The only reason you should be getting back to the office is for you
Yes, yes, yes, there are many reasons why increased flexibility of working conditions can have benefits – but they are not all reasons why we shouldn’t set the default to be work at work – if you can, writes Adam Ferrier.
Recently a lot of people have been saying that getting back to the office is great for productivity, collaboration, and quality of thinking. All of that may be true. However, there’s a more fundamental reason why I am a huge advocate for people getting back to the office, and having their default set to ‘‘I will work at the office – unless I really really can’t’, and that’s because it makes you happier and more satisfied.
Everyone lauded technology and in particular Zoom and Google Meets during Covid / lockdowns – and remarked how bad Covid would have been just 5 years previously. I don’t think it’s as simple as that.. I wonder if these breakthroughs in technology are taking us down a pathway to efficiency, productivity and ease, all of which are deceptively dangerous.
Imagine a single 25 year old who’s just moved out of home into a one bedroom apartment. They work from home using Zoom, they eat at home using home delivery, they do their exercise on a delivered Peloton (paid for by their parents?), and they have relationships at home thanks to social media. There’s little reason for them to leave the couch. Check out this clip from one of the best, and most predictively accurate movies of all time, Wall-e and see what life will (and already is becoming to) look like.
The more someone WFH, the less personal and the more transactional the employer/employee relationship becomes. 6 months is about the limit before it’s purely transactional; but, the employer is still stuck with the cost burden of all the HR, IR, holiday pay, sick pay, long service leave etc etc etc etc. And when that happens, off-shore sourcing becomes much more attractive, because there is zero incentive to employ anyone – especially in Australia..Eventually, all the WFH-lovers can WFH as much as they like – which is what they wanted in the first place – so everyone wins!
“Purely transactional”? Why is that a bad thing? Those “burdens” – HR, IR , holiday pay, sick pay, long service leave; all legislated, mind you – exist because of the continuing precedent for employers to exploit the transaction of work.
There is absolutely no reason an employee should demonstrate a passion for their employer’s mission or additional emotional and social investment if they are delivering on tangible obligations and working the required hours. The pay and entitlements received is only just enough to cover their labour, which ultimately builds employer profits they’re never likely to share in.
If an employee wants their employee to give more (and there’s plenty of them), it’s their choice. But they are going to choose the employers with great incentives that sit additional to the core transaction. Maybe it’s the pitch on quality of life. Maybe it’s a great office environment. Maybe it’s bonuses. Maybe it’s a supportive, non-toxic culture. Maybe it’s genuinely meaningful work. The employer that sees these as investments, not “burdens”, are the employers who won’t have trouble winning people who are willing to give a bit extra.
Australia’s culture of expectation around work really needs to shift. If the employer wants more than the basic, legal transaction from its staff, the onus is on them to incentivise. If the employee is choosing between the collaborative office, or a bit of WFH flexibility to fit the doctor/bank/washing in over lunch, that’s entirely their choice to make.
In my comment above I suggest the more people WFH the more attractive off-shore sourcing becomes.
For those who. believe otherwise – Dentsu has just announced the off-shoring of 10,000 jobs [and they ain’t in Australia!!]
Pre GFC creatives had their own offices. We’d shut the door, lock ourselves in and not leave until we had a few good things on our wall. If after a few days we didn’t have anything good, we’d go for a walk and get some inspiration from a film or real life.
Suits and producers could whinge as much as they liked about why they needed to interrupt us but the traffic manager would decide if they could. Often they couldn’t. The work was great. The craft was great.
Post GFC, in comes open plan. The finance department have taken over and crammed creatives in with the suits and producers in a ‘buzzing’ space full of constant interruptions. Suddenly the only place a creative can get the headspace to think is a choice of being constantly kicked out of meeting rooms, being tapped on the shoulder while wearing ear muffs / noise-cancelling headphones, a noisy café down the street, a park or a pub.
No matter how fancy the pool table or deliberately-understocked bar, we’d come in, leave a jacket on our chair, grab a pad and walk out. The only creatives at their desk were answering emails / typing up notes.
