Towards the latter stages of the 2010s, the argument for more flexible working patterns was beginning to hot up. Various organisations were permitting their employees to work from home (WFH) at least one day of the week and the traditional 5-day-a-week, 9-5 office-based job appeared to be under threat. Little could anyone have known just how under threat it was.

 

With the pandemic forcing lengthy, nationwide office closures, businesses that had previously only flirted with the concept of WFH were suddenly pressed to implement it at scale. Such was the initial popularity of WFH among the workforce, many businesses have persisted with the practice to this day. Some have even closed their offices permanently.

As seems to be part of the course in these polarised times, the debate around office working v WFH quickly became bad-tempered, but it doesn’t need to be. Although WFH clearly has its benefits and suits some workers more than others, in this piece I discuss the merits of being in the office in a way that tactfully demonstrates that it too still has a place in the modern working world.

It’s More Effective for Sharing and Entrenching Culture

A business’ culture is the bedrock upon which all types of success can be built from enhanced productivity and creativity to revenue growth and employee retention. Crucially, organisational culture derives from real human interactions, however fleeting. A word of encouragement by the water cooler, an amiable chit-chat over a sandwich, even just a smile from a colleague – all contribute to a sense of camaraderie that is so essential to the nurture of a strong culture.

At a more professional level, opportunities for learning and development are easier to access when all employees are working from a shared space. And, as effective as video-conferencing has been to maintain lines of communication, it is no substitute for being sat in person with a team and collaborating on ideas, initiatives and projects.

By migrating to a permanent WFH arrangement, these moments can never be replicated to the same extent and the risk that organisational culture begins to erode becomes a stark reality.

 

A Quality Working Environment is Ensured

The ideal of WFH is often represented in images of people sat alone at IKEA-style home office arrangements, surrounded by table plants and neatly organised files, with gentle rays of light coming in through a partially opened window.

In reality, this image tends to be quite different. For employees with young children, children of school-age never more than eight weeks from a lengthy holiday, or any other dependents, the demands placed on them can be highly distracting. There’s also the fact that home should ideally be a place of relaxation and leisure. Bringing work into the home for hours and hours each week means it soon becomes an office too. You end up not so much working from home, more living at work.

It’s not just that offices are better equipped to facilitate quality work, there are laws that demand they are. Employers are obligated to provide clean workplaces with a reasonable working temperature, good ventilation, suitable lighting, the right amount of space and seating, and well-maintained equipment. At home, it is you who must provide all this.

However, it’s about more than just ergonomic chairs and air conditioning. Surrounded by colleagues, opportunities to have a piece of work quickly checked or a question answered so that productivity can remain optimal are ever-present.

 

It Supports a Healthy Work/Life Balance

Those that advocate for WFH do so very much on the basis that only by moving away from the office can a true work/life balance be achieved, and there can be no doubt that their argument carries weight. With the daily commute eliminated and a greater freedom to organise the pattern of your working day, WFH most certainly confers a degree of balance between professional and private life. But the argument isn’t quite as black and white as some of it’s most vocal proponents often tender.

A common concern among business leaders who decided to implement WFH on a more permanent basis was that, away from the gaze of line managers, employees would put in fewer hours each week. It turns out that the reverse may be true.

Studies have shown that employees will often compensate for the perceived luxury of WFH by putting in extra hours, with UK workers found to be increasing their working week by almost 25%. Good for productivity levels perhaps, but not so good for overall wellbeing. And, if wellbeing starts to drop, productivity is invariably the next to go.

Alternatively, operating from the office creates a clear delineation between work and home. The moment an employee logs off and heads for the exit, their labour for the day concludes. They can head home knowing that they are returning to an environment that the rigours of professional life cannot penetrate.

 

The Power of True Networking is Unleashed

For more junior level employees, being in the same environments as senior leaders is key to getting noticed. Of course, they can prove their value to the organisation by consistently turning around high quality work from home and contributing to virtual meetings, but it’s hard to make the argument that their visibility is enhanced when they’re somewhere else altogether.

It is through those ad hoc conversations and random moments where a senior leader sees a junior employee in action that ideas as to their potential within the company start to formulate.

Offices also act as contact points with people from outside the business. They provide a natural meeting ground to strengthen relationships with suppliers and clients and can be used as a place to enter into dialogue with new business prospects.

Yes, these are all interactions that can occur remotely, but few will argue that they can occur with the same degree of potency.

 

Better Health and Wellbeing

Touched upon earlier, there are arguments that can be made for how working in office environments can improve overall health and wellbeing. Among the more powerful of these is the boost to mental health that comes from human interaction.

Although we all place somewhere differently on the introvert/extrovert spectrum, the vast majority of us don’t just want a healthy dose of human interaction, we need it. Multiple studies have shown that those with more and stronger social ties actually live longer, regardless of factors such as lower socio-economic status, heavy smoking or drinking, lack of exercise, or obesity.

Certainly, technology has supplied us with new and versatile means of communicating but it comes with its own problems. It’s harder to pick up on those crucial non-verbal cues that help us navigate human relationships, and issues such as poor connectivity and system failures disrupt the flow of dialogue.

Newer problems are also emerging, such as the fatigue and stress that results from looking at ourselves for long periods during video calls. It makes sense. Imagine being in meetings in the office and the whole time there’s a mirror in front of you. It would be both distracting and disorientating, yet many experience this today in their everyday, professional WFH life.

Ultimately, we can never escape from the fact that we are social animals. The mere experience of being in the physical presence of those we know causes our brains to pump out oxytocin, the ‘feel-good’ chemical. And who doesn’t want to feel good?

 

We can still Access the Best of Both Worlds

Though this has been a piece on the multiple benefits of working from the office, the benefits of WFH are compelling enough that few business leaders are looking to abolish it altogether. Instead what we’re seeing, is a gradual evolution towards hybrid working and it’s an evolution that’s happening in some of the most pioneering companies.

For example, the short-form video hosting platform, TikTok, recently informed employees and interns that there will soon be an expectation for them to spend three working days a week in the office. But even here they are offering flexibility. Rather than being asked to work at the office they were assigned to pre-pandemic, employees will be invited to work at whichever TikTok office is most convenient for them to get to. The other two days – based on manager approval – can be spent WFH.

Similar arrangements have also been announced by the likes of Apple and Amazon and where the big players go, the smaller players tend to follow.

 

Final Thought

With some semblance of normality returning to the corporate world post-pandemic, the expectation for employees to have some presence in the office is also returning. There has undoubtedly been some resistance to this, so it is the responsibility of business leaders to ensure that the advantages of office-life are both communicated and demonstrated.

An iron-fist approach to mandating a return to the workplace is destined for failure, especially as so many businesses will happily offer talented workers more flexible arrangements.

Instead, talk to your people. If you listen to their concerns and convey yours with empathy and clarity, you might be surprised at their willingness to compromise. The benefits of office working are there to be capitalised on, it’s up to you as a leader to ensure they don’t remain hidden.