Once the corona virus is eradicated, which will happen within less than a year from now, people will return to work at their offices, perhaps working from home one day a week at the most.
Working from home allows less control of management over employees, or perhaps less perception of control. The need of management to perceive that they are in control will be a major factors in driving people back to work.
Creative and informal dialogue cannot thrive when people are working from home. With the informal chit chat and face to face interaction, innovation is starved of its oxygen and withers. That too will drive people back to work from the office.
Interpersonal interaction within homes has taken a huge blow as people under the same roof are under each other’s’ skin, inflicting huge emotional damage on the quality of life. Friendships, marriages, parents, whatever: the pressure cooker in which we have all been boiling during 2020 will burst open at the first opportunity as humanity seeks to flee from the cage we all have been sharing.
The market place invests huge bucks which will get us back at work-with ads for cars and the need to dress fashionably being the major factors which will pry people out of their home.
Levi Eshkol, one of Israel’s wiser prime ministers, warned of making a tragedy into an ideology. Working from home is ok from time to time. But it is an emotional tragedy. And on the very day when our arms are aching from the corona vaccine, we’ll all be scurrying back at work.
I think you’re right.
A few years ago I would have disagreed – but today I totally agree. WFH is nice and has some benefits – both personally and professionally. BUT – the office with its meta-converations and interactions is critical.
Lol…as always…lol lol
Allon,
What are your thoughts on the ‘financial counter-balance’ to the discussion regarding the money that will be saved on office space, furniture, taxes, windshield-time saved on commuting, wardrobe, etc.?
Maybe a swing back, but not all the way.
Financial counter balance will make it a bit slower perhaps. But wfh is a passing fad
Interesting, Allon. Much I agree with. But many who WFH are actually more productive. I am one of those. I do not look forward to a return to the office.
Perhaps I have been shut down for too long.
At first it was ok….but not seeing other people face 2 face makes my work more taxing.
Alon
I think there are some people who can’t wait to get back to the office.
There are others who have been pushing for WFH for a while and will now not come back to the office on a full time basis.
I think the biggest challenge will be if it ends up being a hybrid where say 50% are in office and the rest working from home.
In this case meetings will be challenging. IMHO it works well if everyone is on the phone or no one is on the phone. If some are gathered in a room the ones on the phone will get drowned out unless the meeting is very well managed / moderated.
Agree about all or none in meetings.
Good to hear from you!
I largely agree with all of this except for the vaccine timeline. I suspect that’s overly optimistic.
Keep in mind that all 3 vaccines approaching FDA approval are 2-dose vaccines. that means for the world’s population we will need roughly 16,000,000,000 doses. The entire world’s vaccine manufacturing capacity doesn’t even come close to being able to turn that out in a year’s time. Then there’s distribution. & the Pfizer vaccine (which NPR seemed to report today some questions about the data for) has to be kept at -94º F. There’s nowhere near the necessary refrigeration capacity for that anywhere in the world, nor is there the manufacturing capability to turn out enough in any sort of reasonable timeline. So It looks to me as if making & distributing enough vaccine to begin to get this under control could easily take a lot longer than a year.
& of course, G-d forbid, during that time it’s always possible that the virus could mutate & leave us having to start all over again from scratch.
I am not at all a social person. I generally like being on my own, enjoy working by myself and I am not that much of a “team player”. But as soon as McDonald’s opened, I rushed in just to sit and eat my sandwich next to other “live” humans. That should tell something 😉
I think we are heading to a hybrid model. Not one that creates two classes, one of remote and another of on-site workers, but one in which (almost) everybody is part-time remote and part-time on-site. That may allow getting the best from both worlds, if well managed.
The big IF.
I’m Hebrew there is a saying…if my grandmother had wheels, I would not need a car