In comes work from home with collaborative tools over Google. Sure video calls are clunky, but speaker phone and Jamboard are almost as good as sitting next to each other. Even better is meeting your partner at the beach with no ‘oh fuck I need to be back at the office for a meeting’ just as you crack a big idea, knowing the rest of the afternoon will be full of people asking you to look at stuff. Just zoom in, then get back to the idea straight after.
My long point being, if you want your creatives to strike gold, they need to go down a mine shaft. They need their privacy cave to fail, fail again then fail so miserably it’s actually genius. Doing that in an open-plan office has never worked.
If you’re questioning why it’s hard to get good creatives back to the office, maybe you should ask if they were ever really there in the first place.
Love this (although if you’re going to stay down a mine all week you better know where the gold reef is)
“So this is an invitation to everyone to get dressed, put up with traffic, get a coffee at the local café, make small talk in a lift, work with people and have conversations, drive home and then do it all again the next day. Now that may or may not sound like much fun, but the alternative looks far worse.”
So what’s the alternative Mr Ferrier saving tons of money at home?.. less travel time?.. less wasting time on small talk?… come on tell us.
Rising house prices have forced families away from the city. These are people with kids in school who need collection and drop off. That plus 1.5 hours travel there, and 1.5 hours travel home give you zero time to enjoy life.
It’s important to remember that we work to live, and taking advantage of the new WFH scenario has made it possible to survive in the economic climate we live in. Sacrificing family time and wasting it in a traffic jam because some boomer is upset that their expensive lease is going to waste is not the world’s problem.
If your’e in top management, you’re probably not too far from the office and can drive in. But remember what works for you may not work for others.
Now, back to my Peloton, which I paid for by myself with money I saved on petrol and public transport.
that’s genius, especially the last bit..
Single 25 year olds don’t move out of family homes to live by themselves, they move into sharehouses and treat themselves to uber eats once a week. They sleep, work, eat and do yoga/pilates via a free youtube videos on their bedroom floor. They like working from home so they can wake up later after having to work overtime to prove to their bosses that they’re committed to their job. Working from home also allows them to save on transit costs…wake up.
Are we still talking about this?
Perspicacious as ever, Mr Ferrier.
For me, the ability to work at home is a godsend. For the first time in my decades long career, I have been able to make my home life and work life move in synchronicity and not feel like they were competing and tearing me in two.
The net result? I am happier, more satisfied, and achieve much more at home, and at work, every single day. And, the bonus of time saved on commuting, idle chit-chatting, not walking around ridiculously shaped desks, or taking trips to the coffee shop vs. the four steps to my kitchen, has allowed me to invest in me, and what’s important for me.
I’d happily never step foot back into an office.
Spoken exactly like someone who splashed out on a fancy (and expensive!) office lease in Richmond just one year prior to the pandemic.
“they do their exercise on a delivered Peloton (paid for by their parents?)”
This certainly gives you insight into Adam’s take on younger generations.
I love how people deal in absolutes. Can we please simply acknowledge that what works for one person might not work for another? That goes both ways, whether you’re perfectly happy working from home or whether you can’t wait to be back at the office 7 days a week.
Regardless of whether you agree with Adam this comment thread reels of entitlement.
This is what happens when personnel are viewed as a means to indulge the managements view of how work should be:
– performed from the office
– staff available for management to look out at and distract with their requests whenever it suits them
– staff accepting of the culture and facilities pushed onto them rather than working in a way that suits them as individuals
– endemic of the ‘trust me i know better’ view of management trying to tell people something they find fulfilling and productive is actually bad for them (and will end up like a Pixar dystopian view of technology)
I so wish you were not anonymous as it’s such an interesting conversation – but not worth having with words that could come from a bot.
Imagine a single 25 year old who’s just moved out of home into a one bedroom apartment. – Advertising really needs to look outside this box and grab the diversity opportunity it so badly wanted 9and very much needs) that’s been made possible with Covid work flexibility.
