I think a lot of companies are thinking about the ROI of returning to in-person work all wrong.
Most conversations I've heard where people are weighing the trade-offs between working from home and working in an office focus on two questions:
Do you feel like you're more productive at home or in the office?
Do you feel like you collaborate better working virtually with people or working face-to-face?
And everyone has their own slightly different takes and nuances when answering these questions, but I think in general we've proven over the past two years that 1) employees can be remarkably productive working remotely and 2) many projects can be completed just fine via virtual collaboration even if working face-to-face is still the most comfortable setting for many folks. And I think these are the sorts of conclusions that are leading many companies right now to either double-down on being a remote-first company or adopt a master-of-none hybrid work philosophy.
But this train of thought overlooks one key element: the impact of company culture on worker output. We've proven workers can be productive when working remotely, and we've proven that workers can be quite collaborative when working remotely, but we've also learned that it's extremely difficult to establish a well-defined and widely felt company culture remotely. Company culture isn't formed in Zoom happy hours and biweekly 1:1s. Company culture is formed in desk gossip and break room snack rankings and evening vent sessions and birthday happy hours and hallway shenanigans. We're social creatures, and we can train ourselves to think seeing someone's face getting transmitted to our computer screens in a marathon of 1s and 0s is meeting this need, but it isn't. Nothing can replace the sense of community and in turn the corporate culture that arises from being with other coworkers in-person.
And when workers are happy or feel like they have a sense of community at work, they do better work. I don't have proof for this. I don't have a study to cite. But we've all felt it. When you are getting along well with our coworkers and feel like you are part of a community in the office, you will be generally happier at work, and if you are generally happier at work, you do better quality work. Plain and simple. That's where the ROI of transitioning back to in-person work comes in. Not in increased productivity. Not in substantially better collaboration. But in the fruits of happier employees doing higher quality work.
This is why I still go into the office. Not to get visibility from leadership. Not because I'm more productive in the office. Not because I'm a sucker for a good 35-minute commute (although I somewhat am). It's because I think the benefits on worker morale and therefore worker output are too great to ignore. So until someone proves to me otherwise, I'm going to keep going in.
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