Working remotely and flexibly was never on the 'to do' list of most companies in the world.
Following hot on the heels of the pandemic season a new virus is spreading through the minds of leaders, managers and shareholders the world over: the return-to-office bug. Like Covid it is easily caught and hard to defend against. By contrast, however, we can address it with reason, not vaccines.
Obviously that is a somewhat idealistic rendering of reality. For many people who were still doing manual labour the inability to go in to work was a calamity. The jobs of many of the support staff in offices became redundant almost overnight. The second flaw relates to a romanticisation of the pre-Covid office. Far from being an environment consistently creative and collaborative, many offices were mired in problems. Commuting, alone, could chew up hours of a person’s day. Then you had disagreements about parking, about desks, about facilities and about air-conditioning.
Does this seem, even at first glance, to be true? I have visited many corporate offices with zero culture. Go and walk around a huge warehouse full of packers or a big call centre and ask yourself whether the physical location is contributing to a healthy culture for staff. In our business we have moved from our company being a place to a company being an idea. That idea, it turns out, can exist on Slack or on WhatsApp. It can travel to coffee shops and walks in the park. And it is present, at least some of the time, on video calls and in the work we do. It doesn’t make the job of building culture easier, but I have to tell you, it also doesn’t make it harder. It’s just different - and that’s the part that many leaders can’t stomach.
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