Agencies pushing people back to the office with these excuses of back to the office is great for productivity, collaboration, and quality of thinking. It makes me cringe. Office and Quality thinking are a juxtaposition. Especially when you were never leaving the office to be in the real world that you’re advertising to.
Diversity gives you quality thinking. Happy diverse people who are well rested and inspired by what they see and feel outside an office gives you an even higher quality of thinking. Productivity and Collaboration comes from happy, inspired people sharing that inspiration willingly.
Most companies I talk to are doing a healthy mix of the two – office time and WFH. Both are important and both efficient in their own ways. I’ve worked for 8 days a week agencies and for 4-days a week agencies. The latter was much more efficient as there is a certain transference of power and autonomy to the employee, which in turns builds trust and loyalty. Before COVID, everyone thought we were mad initiating a 4-day week. During lockdowns, many asked how it worked. Some of the ethos of the 4-day week is living on for many agencies, especially digital, where as long as a deadline or sprint is hit, does it matter with zoom and slack?
However nothing beats physical contact. That’s why we’ve moved to a half-way house solution at The Commons. Go in 24/7, meet others and work in a creative and caring environment. The thing about the work environment I love (and especially for young people), is the ability to learn from others on the spot, gain teamwork social experience and have fun. I can’t imagine being young in the ad industry and not having that intrinsic social connection. But then again this may be an extrovert/introvert thing.
I think the most important thing about work is the spontaneity that interaction delivers. For me, the magic happens not in the meeting but as you were coming out of the meeting. Grabbing someone with a thought, a question or a build. That’s pretty hard to do on slack or zoom.
Do we really need people to tell us how to work? Get your employees back to work if you want them to, but why write an opinion piece on something that not everyone would agree on? Work how your work wants you to work and make it work for all.
Easy.
As an example, I’ve put in my hours so far for today, deadlines and meetings met and now I’m off to the gym and I’ll work again later into the eve to get things done that 1.5/2hrs ‘out of the work from home office’ will need catching up on. Now that’s making working from home work for me, and the agency. If the work gets done, who cares where you do it from and how you do it?
Oh that’s right, you’ve got overheads like offices to pay for, and worker benefits like coffee machines and pinball/football tables and a ‘well stocked bar’ etc to pay off. Yep, got it.
> why write an opinion piece on something that not everyone would agree on?
An opinion piece everyone agreed on wouldn’t be worth reading.
I disagree and this is why. It looks like you have a nice office so you can argue from that point. We don’t have a nice office where I work and our company doesn’t want to invest in that. I currently pay for a co-working space and enjoy it much more, working from home isn’t good 5 days a week for sure, I personally get that.
The environment you work in outside of home needs to be better than home. No company that has an open office floor plan with no private space i.e. (saving money and just putting tonnes of desks in a big room in the name of “collaboration”) without paying for breakout phone booths or personal meeting rooms can say they have a productive environment. Also, if there is no airflow, no plants, or factory like strip lighting then the environment is poor for health. If there is no office manager to change the filter on the tap then it’s probably worse for you than straight tap water. It’s all these little things that just make some companies easy to get people to work there and some companies keep asking why everyone wants to work from home and why they can’t retain staff.
Because nothing screams humanity than being stuck in a 2×2 cubicle while getting harassed by coworkers/bosses.
– If it’s about productivity: people have different ways of working, as long as they get the work done, on time, it doesn’t matter
– You can’t have a culture if you’re not interacting in person, but you don’t need to see each other 2/3 of your adult life
– WFH or even remote opportunities can open up talent pools
– People should establish their own routines if WFH/remote – you don’t need to travel into the office to have a routine.
– WFH/ remote doesn’t mean you just stay at your desk at home… go work at your local cafe, your mother’s house (free lunch?), tiny house in the country (with stable wifi)… the imagination is yours and outdoors is probably a better place than the office for inspiration tbh
Propinquity. Physical distance is still the most powerful predictor of contact, interaction, friendship, and influence.