6 things we will (and won’t) miss about the office

Things we will miss

Office romances
Offices don’t just breed ideas and inno­va­tion, they’ve long been fer­tile grounds for love. It’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing. Man­agers might well dis­ap­prove, but when office cul­ture is such that peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly put in eight-hour or longer dai­ly stints, inter-col­league col­lab­o­ra­tion can quick­ly turn into some­thing much more, espe­cial­ly when stud­ies reveal some people’s entire social sphere is through work.

Data from Career­Builder shows 36 per cent of office work­ers have, at some point, dat­ed a col­league, with between 10 and 25 per cent of mar­riages thought to orig­i­nate from romances that blos­somed in the office. Office work­ers are ser­i­al match­mak­ers too, often intro­duc­ing col­leagues to their own cir­cle of friends.

So with at-work inter­ac­tion all but dead at the moment, so too could many people’s love lives be. Psy­chol­o­gists sug­gest a snatched day in the office every so often is not suf­fi­cient to get to know peo­ple at a deep enough lev­el to trig­ger love.

Our over­all men­tal health could be the worse for not find­ing at-work friend­ships. New research by Milkround finds mil­len­ni­als want, and seek, real friend­ships through work, and 75 per cent of those who say they strug­gle to make friends at work say it has a neg­a­tive impact on their men­tal well­be­ing.

Chit-chat
Those who say they’ll miss noth­ing about office cul­ture are in the minor­i­ty – just 13 per cent accord­ing to data from col­lab­o­ra­tion provider Uni­pos – and by far the biggest thing they say they miss is infor­mal face-to-face chit-chat (71 per cent).

“We’re social crea­tures and it’s lots of micro-moments that make us feel more con­nect­ed to our col­leagues and even con­nect­ed to the pur­pose of the busi­ness,” argues Noreena Hertz, author of just-pub­lished book The Lone­ly Cen­tu­ry.

Chit-chat doesn’t just build cama­raderie; it gives us all a sense of nor­mal­i­ty and famil­iar­i­ty

“Boss­es need to embrace remote work­ing with cau­tion, because what they’ll gain in reduced finan­cial costs, they’ll lose in terms of loy­al­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and shared val­ues.”

Accord­ing to Stephanie Davies, for­mer stand-up com­ic, turned psy­chol­o­gist and founder, of con­sul­tan­cy Laugh­ol­o­gy: “Chit-chat is every­thing from say­ing hel­lo to the recep­tion­ist, to some­one stop­ping some­one as they see them, to devel­op an idea.

“Chit-chat doesn’t just build cama­raderie; it gives us all a sense of nor­mal­i­ty and famil­iar­i­ty. It also gives us a social boost of dopamine, that cre­ates what psy­chol­o­gists call social cap­i­tal.”

Nico­la Down­ing, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of Ricoh Europe, adds: “There is no sub­sti­tute for unplanned inter­ac­tions. We’ve all learnt some­thing new about our busi­ness, cus­tomers or indus­try when ‘talk­ing and walk­ing’ with a col­league. While chats by the water­cool­er can seem passé, impromp­tu con­ver­sa­tions in the office lead to bet­ter rela­tion­ships, ideas and out­comes.”

Train­ing and devel­op­ment
“The press­ing and dev­as­tat­ing impact of mov­ing to remote-first ways of work­ing will be lost learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly among younger work­ers,” says David Spencer-Per­ci­val, founder of Life Sci­ence Peo­ple.

“The ben­e­fits peo­ple get in the ear­ly stages of their career through learn­ing on the job can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed and it pro­vides a foun­da­tion for how they will per­form dur­ing the rest of their lives.”

Dr Sophie Ward, pro­gramme team leader for post­grad­u­ate psy­chol­o­gy at Arden Uni­ver­si­ty, says that due to a lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty, there’s a very real chance remote work­ers will now get left behind. “They could miss out on train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and/or be passed over for a pro­mo­tion,” she says.

Evi­dence sug­gests staff are now real­is­ing for them­selves that being out of sight could indeed see them out of mind too, with LinkedIn this month reveal­ing that employ­ees are hav­ing to take mat­ters into their own hands. It found work­ers have invest­ed more than 1.3 mil­lion hours learn­ing new skills over the past year, a 153 per cent increase com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. The most pop­u­lar skills being devel­oped include strate­gic think­ing, devel­op­ing emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and time man­age­ment.

Things we won’t miss

The com­mute

Take your pick: an hours’ com­mute or a three-sec­ond walk from one room to anoth­er? Some 34 per cent of peo­ple, accord­ing to e‑days, find the sheer grind of com­mut­ing is enough of an annoy­ance to main­tain a pref­er­ence for work­ing from home.

