Right now, at least in the USA with cases spiking, it’s hard for many to envision a full-on return to the office for “knowledge worker” (do those really exist? HA!) roles — and rightfully so.
As a result, what we’ve been doing for much of the past four months is writing articles about different safety precautions, ideas about work-from-home productivity, and this much-balleyhooed “hybrid model.”
If I had to generally summarize where we stand right now (and it varies by job role and industry), these are the intersection points:
- Execs: They write big checks for these office spaces and it’s not always easy to get out of these leases. They might be chasing a full-on remote-work context, thus potentially cratering the commercial real estate market in some global cities, but more than likely they’re looking at safety options and being told by lieutenants and middle managers that “the teams need to be together.”
- Middle managers: They are OK doing their eight hours of Zoom and Skype calls per day, but they can’t do anything in terms of coaching, mentoring, guiding, developing — assuming they ever did. They are doubling down on “making the trains run” as opposed to anything about appeasing the fears and concerns of people re: layoffs, future plans, and more. (Well, most that I’ve seen are.)
- Regular employees: Just want to know what the future holds, if there will be a job for them, and more.
- Most workers on Earth: Cannot work from home anyway because they are in retail, service, or do something physical like lay pipes or work in oil/shale fields.
- The core intersection argument for those who can work from home: There is a power to spontaneous interaction, which offices provide, and there is a power to having friends physically present at work and being able to ask them “Hey, is that chicken?” (You knew it was chicken but you needed something to say to enter the conversation, Rachel.) So that’s in the ledger for “let’s all work together in an office.” But on the other side, you have reams of research about remote productivity (good), you have less of a commute (good), you see your dog/child more (good/bad), you like wearing sweatpants all day (good/bad), and you’re starting to get used to it minus “Zoom Fatigue.” Also, you don’t want to go back to a petri dish office and get really sick, and in the USA it feels like we’re managing everything super poorly, so you might.
But we must seek productivity!
Well, that’s only half true. The goal of work is actually control of other people and processes, but that doesn’t sound as good to admit, so we don’t. Part of the reason that work-from-home transitions were more successful than people imagined is because there are a lot of opportunities for one group to control another group, and people in white-collar knowledge jobs tend to love that, even if they don’t admit they love it and cloud everything in discussions about “innovation” and “collaboration.”
But I want to see my work friends and “work wife” again!
PS how creepy is the term “work wife?” I worked for a SVP of Finance once who told me at a trade show, “The key to life is to find a wife that serves the cock and a work wife that serves the calendar.” Nice. That dude got promoted about six times every 2.5 years at this company. If you ever want to understand why certain “woke” work initiatives seem to falter, it’s because guys who say things like that have power in most companies.
OK, so if you want to see people again (noble!), the best idea is this “hybrid model.” Here’s a good article from Harvard Business Review about “the ideal worker fallacy,” which is an academic-sounding way of saying “Women will feel the brunt of this pandemic more work-wise because it is expected they will do more around child care and thus cannot be jumping on Zooms all the time to discuss KPIs.”
Down near the bottom of that article, you have this:
What many knowledge workers need is spurts of unstructured interaction, followed by hours of quiet time to execute— time that’s often more productive done away from the office. Finding the optimal combination of telework and on-site work will vary from company to company, job to job, and person to person.
Concur. That’s the hybrid model to an extent: keep people safe and distant, but also bring them together for pockets of interaction and “brainstorming,” insofar as that even works.
What a hybrid model could look like
Every Friday on Zoom, do a fun little lottery deal where people draw numbers or letters … and then those letters are tied to the days you come in next week. “Oh, Randy got a ‘B’ as well! Haven’t seen you in a bit! Excited for Tuesday!” This gives people a mix of at-home and in-office, and the teams and people coming together might be random enough that spurts of innovation could happen cross-silo.
Now, some managers might hate this approach because they would want their entire team physically present on one day. I get it. And, sadly, one of the worst pieces of research that keeps circulating during COVID is that in-office workers get promoted significantly more. The notion of “seat time” is a relic, but it has never actually died.
But I would do 1/2/3 or A/B/C teams in terms of rotating people back in, allowing for some distance and some random connections to be formed and experiences to be shared. Everyone else, relative to their job, can be remote for a minute. While you’re doing this, try to cap Zoom calls at 3, max 4, per day. People do burn out on that stuff.
As much as I’ve bashed WeWork against the rocks on social media for years now, I admittedly do use it myself sometimes these days — and it’s a good option for execs who don’t want to buy a big building or floors of a building downtown. Go send your people there and they can interact but also distance. It makes some sense and it solves some “hybrid model” issues at a much lower cost, which is likely important to you.
Those are just a few ideas and some of the research things we’ve seen and discussions we’ve been having (which are admittedly getting repetitive) in the last four-five months. What else you got on the hybrid model?
Couple of other COVID pops from me, FYI:
- Will this be a mental health reckoning?
- Will it make the four-day work week more likely?
- Whoa, looks like execs are still getting paid.
- KPI Kevin wants to see you fight for resources.
- Will COVID shift friendship? (No.)
Holler at me about whatever COVID and hybrid model-related.
