The Future of the Office summary

It’s April 2020. An ABC reporter is presenting the news from his home – a necessity with the recent COVID-19 restrictions. At the end of his piece, the camera zooms out to reveal the man isn’t wearing pants.

There was a time when this might have ruined his career. Instead, he laughed it off and – for the most part – the world laughed with him. This was an early sign that things were changing. By the final months of the pandemic, there was much that had come to be accepted as normal regarding work – not just going pantless on a Zoom call.

If we want any of these positive changes to continue, it’s important that we know what exactly happened during the pandemic.

Initially, many employers treated it like a bad storm. They just had to close up and wait it out – the public was saying no more than two weeks. The focus of a lot of businesses was on preparing financially for a stoppage, not on how to keep working.

As the realization sunk in that things might be like this for a while, companies started taking more drastic measures. The Marriott International hotel announced that two-thirds of its corporate staff would be suspended with 20 percent pay until further notice. Some big companies like Amazon and Walmart offered bonuses to encourage workers to stay, despite the risks.

The wiser businesses saw what was happening and started closing offices and letting employees work from home. Microsoft announced early on that it had no intention of reopening offices until 2021, and during the peak of the pandemic, it was reported that 35 percent of employees in the US were working remotely.

The general reception was positive – workers reported greater satisfaction in almost all areas. Even employers declared the whole work-from-home experience a success. It seems that the time employees saved by not having to commute was largely put into doing more work. People appreciated the trust that their bosses placed in them and they felt a certain obligation to maintain or even increase productivity.

Some other interesting trends were noticed. The number of meetings increased but they were shorter and more efficient – made possible by the fact that video conferencing was better than ever. Some companies also noticed an increase in remote work in the evening, presumably after parents had put their kids to bed. People were working the way they wanted.

So what did the pandemic teach us? Not only is working from home a viable option but it can actually be better. But this does depend largely on how it’s executed. Now, in the waning years of the pandemic, this style of work has gone from a necessity to an option. It’s time to think about what you can expect when given this option to work from home.