Notwith­stand­ing new-found health fears of being on pub­lic trans­port, some staff were already tir­ing of the dai­ly com­mute. Accord­ing to human resources con­sul­tan­cy Robert Half, 23 per cent of work­ers claim to have quit their jobs due to their com­mute, ris­ing to a third among those aged 18 to 34.

The Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics says women feel most strong­ly about com­mut­ing to work; women who have an hour-long com­mute are 29.1 per cent more like­ly to leave their jobs than if they had a ten-minute jour­ney, com­pared to 23.9 per cent for men.

Even though some peo­ple don’t have room at home, par­tic­u­lar­ly flat-shar­ers, on bal­ance they seem to be pre­pared to put up with this. Flex­i­ble work­space provider OSiT found 72 per cent of work­ers say avoid­ing com­mut­ing has been the main ben­e­fit of work­ing from home.

Pre-coro­n­avirus, one in sev­en work­ers spent a waste­ful two or more hours a day get­ting to and from the office, and pay­ing a life­time £135,000 for the priv­i­lege, accord­ing to research from Instant Offices.

It will be a real strug­gle try­ing to con­vince peo­ple to pay to come back to offices when COVID-19 dies down

Jes­si­ca Hea­gren, founder of flex­i­ble work­ing recruit­ment con­sul­tan­cy That Works For Me, says: “Peo­ple are real­is­ing they can be doing oth­er stuff now with their pre­vi­ous com­mute time. They don’t miss the office cul­ture of old and aren’t rush­ing to get back to it. Instead they’re doing things that emo­tion­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly enrich them. Data shows peo­ple who feel they con­trol the hours they work do 20 per cent more work in 20 per cent less time.
“It will be a real strug­gle try­ing to con­vince peo­ple to pay to come back to offices when COVID-19 dies down.”

Bul­ly­ing and dis­crim­i­na­tion

While Zoom calls rarely recre­ate the spon­tane­ity and vibran­cy of a bustling office, sig­nif­i­cant new data finds this tech­nol­o­gy ush­er­ing in pos­i­tive changes to a form of office cul­ture many won’t miss: bul­ly­ing and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

New post-lock­down research by Cul­ture Shift finds 37 per cent of employ­ees felt more like­ly to expe­ri­ence some­thing they would describe as bul­ly­ing or harass­ment in the work­place, com­pared to 26 per cent while work­ing from home.

Cul­ture Shift chief exec­u­tive Gem­ma McCall says: “With find­ings like this, there won’t be a stam­pede back to the office, because peo­ple sense that if they do, old ways will return too.”

Mean­while, with­out an office to be judged in, peo­ple could be hired and assessed accord­ing to their skills or out­put, rather than their eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

Dr Esther Canóni­co, lec­tur­er and researcher at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, says peo­ple with autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD), who face sig­nif­i­cant employ­ment chal­lenges, will ben­e­fit from a more lev­el play­ing field. “Com­mu­ni­ca­tions asso­ci­at­ed with tele­work­ing often suit work­ers with ASD,” she says.

“Work­ing remote­ly allows less neu­rotyp­i­cal peo­ple to have more con­trol on aspects of their work­space, for instance noise and light lev­els, than they would oth­er­wise have at the office.”

Office irri­tants, meet­ings and hot-desk­ing

While there’s plen­ty a hap­py office cul­ture pro­vides, for legions of new­ly con­fi­dent home work­ers, one thing they cer­tain­ly won’t be miss­ing is the con­ta­gion of con­stant inter­rup­tion.

A post-lock­down poll by Capter­ra among 500 small busi­ness employ­ers found 27 per cent of staff say they wel­comed dis­ap­pear­ing dis­trac­tions and the abil­i­ty to get on with work unim­ped­ed.

Oth­er data sug­gests employ­ees would hap­pi­ly live with­out hav­ing to work along­side loud, rude, unhy­gien­ic and smelly col­leagues. Pet peeves, an AXA PPP Health­care study found, include work­ing with col­leagues with “dis­gust­ing” habits, such as nose-pick­ing and eat­ing mess­i­ly in front of them.

Now online meet­ings have to be sched­uled, rather than con­vened by round­ing peo­ple up at the drop of a hat, staff won’t be pin­ing for meet­ings for meet­ings sake.

Also, staff who hat­ed hot-desk­ing will be breath­ing a sigh of relief. “Many office work­ers are crea­tures of habit, fierce­ly pro­tec­tive of their right to cre­ate their own base camps in the office,” says Gavin Sut­ton, head of learn­ing and devel­op­ment at media agency Ogilvy UK.

“The advent of more work­ing from home means hot-desk­ing will no longer be ‘a thing’ and many will applaud this. Most of an employee’s desk work will be done at home, while the office could become more about com­mu­ni­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, co-cre­ation, work­ing ses­sions and any­thing else that it might be deemed advan­ta­geous to car­ry out in per­son.”

---