In recent weeks, we have seen a steady increase in the percentage of workers returning to the office. Workers are returning to the office at the highest rates since early 2020, as companies increase their efforts to bring back their employees from remote work.
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, office use is up to 47.5 percent in 10 major metropolitan areas, the highest it has been since late March 2020. I am encouraged by this because I think there are many benefits to being back in the office.
However, when I discussed this with my Gen-Z daughter, she clearly felt differently. This surprised me, as she is the most extroverted and social member of our family and I thought if anyone would want to be back in the office with other people, she would. So, as I made my case for the return to the office to her, I found that she also had some good reasons for remaining remote.
I have always found that one of the greatest benefits to the office environment is “knowledge transfer.” That is, the office allows for ease of information sharing among employees that is less available when people are working remotely.
I think such knowledge transfer becomes much more critical when a job requires complex problem solving and any time you regularly add new employees. It is also important when a group of people are doing similar jobs, but often dealing with unique situations.
For instance, my other daughter works in a customer service job where a group of employees are each responsible for a large number of clients. Because they work in a “bullpen” setting, it is easy for them to ask someone for guidance in a situation that might be new to one individual, but that has occurred to someone else. I know that early in my Air Force career when I was managing the research and development of complex weapon systems, I learned much just from being around others in my office.
Similarly, teamwork is typically enhanced in an office environment when compared to a remote environment. As individuals spend more time with one another and get to know each other better, teamwork typically improves. As more work is now accomplished in projects rather than functionally, teamwork has become more critical.
It’s not that knowledge transfer and teamwork can’t be successfully accomplished in remote working environments, but the likelihood of each is much higher in an office environment.
While knowledge transfer and teamwork would seem to be more beneficial to the company than the individual, there are important benefits to the individual as well. Knowledge transfer develops the worker professionally and therefore, makes him/her more marketable for other positions both within and outside the firm. Teamwork provides professional development by improving the individual’s collaboration skills while also likely improving the person’s mental health via increased socialization.
Improved mental health might be one of the most important employee benefits of returning to the office. While there were also other factors involved with the increased levels of mental health issues during the pandemic, many of those issues, such as depression, were seen to be brought on by social distancing, quarantine, and isolation. Returning to the office reduces such isolation, improving the mental health of individuals.
Despite these benefits, my daughter and many others of her generation (“Gen Z”) respectfully disagree that returning to the office is necessarily a good thing.
First and foremost, she indicates that she works much more efficiently remotely than in an office. She does not have to waste any time commuting, so the time normally spent commuting can be used to perform productive work. Additionally, by not being in the office, she believes that there are fewer interruptions, and she does not have to deal with co-workers who like to chat to avoid work. Therefore, she, and many of her peers, believe they are much more productive working remotely.
She also indicates that the knowledge transfer issue is not as big a deal for her generation. She believes that since her generation is so much better than mine at finding information online or reaching out to peers electronically, this more than makes up for the lack of office knowledge transfer. This is just one example of how her generation values flexibility over all else.
Gen Z employees believe that this flexibility provided by working remotely promotes work-life balance. They feel they can take care of personal business and errands during the workday when it is more convenient, and it allows them to break up their workdays into shorter, more productive chunks. They indicate that higher productivity and work-life balance leads to better performance and higher job satisfaction.
There does not seem to be a clear-cut winner in the argument of remote work versus return to the office. There are clearly pros and cons to both.
I think that is why hybrid (mix of remote/office) work appears to be catching on and will be the preferred arrangement for most in the future. A hybrid work schedule will allow knowledge transfer and teamwork to flourish, while still allowing for improved mental health, more flexibility, and better work-life balance.
