from home full time. By comparison, 45% said they wanted to be in a workplace or an office full time. The remaining 24% said they wanted to split time between work and home.
Morning Consult surveyed workers from a variety of industries.
Some have thrived in their new remote work lives. The degree to which employees have embraced permanent remote or hybrid work models has been “stunning” to company executives, said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied remote work for decades.
But for others, Neeley said, it has removed needed barriers between work and home life, increased a sense of isolation and led to burnout.
David Pantera, an incoming assistant product marketing manager at Google, said the company had decided to turn the September orientation for him and other new hires into a virtual event because of rising COVID-19 cases.
Google’s process, “Noogler orientation,” is a social, community-building event meant to acquaint employees with one another and acclimate them to the company’s culture.
Pantera, a 23-year-old recent college graduate, said he was eager to start his new job but worried about whether missing out on that in-person experience would hinder his career prospects.
“If we don’t get a really solid foundation at this company in our first six months, our first year, what foot does that leave us on for the rest of our time at the company?” said Pantera, who lives in San Francisco.