From members
Rediscovering the physical workspace
By Martin Moehrle, Director, EFMD Corporate Services & CLIP
When taking stock of the large unplanned working from home experiment that the pandemic has forced us to engage in, one has to say that it worked much better than we all thought. Both, from a technology as well as a from productivity point of view. A lot has to do with the pandemic being caused by an ‘external enemy’, thus releasing lots of discretionary energy, much more than in top down-initiated change programs.
A small elite of leaders who have been used to managing global virtual teams were somehow prepared. Most frontline managers were not. And certainly not the millions of workers who had to create an ad hoc work environment at home, often competing with partners and children for space and bandwidth. Despite all of that, productivity did not suffer.
The prejudice of remote work being a hideaway from real work is overcome. Surprisingly fast, some top managers declared victory and working from home and virtual meetings as the future standard, thereby planning for tangible cost savings through reduced office space and travel. However, this is a short term-view only.
To imagine the post-pandemic way of working, long-term effects must be taken into consideration, notably on:
- social cohesion and a sense of belonging: the social aspects of work are limited when human interactions are purely of digital nature and only two of our five senses are activated. Communication is reduced to the immediate work environment, weaker relationships at the periphery are eroding. Especially new joiners have difficulties to develop trustful relationships, embrace purpose and culture, and express their selves.
- inclusiveness and equality: the odds of working from home are not equally distributed, some commute much longer than others, and some are more productive in the office than at home. There must be optionality to work from either the office or home or any other place. This, however, must not have an impact on pay or career progression and requires monitoring.
- serendipity and innovation: the more creativity and collaboration are drivers of value creation in an organization, the more the absence of unplanned encounters, be they in the elevator or at the cafeteria or the often-cited water cooler, will limit serendipity and idea generation at the periphery and intersection of businesses and functions.
