Why the future for work is NOT work from home

There are many companies announcing work from home policies and some are even going further by announcing that these changes are permanent. During a pandemic like COVID-19, the new work from home policies are really required to enable employees to work and contribute from home. However, I strongly believe the future is still working in an office.

I know working from home gives oneself a lot of flexibility and helps them meet their commitments. However that doesn’t mean greater productivity or creativity.

Working from home feels great for the first few days and requires one to be very disciplined to get meaningful work done.There are very few, if not no restrictions at home and it’s very easy to get distracted and get drifted away. While working from home, one looses the camaraderie of working in a team and the chances of getting demotivated are much higher.

We all know, all too well, how we tend to mute a call during a meeting and start doing other things while listening on the call. We think this is multitasking but it is also lacking focus. Most of the time these organized meetings would be unnecessary. With work from home, more and more meetings need to be arranged in order to just keep simple communication going. A simple conversation in an office would turn into a meeting in a virtual workplace.

Creativity is lost

While building something creatively, we need to sit together to brainstorm and bounce off ideas from one and other. And often great ideas come from unplanned conversations. Free flow of ideas is vital in coming up with new innovations. The speed at which ideas flow is severely hindered in a virtual workplace. While its easy to think we can schedule a meeting for creative ideas, but the pace at which they come out are severely hindered.

There is no replacement for physical work place

Despite the advancements in technologies, there is no replacement for a, one to one physical conversation. And during these physical conversations we not only exchange ideas but also our vibes, which is difficult to quantify. We all tend to have our low points and during these low points it becomes very difficult to work and especially while working remotely, the chances of doing something other than work are much higher. But while at office we can feed off the positive energy of our colleagues and there is also a feeling of not letting your team mates down. Which all drives greater productivity that leads to a good feeling within oneself.

We tend to do very well in a group setting, we learn and perform better while in groups, for example if you are doing yoga in a classroom with others around you, you are very likely to complete the entire class than if you were to do it virtually with no one around you. In a group setting the motivation to not give up is much higher.

My experience

In my own case, we as a team tried working remotely and after a few weeks we could see a significant drop in our pace of decision making and progress in our work. A simple exchange of idea turned into a planned call, there by reducing the pace of work. This experience had taught us the value of working in a common workspace.

Summary

While there are many benefits by working from home, but there are significant losses in-terms of creativity, team spirit and exchange of ideas. Work from home is a necessity during a global pandemic but looking into post COVID-19, working from office would still play a dominant role.