What's next for the office?
Last week I saw a quote from the CEO of Unilever - '5 days in the office seems so old fashioned now’.
It stayed with me, as important ideas often do. I started thinking about how quickly that sense of obsolescence has manifested. But then I started thinking about all the conversations I’ve had over the years, with colleagues, with clients and with myself! And I thought - no - 5 days in the office doesn’t’ seem old fashioned NOW - it always has!
Ever since my days in middle management corporate roles I found that the 9 to 5 really didn’t suit me. I was more than willing to come in at 5 am some days, stay til 10 pm on others but what I wanted was a credit debit system. One where if I felt like i’d run out of steam one Tuesday afternoon at 2 then I could chip off and walk the long way home through Hyde Park. The rebellious child within me took it upon myself to do this anyway at times. But in terms of the perception I created it always seemed as though those absences were noticed far more than the all nighters and the 3:30 am starts to make sure I got to Asda or Tesco head office on time for 9 am meetings.
My commitment was questioned in every annual review, as I imagine was the commitment of anyone who wasn’t the first to arrive or the last one to leave every day. Payroll is always one of the biggest sing-offs of the month - why not try and get more bang for your buck right
The sad thing about all of this is I did live and breathe my job. I loved it! I just didn’t love sitting at a desk all day.
But we digress.
Or maybe we don’t. This story is indicative of most office based corporate cultures - especially the blue chip ones. And I’m sorry to say, the culture of long office hours is still more than present, if not more so in the startups I’ve worked in. Especially as, in that setting, it’s even more scope for your employees to feel ‘all in’. After all, in many cases, they’ve taken a big risk to come and work for you at all.
It’s why, in most businesses, even if 5 days a week might have seemed vaguely old fashioned to some, it was never going to be overcome until it became truly, unavoidably necessary. There were obstacles. A fear of setting precedents and losing control. A distinct lack of trust that anyone who wanted to be anything other than chained to their desk was actually finding ways to be more committed not less!
As well as obstacles there were, and still are, many tangible benefits to being in the physical presence of your team. In real terms the reluctance to move away from a full office based culture stems from some pretty sound rationale.
Communication is just easier when you’re in the same room as someone. And when you’re at the start of your business journey it’s easier to build a culture when you’re able to create a vibe, a sense of ‘how we do things round here’.
And let’s never, ever be tempted to downplay the fundamental importance of the informality that exists in day to day office banter and low level chat. That becomes the air we breathe; it knits a cultural cloth that binds us all together.
But that rationale only looks at one side of the story. People really do crave a better work life blend (there is no balance in my opinion - people don’t want it!). They want the freedom and independence to decide what form that takes for them.
I recently ran a series of team coaching sessions for a client who wanted to signal a return to business (growth) as usual. The brief was to guide the team through some reflective thinking that would help them shrug off the turmoil of 2020 and think about how they could use what they’d learned, and what they’d missed, to really ‘go for it’ in 2021.
During these sessions, as well as picking up on a huge appetite to achieve again, I also observed an almost overwhelming desire to recoup some of the things that have been lost from a move to online working.
The team miss their culture, the learning that comes from being sat alongside their peers, they miss the group celebration and commiseration at the little, but hugely important in the moment things - the things you’d never think to book a zoom call to chat about. They miss the social fabric that comes with being a part of something physical, something that you can touch, feel, hear and reach out to.
So if 5 days in the office feels old fashioned but there are some pretty solid benefits to being in the office then what is the solution ongoing?
The reality is, the best fusion of home and office working is going to be completely unique per business. 2-3 days in the office seems to be the general consensus for the businesses I’m speaking to day to day. In most cases, the detail of that has yet to be ironed out.
For my part, there are a number of things you need to consider before you abandon 5 days a week completely:
Younger members of the team
They say you don’t learn to drive until you’ve passed your test. For me, work is pretty similar. The real learning starts when you sit down at your desk to get on with the job. The younger, less experienced members of your team often learn by observing, being informally mentored and through asking silly questions of a friendly longer standing member of the team.
For a time, in my days as an analyst I was the go-to person for anything excel. I’d never done a day’s training in my life, I just asked and asked and asked until I worked out how to make it do everything I wanted it to. I’d never ever have booked a Zoom call for most of those things.
How do you make sure the younger members of your team aren’t getting left behind?
Relationships
Remember the one about 9% of commutation being in ‘what’ you say and the rest being in non verbal cues? Let’s assume we’re getting about 50% of those non verbal cues during the short time we speak to someone on Zoom. We haven’t seen how that person has walked into the room. We haven’t heard how they said they were feeling at the start of the day. We haven’t picked up how loud or quiet they are at their desk.
We know so much less about that person than we would if we were in their presence. In terms of building relationships this is catastrophic. We just can’t get to know people if we can only ever see such a tiny amount of how they are.
How can you encourage your team to focus on relationships in the office and ‘desk’ work (if it exists) when they are at home?
Preventing work creep
Remember all of those lockdown resolutions you made? The ones about doing Joe Wickes every morning or learning french? Yeah, me too!
I’ve literally lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had recently with people who have found themselves opening their laptops at 7am and closing them again at 10 pm. They’re delighted by how much they’re getting through but worried about where all this ‘extra’ work has come from.
I’m sorry to say that the extra work has come from the extra time. The more time we have, the more things we find to fill it. And there’s nowhere to hide from that work at the moment, or no good reason not to do it, so we keep on ticking those boxes. This is a shortcut to burnout if left unchecked and it’s something you need to support your staff to manage. A virtual commute - such as a walk at the beginning and end of each day, or a ritual such as writing down three goals for the next day to close off the day will help with this.
Do you need to give your team permission to switch off?
Socials
Can we all agree that Zoom socials are the devil’s own work now please? Yeah it was fun to begin with but a year on, they’ve definitely lost their charm.
Prioritise in person socials as much and as soon as humanly possible. It’s been unanimously fed back to me that this is a real gap for people, especially new starters.
Can you create opportunities for low level social interaction during the day? How about some Zoom working sessions for people to feel as though they are working alongside each other?
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As always, thanks so much for reading!
Til next time.
Rebecca
