Lately, I’ve come across many posts on this topic, typically taking extreme stances either strongly advocating for office or home office work. This isn’t surprising, as on an individual level, our fundamental goal is to determine as quickly as possible what is true, what is good, and what is bad about a given situation. However, it might be more effective to examine this complex issue from multiple perspectives and avoid declaring that one method—be it home office, fully office-based work, or hybrid work—is inherently better than the others. Each requires a different individual mindset and organizational culture. The difficulties arise when we choose one of the three but fail to align our mindset and corporate culture with it. We try to solve the issue on the level of tools and systems, letting the deeper levels form unconsciously. We expect good performance by writing and implementing home office, meeting, and communication policies and installing online collaboration tools. These are necessary for success, but if we skip the previous step, cooperation, efficiency, and productivity will decline despite all efforts. Essentially, we are stuck if we expect the place of work to determine the mindset and culture rather than the other way around. We should first define how we want to work together and be successful, and then align the place of work to serve that purpose. Since most people don’t think this way about the issue, the fight between the office and home office persists.
This struggle has many aspects; here are a few highlighted points. One is the question of motivation. Individuals fall somewhere on a spectrum, with one endpoint being “I feel intrinsically motivated to achieve the most” and the other being “I just expect my job to pay me and pass the 8 hours.” If we succeed in hiring people who are on the first half of the spectrum or move existing employees in that direction, the place of work becomes less important. If our employees are on the second half, home office will reduce productivity. Greater control can decrease the productivity of intrinsically motivated people, while less control can decrease the productivity of the indifferent ones. There are three main solutions: moving people toward intrinsic motivation, increasing control, or accepting the drop in productivity.
Another important issue is connection. Strong arguments support home office, such as not being disturbed by others walking around, not having to listen to others’ conversations or having others listen to yours, not getting sicknesses, having an ideal scent and temperature, wearing comfortable clothes, and having a bathroom as clean as you like. We get these comfort factors in exchange for giving up connection. We are fundamentally social beings, and most people have a strong need for the proximity of others. There are exceptions, but even the most introverted person occasionally prefers looking at someone else’s shoes instead of their own. In a shared space, thousands of micro-connections occur, which are lost during home office. It’s naive to think these can be replaced by a quarterly team-building event. We must consider that a significant portion of people will feel lonely, likely suppress it, and just feel that something is not right, often blaming their job for it. Many recognize this issue and try to solve it by mandating a certain number of office days, which seems like a good solution because it gives real meaning to maintaining an office. However, if this decision isn’t preceded by a cultural shift, it leads to people working from home and coming to the office to connect and chat. This viewpoint becomes self-justifying: you can work at home, but not in the office. It’s not that I’m happy to be among people, so I connect with them, but rather they impose themselves on me and disturb my work. 🙂 I’m not saying everyone working from home is lonely, but a long-standing constant in people’s lives has been workplace connections, and many lack the awareness to replace this missing element from elsewhere. Those who do will thrive in home office; the others will either return to the office or become increasingly dissatisfied with their job without understanding why.
Let’s also consider the situation from the perspective of time. The first idea that comes to mind is to save the time spent commuting. The question is whether we can free up this time and genuinely serve either the individual’s free time or the company’s productivity. Most research shows that improving collaboration is among the main challenges for companies. Employees often don’t know with whom and how they should collaborate or who is responsible for a given task. If new ways of enhancing collaboration aren’t found in the home office model, the saved commuting time is spent solving communication problems. Another ineffective solution is flooding the system with information without a well-thought-out structure. Then, time is spent untangling and processing information from emails, Slack channels, and meetings. Many complain about the FOMO phenomenon, reading channels instead of working to avoid missing out on something. Many have said they don’t understand why their company wants to reduce home office; they work more than before, even attending meetings during evening grocery shopping. Perhaps that’s precisely why? I think the time spent commuting can be saved, but it requires a serious system behind it; it’s not enough to say don’t come to the office and you’ve gained 3 hours.
Let’s look at some concrete examples of working and non-working models. Fear-based models typically don’t work. We fear calling people back to the office because they might quit, but we still act as if everyone is in the office. We look for team players in job ads, but team members hardly know each other. Or we fear that connections between people will break, so we mandate coming in once a week, hoping people won’t quit for that. This creates a 4-day workweek, as on that one day, people are happy to see each other and don’t work much. The “because others are doing it” model is also doomed to fail. Many chose the 3 days office, 2 days home office solution. Senior management asked me to hold a workshop to develop a strategy for implementing the hybrid model because, inexplicably, there was significant employee resistance. At the workshop, I asked why they thought the 3+2 solution was good; it turned out they preferred full home office and didn’t want to come in three times. At least we found out why there was significant employee resistance… A similar result comes from the “we don’t dare to change, so we look for the best solution within the existing framework” model. We must utilize the office! Have home office but feel like we are utilizing the office.
Successful models all integrate the forced home office experiences caused by Covid into the companies’ mindsets, recognizing that there is no longer a compulsion and making decisions about their operations with the organization’s success in mind. The place of work becomes a consequence of the culture, not its creator. I’ve encountered companies where everyone works from home, and the leader only wants to know if people can work independently or not. Everyone contracts for a job and only communicates with others as much as necessary to complete the work. It works! It works because they contract clearly. If you want connections with colleagues, this is not your place!
We see companies that have committed to “office first.” This means the company values personal connection and collaboration as one of its greatest assets. The organization’s mindset is that they work together whenever possible because they find it efficient. If this mindset transfers to the employees, no home office policy is needed; employees work from home when justified. This might mean zero days one month and one week the next. Everyone embraces the company’s value and considers it as adults.
Some companies shape mindsets by avoiding the negative connotations attached to office vs. home office operations and approach from the productivity side, calling their operational model “distributed work.” For example, Atlassian published a comprehensive report on this working method. (https://atlassianblog.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/lessonslearned.pdf)
Overall, I think the debate over whether home office or office work is better cannot and should not be decided! We need to figure out what kind of culture we want to build, how we want to collaborate, and how we can be productive. Once that’s clear, it becomes more apparent where our people should work to make this happen.