There is a lot of debate and discussion around the evolving nature of the office. On one side, we have many of the financial services firms planting the flag on the return to office full-time, with one CEO stating that they would “prefer six days a week, but five will have to do.” On the other side of the discussion is every other company, and the debate ranges from a default of fully remote to a new default: the office with some flexibility.
The first step in the new default is the Company requiring employees to be in the office on some designated days per week, usually three. Many of the CEOs we advise are calling these ‘Density Days,’ where the office has human density and operates not as another place to get on video calls, but as a place for in-person interaction.
The prevailing argument made by those executives who want to stay home is: why change now when we have spent more than two years doing it through the Pandemic? The pushback is that the pivot to virtual relied on trust and ways of working established in the real world, and it was something that everyone (who was not a frontline worker) was doing. In that sense, it was pure. We have now moved to the messy hybrid work environment where some people are home and others are at the office which is leading to lower engagement and higher overall levels of grumpiness.
The Pandemic isolated the world and significantly lowered the amount of human interaction. Humans by nature need social stimulation and in-person interactions. We wonder why we are continuing to observe the most bizarre and frightening behavior from people on the sidewalk, in airplanes, subways and on the roads. People have lost much of their in-person, ‘human game,’ and we are seeing the deleterious side effects of a low stimulation, isolated world. This is also the case in a more ameliorated form with our office co-workers and the teams we work with or lead. The niceties of a high stimulation, high trust environment have been replaced with a general lack of social norms and the associated decorum that accompanies it. This is amplified by a virtual world where people can hide behind their screens and say and do things few would do in person.
Where are we headed now? Most CEOs would suggest that we are going back to the office, and when they can pull it off – back full-time. History suggests that when people are forced to change by some event, three years after that event, we are generally doing 99% of what we did pre-event. We are in Year One of the post-COVID era. So, what will the role of the office be in 2026? A key message to anyone who is digging into a default: virtual world is – if your job can be done virtually, then it can be done somewhere else in the world for a lot less money.
The virtual-first world does have many limitations:
- The virtual world – especially the messy hybrid world – requires companies to have workarounds to get things done. As one technology company founder told me, “We have developed 100,000 processes to enable a default: personal convenience, and now we are going back to a default: office and getting rid of those processes.” The hybrid world has significantly increased ‘the cost of coordination’ and created higher levels of friction.
- Additionally, for many leaders the virtual world has created an activity-based version of work rather than people being focused on outcome-driven work. People feel like they are working extremely hard and they are exhausted, yet they are well off their plans!
- One of the most challenging limitations is the inability to ‘edit.’ An important element of being together is allowing the creative juices to flow. When you are in person working through a set of ideas and editing those ideas down to the best one together, it can be magic as people read the room and build on others’ comments. The process can be painful, but it allows for participation and the eventual output of the best idea. In the virtual world, you can still have lots of good ideas but the process of editing is removed and replaced with whoever is running with the idea.
- Above all, the greatest failing of the virtual world is the human dynamic. If you lead any company (or anything for that matter), ‘the only business you are in is the people business’ and a lot of this has been lost through the Pandemic. This is especially true for early career employees who are in need of apprenticeship and mentorship in order to accelerate their growth, including how to effectively interact and work on teams. The last two years, no matter how enjoyable for some, have stunted the executive development of others, and it will take years to recover.
The in-person aspect of the office allows for people to easily engage and work through content together. It allows for incidental contact, and the ability to easily share context and update someone in real time. It creates opportunities for feedback in the moment, helping someone understand the situation more fully and receive advice on how to be even better next time. Being in person allows teams to spend time together and build real relationships that can eventually turn into trust, which is the grease that removes tension from the system because people are able to assume good intent in a different way.
There is no substitute that is even close to having the office function in an intentional, in-person way at least a few days a week to amplify all of the good things and allow people flex days to work outside the office and focus on their content. This can lead to a high performing, high engagement and high satisfaction environment for everyone rather than individuals in each corner digging in for where the default setting is: work from home or the office.
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