Office, What Office? How Our Concept Of Work Is Changing

Most of us have become well-versed in the ways of new work with Zoom routines in our neat home offices. While we are far from post-pandemic times, we are gradually stepping back into office spaces and the question is not only how much has the office changed but how much have we changed?

In August, only 19% of organizations planned to have their workforce operating fully in person this fall; most are taking an approach that combines in-person, remote and hybrid work. On the individual level, some people desperately want to return to the office, some enjoy the flexibility of their home office and some enjoy a mix of both. Some feel inspired working with others and being immersed in a team, while others loathe the commute and feel overwhelmed with distractions at the office.

Here are the important factors changing the way we work:

Supervision And Productivity

In its worst sense, the home office can become a sort of panopticon with supervision enforced on all sides. In the office, supervision was mostly limited to whether the set tasks were completed, combined with physical supervision in the shared space. Remove the worker from the office and there is no way to peep into the home and see how efficiently and productively the work is being done. Or is there?

In our digital world, we are leaving non-physical traces everywhere and those can be tracked — our phone activity log, our social media patterns, our desktop times. While there may be harmless ways of tracking activity, such as a required log-in to the server at home after touchpad/mouse inactivity, other companies have started actually tracking activity across home office desktops, causing controversy. Now, the question becomes: How much do we want to share our ways of work and, by extension, our ways of life with our employers?

Terms like supervision and discipline are not merely threats from dystopian corporate fiction, they are present in contemporary society. In his influential work Discipline and Punish, French theorist Michel Foucault digs deep into the mechanisms that shape our modern society and turn us into docile bodies, cogs in a machine. They can be societal or self-enforced.

It is with self-enforcement that notions of toxic productivity come into play as individuals constantly compare their productivity to a highly constructed, artificial and unattainable productivity as presented on social media platforms. What exactly is toxic productivity? According to Dr. Julie Smith, toxic productivity is “this obsession with radical self-improvement above all else — and the result is that no matter how productive you are, you’re always left with that guilty feeling of not having done more.”

On the other hand, when it comes to working remotely, the Economist reported (paywall) that remote workers are working longer hours but productivity has declined. Why? Because the number of dedicated "focus hours" declined, eaten up by numerous, often endless meetings and collaboration calls.

Shared Workspaces

The complexities of new ways of living and working, blurred boundaries, digital overload, video call fatigue and the pressures of productivity may play into the discussion about the future of work. Going back to the office may not fix issues — but neither will staying home.

In a recent article for the New Yorker, Cal Newport and Chris Herd discuss whether the office as a space has become obsolete. Although there are predictions that by the time things go back to some sort of normality, a lot of office spaces will have disappeared or a lot of people will have continued to flee the city, we also need to consider the positive aspects of shared workspaces: “Knowledge work requires collaboration and access to information, both of which are conveniently served when individuals are physically near shared conference rooms and filing cabinets,” they write.

This could mean having a remote workforce that still gathers from time to time for in-person brainstorming and collaboration or giving people the flexibility to spend some days in the office or some at home. This, in turn, leads us to the third major theme: the disappearance of corporate culture.

Corporate Culture

As employees are physically removed from each other, bond less and have fewer opportunities for informal communication, the challenge of disappearing company culture is huge. Whether it can be adequately overcome by more advanced communication platforms that include virtual reality and augmented reality is yet unclear. As humans, we are inextricably connected to chemistry — when we instantly like or dislike someone, when we enter a room full of people and grasp the lingering mood/emotion in a millisecond, when our palms start sweating if we are in awe of someone or get goosebumps when a colleague shares a story over a cup of coffee. Embodying company values and culture is increasingly difficult for leaders who are on a video call and equally difficult for employees who may really miss the “pat on the back.” As our brains undoubtedly rewire to adapt to different stimuli and different ways of processing information and emotion, the quality of communication in meetings and one-on-ones and the overall emotional intelligence of both leaders and employees becomes crucial if companies are going to survive and thrive.

As a career and leadership development coach, I see time and again that shared values and solid corporate culture are the bedrock of any organization’s success and its working environment — whether it be remote, in person or hybrid. It is essential to create transparency and foster a sense of belonging where employees feel not only heard and respected, but also invited to contribute and valued for that. Companies that are clear about their values and their “why” can attract, develop and retain top talent. How the companies of the future will be able to instill the same sense of belonging and improved well-being for their employees remains to be seen.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR AND PUBLISHED BY FORBES COACHES COUNCIL IN DECEMBER 2021