Thought Leader Insight: Why we’re homesick for our offices
As Joni Mitchell sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Staff are missing their workplaces in ways they never imagined. Why is this, and what can be done about it?
THE HARD WORD’S THOUGHT LEADER INSIGHT SERIES IS INSPIRED BY MOMENTS FROM OUR REGULAR INTERVIEWS WITH THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST IN BUSINESS.
This week I ran a ‘sharpening your interviewing skills’ session, via video conference, for one of my favourite client organisations. As we waited for attendees, a few of us chatted about whether everybody was enjoying working from home. The responses were mixed.
The office, it seems, holds a special place in our heart. But why, I wondered. After all, isn’t it a place we sometimes dread? Isn’t the office a place brimming with politics and pettiness, power plays and prima donnas?
A while ago I interviewed Dallas Burgess, psychologist and organisational renewal consultant and executive director of People Advantage, for a story about the office of the future. We didn’t realise at the time that the office of the future, one where a large percentage of staff were able to work remotely, would be introduced sooner rather than later as the result of a novel coronavirus.
Burgess shared powerful insight into the social and psychological benefits we get from our offices. The detail of this interview helped me to understand why we’re not all celebrating our newfound freedom and flexibility.
Our office, our identity
“There is sufficient research that says everybody needs structure of some type, and that the type of structure and how that manifests varies from person to person,” Burgess explains. “We all have habits and routines. A lot of what happens in our brains is automatic and we're not even conscious of it. It is almost biological that we need to have structure.”
“Some people are very individual and can cope well on their own. But mostly, when people leave an office environment and start working on their own, there is a loss of social interaction which they feel quite deeply.”
A large part of our identity, Burgess says, is related to what we do for work and at work, and how other people think of us. We take affirmation from others.
We are also intellectually stimulated when we are able to bounce ideas off others. In fact, the input of diverse points of view, as opposed to being alone with our thoughts, can actually break our mood by helping us to think about things differently.
“In an office environment, there is a significant opportunity for happiness and satisfaction,” he says. “There is research that supports the fact that this social stimulation is very important.”
Technology isn’t the answer
Most of what we currently read around the office of the future, Burgess says, is about the opportunities introduced by technology.
“I’m seeing very little about how people can retain the essence of our evolutionary advantages,” he says. “These include our capacity to be social animals, our need to be social, our capacity to engage and to be emotional about things, and to be curious.”
In the future, when we’re all wired in from home, or from wherever we happen to be working, the office itself may be primarily kept as a meeting place. The role of the office could be to simply facilitate human interaction and, in doing so, to keep people sane.
“It could be a drop-in place for the sharing of ideas and for catching up with others,” Burgess says.
“If I was running a business in that environment, I’d be inclined to keep the technology out of it. I would even go as far as providing only notebooks and pens to make sure people are in the right place psychologically, to benefit from those sorts of interactions and for the organisation to benefit. As soon as you introduce technology, it detracts from the advantages and benefits that come from what it is to be human and how humans work best.”
“Ideas can come from anywhere, whereas computers and technology are about formulating, ordering, formatting, limiting and logic. That’s an important part of the organisational story, but it’s only part of the story.”
Why we long for our offices
Burgess says the psychological process of staff understanding and engagement in change can be defined in five steps.
Here is how I defined those steps after another conversation with Burgess for a story written for Business Think, the online magazine for the UNSW School of Business (AGSM).
1) Pre-contemplation: staff have not even perceived the need for change. They may deny change is necessary.
2) Contemplation: individuals are aware that there’s an issue but are not yet convinced change is required. They are yet to understand the logic behind the change or how it is going to impact on them or the organisation.
3) Preparation: staff are actively involved in the planning of the change to ensure its success. They are helping develop a clear map or picture of what the new roles are going to look like.
4) Action: the plan is put into effect when staff understand and buy into the change. They have been a part of the process and are engaged and focused.
5) Maintenance: active strategies are put in place to stop regression to old ways of doing things.
In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, most organisations had to skip stages 1, 2 and 3. They jumped straight to 4, minus the ‘engagement’ and ‘focus’, and therefore missed many steps that offer psychological comfort around the change.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that the timing of the change is extremely fluid. Nobody knows whether it will last for another week or another year.
It’s no wonder many staff are uncomfortable, and hankering for the security of the office. Even with current technology such as Zoom and Skype, Burgess says, people still need real, face-to-face interaction.
There will always be a place in our working lives, and in our hearts and minds, for an office. What is likely to change is its purpose.
Business writer Chris Sheedy from THE HARD WORD spoke with Dallas Burgess for stories in the Virgin Australia Voyeur magazine and UNSW Business Think.
