It is now over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared, changing all of our lives. It is hard to believe that a year has passed. The pandemic struck when I was off on medical leave. I was therefore already used to staying at home during this time. So, the transition wasn't perhaps as difficult for me as it was for other people.
I have now been off of my medical leave and back at work for six months. I am glad that I was able to deal with my health and return to work in much better shape than when I left. When I returned, we were working from our office building but with stringent masking and hand sanitizing protocols. After being away from the office for so long, the return to the building was a bit jarring. I fully realized how our office environment has been allowed to deteriorate since the building first opened in 1981. Due to cost cutting and the "optics" of a building renovation / restoration, little has been done to improve, let alone basically maintain the office environment.
To be completely honest, I don't enjoy the in-office work environment. I do enjoy the work though and working from home has been fantastic - it is more productive, makes better use of my time (no lengthy commuting), I am in a much healthier environment (my home is clean and less subject to bugs like the seasonal flu that goes around the office twice a year), and the company has provided fantastic collaboration tools. I find that meetings are more productive and are called only when necessary. Colleagues can see when I am available and when I don't want to be disturbed. As a somewhat shy introvert, I have also found that I participate more in meetings. I am generally more comfortable in remote meetings - no need to pay attention to body language or power expressed through clothing and physical size. The online medium of work and collaboration is absolutely for me.
Yet, as COVID-19 vaccination programs march on and the end of the pandemic appears off in the horizon (although, who knows when this thing is actually going to end given all of the "variants of concern" that seem to be evolving), I am feeling uneasy. I'm am certain that, although my company has made a commitment to work from home, there is a strong undertone in all recent communications that they will want as many people back as possible - "assess in seats". This is being driven by the owners of the company who have indirectly expressed that working from home is a privilige that most people don't have and, therefore, why should we? It is also being driven by an aging management team that is uncomfortable with using technology to "supervise" remote employees. Instead of focusing on outputs, they seem to want to physically see that people are working - which, for jobs like mine that involve 100% intellectual work - is impossible! This desire / need to have people in the office that do the kind of work that I do is not rational. Indeed, if managers want to monitor and micromanage this type of intellectual work, they can do so much more effectively through electronic monitoring.
I honestly don't know what is going to happen in the near future once the pandemic has ran its course. In one form or another, I will likely find myself back in my cubicle breathing recycled air, being exposed to colds, doing an insane commute twice a day, and using the same tools and technology to do the same work that I'm doing from home right now. The one major difference will be that my morale and motivation will suffer.
I do understand that there are a lot of people (especially extroverts who thrive on being around others) that really do want to return to the office environment. I can empathize with this position. Yet, this does not work for me as an individual and will, without a doubt, make me less productive. I think that it is time for people that are stuck in old ways of thinking and working or who are simply uncomfortable with modern collaboration technologies to really consider whether or not they should continue - especially if they are in leadership roles. It might just be time to retire and let some new leadership blood in that will be more flexible in how it approaches work.
Of couse, perhaps I'm just some sort of weird outlier. Maybe I'm the one who is offside and should just be thankful that I have what is a pretty great job. Yet, I am grateful. I just don't want to see us take several steps backward in how we work and live our lives. The pandemic has been absolutely horrible. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives. Political controversies have divided families and nations. But, we have also learned a great deal from this experience in other parts of our lives. One of these learnings is that we can work in many different ways that are much more productive and healthy. The pandemic forced these changes - there is no way in hell that we would have seriously tried some of these collaboration technologies at scale without the pandemic making it necessary. Let's not go back to old, ineffective ways of working just because some are uncomfortable with the new ways.
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