Rewiring Work: Just Returning is a Missed Opportunity

March 9, 2022

Continued conversations about a “Return” without doing any “Rewiring” is like letting people back into buildings that aren’t up to code.

The mass exodus from our offices, (where work primarily happened pre-pandemic) exposed the faulty wiring of our workplaces.  

Just as you would before any major renovation – we took all of our WORK out of our WORKPLACES. This forced “experiment” uncovered so much about what was (and wasn’t) working at work. Now, just as you would for the floorplan of an old house, we have a lot of ideas about how to change the layout to improve flow.

As we embark on this next phase everyone keeps calling a “return,” it feels like we’re re-entering spaces, leadership styles, mindsets and technology habits that are still in demolition phase – with missing structures and live wires.

Are we not going to seize the opportunity to intentionally re-design the architecture based on what we’ve learned? Are we going to miss the chance to re-create the blueprints based on real, modern human needs, desires and preferences?  

What did we learn?

Here are some of the findings I’ve read about and experienced:

• We learned that we really liked (thrived even?) on having more flexibility, autonomy and control (which data confirms is better for stress levels and performance).
• This new-found flexibility initially eased the strain on parents and caregivers. Parents who were often forced to diminish or downplay their caregiving responsibilities at the office have found new ways to balance the demands of parenthood and their jobs.
• Still, the “She-cession” was (and is) real. The societal and structural inadequacies of childcare in our country (and its impact on women) have been exposed. We can’t un-see the toll it’s taking, particularly on parents of young (unable to be vaccinated) children.
• That said, there are many ways all-remote workforces helped to level the playing field.  Not just for parents and caregivers, but for racial and ethnic minorities, and those geographically dispersed who don’t have the same “visibility” at the office. Talk of a return has many dreading the microaggressions and bias they faced at work. A recent Slack poll found the return may be “whiter and more male” and the ways proximity bias may disproportionally affect parents, women and minorities.   
• And we can’t ignore the pervasive burnout and languishing that came with working as many as four additional hours every week. We learned that for many of us, this “new normal” needed better boundaries.
• We also learned what we truly missed about our workplaces: the office potlucks, the happy hours, even the small talk before the meetings. The social connection. The lack of isolation. The face-to-face collaboration. And some separation between home and work.

So how can we rewire?

Here are some tangible places to begin rewiring:

We need to rewire communications

Talking points about “returning to work” abound. Most recently, New York Mayor Eric Adams, asked top companies to bring the employees back to the office, saying: “It’s time to get back to work. The time frame is now.”

Wait, haven’t we been working?

In fact, studies show we’re actually working more since being away from the office. It’s just that “work” is no longer a place, it’s a verb. Not a place we go, but something we do.

Not only should we do away with the dismissive language of “it’s time to get back to work,” we must also ditch the word “returning.” By its very nature, it presumes we are going back to something that was before.

We need to rewire space (and mindsets about space)

If work is a thing we do and no longer a place we go – how might we curate “space” for work to happen in a new way that better meets the needs of employees? We’re seeing glimmers of what this could look like with companies pursuing outdoor offices, providing WeWork all-access passes or going so far as creating Wellness Retreats. We’re also seeing companies built around the notion of curating digital “spaces” where teams can connect as well.

The question we should be asking, is how do we maintain the flexibility and autonomy we’ve gained without simultaneously creating an “office gravity” that we know yielded the experience inequities that existed pre-pandemic?

Pre-pandemic, the office was a place for meetings in over-booked conference rooms, interspersed with focused work, often in cubicles or offices.

In this new world of hybrid work, it’s almost entirely different. The office will be about creative collisions that naturally occur when employees from different parts of the company are in shared spaces.

In fact, according to a Remote Work Survey from PWC in January 2021, 87% of executives expect to make changes to their real estate strategies over the next 12-months.

Rewiring our mindsets to capture the innovation that comes from those casual collisions could be a beautiful opportunity that didn’t exist when departments were siloed to their own floors.

We need to rewire the way we lead

As leaders we must communicate, recruit, model behaviors, and build team cultures that are remote-first. That means that we must learn to lead in new ways.

Communication will become incredibly important – knowing which channels are best for what type of communication is paramount. To protect experience equity, we have to embrace, and frankly dust off, our writing skills. We cannot leave our hybrid or remote colleagues out of the conversation. And let’s face it, email and instant messaging has not exactly made our communication stronger. We’ve atrophied, and need to focus on strengthening that muscle again so our teams are hearing the same message, at the same time, and in the same voice.

Communication isn’t just important to ensure everyone’s on the same page about key updates, it’s also integral to building relationships and TRUST. Pre-pandemic, casual interactions between meetings allowed us to hear about our colleagues’ kids, families, weekends and adventures. No longer can we rely on these “accidental encounters.”

Finally, leaders must model new habits and routines. We have to invest in learning and not just those digitally savvy on our teams. We have to embrace digital tools such as Teams, Slack, Miro, Mural, etc. and model what asynchronous collaboration looks like. This also extends to modeling healthy boundaries at work. Culture is created by a set of behaviors and if we want a different culture, one that preserves the autonomy, flexibility, and equity that the pandemic has created, we will have to change our behaviors to preserve it.

And, finally, we must rewire our technology

When we first entered the pandemic, there was a wave of technological advances to enable millions of people to work at home. Hybrid work will bring yet another shift of technology change. While the urgency won’t be as high, it will nonetheless be another force that continues to drive change.

Mobility will be standard and consumer-grade experiences will be required because without them, productivity will be interrupted. The ability to work anywhere in the world will be expected and necessary. As pandemic constraints loosen, this will become a must-have for employees who have been travel-constrained over the last two years.

We’ll also need to leverage data in new and different ways. Digital transformation has been a buzz word for the last decade, yet it’s largely been driven at a functional level. Hybrid work requires us to break down the organizational barriers between workplace solutions/facilities, HR, and IT to leverage technology in novel ways – from easily finding colleagues across campus, to protecting employee well-being, to creating space for thinking/creating/problem-solving in a world full of digital distractions.

Summary

In the same way the pandemic catalyzed a tremendous amount of positive change for the workforce, our full step into hybrid work, which re-opening offices will create, has the potential to do the same. We need to reinvent, reimagine and rewire. And ruthlessly guard against just returning “the way things were before”.

That would be a missed opportunity. And a potential fire hazard.