Should we ever return to our offices again?
Photo: Karan Madhok
With today’s fast-paced digital connectivity, critiques of the office spaces asked if the cost of infrastructure, the inconvenience of the daily commute, and the needless increase in the carbon footprint was worth it. The pandemic proved them emphatically right.
Many more shutdowns now, across the nation. Curfews and blockades. The fear of another massive wave. Full hospitals and empty schools. And yet again, the workforce being encouraged, as much as possible, to stay put where they are, store away their work-outfits, and settle down for more labour from home.
Once again, the return to our much-awaited brick and mortar workplace has been stymied by the emergence of the omicron variant of Covid-19. Perhaps now is a good time to pause a moment and ask: Why do we need to return to office, at all? What will be accomplished by being physically present at our ‘work desks’ that hasn’t been accomplished by working from home? Even before the pandemic descended upon us like Thor’s hammer to upend the way we worked, there was a growing realisation—especially among those working in the technology/knowledge industry—of the compelling arguments against people sitting down to work together in an office space.
With today’s fast-paced digital connectivity and the slew of productivity tools at their disposal, critiques of the office spaces rightly asked if the cost of infrastructure, the inconvenience of the daily commute, and the needless increase in the carbon footprint was worth it. The pandemic proved them emphatically right. The fact that gargantuan organisations with gargantuan teams could perform more or less seamlessly working remotely showed the world that much of the pre-pandemic workplace ecosystem was unnecessary and redundant.
In his essay “In Praise of Idleness”, twentieth century philosopher Bertrand Russell explained why work—or too much work—was a bad, and even an evil thing. In the concluding remark of that essay, Russell added, “Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.”
From reduced greenhouse emissions and cleaner air to less use of environment degrading paper and plastic, there are many benefits from jettisoning the office in favour of a work from home dispensation. The most blatantly obvious one is the lessening of the endemic traffic congestion that is witnessed across the metros, small towns and even villages of India.
Taking a positively non-philosophical and an eminently practical view of the matter, a 2015 study (much before the pandemic) found that working from home enhanced productivity by 13%, which further increased up to 22% in the case of workers who continued to work in a similar fashion beyond nine months. Now that we know that work from home is not only possible, but better (with the exception of the industries where it is simply not possible), shouldn’t we allow office workers the option of working from home permanently versus returning to their old office routines? According to research along these lines conducted by business communication platform Slack involving 4700 knowledge workers, a majority of officegoers hailing from that sector actually didn’t wish to return to the old model. While 72% expressed their willingness to opt for a hybrid-a combination of remote and office-based work module, a mere 12% wanted a return to the old way of doing things.
There are those who would tell you that work-from-office needs to be phased out for the good of the planet, just as the internal combustion engine is being phased out to save the world from air pollution. From reduced greenhouse emissions and cleaner air to less use of environment degrading paper and plastic, there are many benefits from jettisoning the office in favour of a work from home dispensation. The most blatantly obvious one is the lessening of the endemic traffic congestion that is witnessed across the metros, small towns and even villages of India.
The “great resignation” movement that we are witnessing around the world is the clearest manifestation of this latent human desire to take control of our work lives. As many as 4.3 million people in the U.S. resigned from their jobs in the month of August this year. The distress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic made the people take a long and hard look at their work-life balance and what was wrong with it.
Of course, the situation at home in India—where decent jobs elude so many of our educated youth—would not warrant this kind of a phenomenon taking root at the macro level. But we can still see similar rumblings in the rarified world of our technology workers who seamlessly straddle the global workplace. Those of us who can ask that question are doing so already.
Many corporates in India have enthusiastically adopted and even pushed the flexi or hybrid work model. A number of large companies are opening offices in Tier II and Tier III towns to make it convenient for people to come to work in the towns they grew up in. Jobs are now going to where the people are rather than the other way round. Working professional who can afford it are renting or buying bigger homes to make it possible to both set up home-offices and make e-schooling convenient for their children.
The signs about the acceptance of work-from-home as mainstream way of life are all around us. For every Slack, Twitter and Spotify propagating the work-from-home model, there are Indian companies like Tata Steel and TCS affording the same convenience to their employees. According to Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran, only a fourth of its employees would be expected to work from office on any given day by 2025. Top IT companies like Tech Mahindra, Wipro and Cap Gemini have set up shop in the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar region signifying a solidification of the trend that sees large corporates opening offices in Tier II and Tier III cities and towns.
All that said, however, the human need to socialise in the personal company of their colleagues is as strong as ever, and this is true even of the younger lot who are digital natives and have started their careers working remotely. This generation, too, pines for water-cooler conversations and having a beer with a buddy after office. They may want to discover what office life is all about. According to a survey carried out by Jane Kellogg Murray senior editor with job portal Indeed.com 50% of the respondents admitted to missing even their daily commute! As many as 73% missed socialising in person. This holds as true for many Indian employees, especially the younger ones, as it does for their American counterparts. According to an article in The Hindu, young people in India, especially those hailing from small towns prefer to work from plush airconditioned offices replete with modern amenities—a far cry from the operating conditions at home.
Another survey, titled, “Future of work” that was launched by LinkedIn and carried out by Censuswide recently came up with some interesting findings by collecting insights from 1108 respondents spanning the age group 16 to 68. All of these people worked from home during the pandemic, and it was found that 86% of Indian professionals would rather have a hybrid model than a work from home one. As many as 71% of the respondents believed that working from the office would lead to their bosses viewing them more favorably. Importantly, 89% of the professionals surveyed believed that working from office would help them make more money, because of more hours worked.
And yet, times change and social mores evolve. Who knows how work will occur in the future, with AI powered machines and robots taking on more and more of the functions performed by people? The new AI, machine learning and robotics determined work paradigm may, where most of us may have truly little or nothing to do at all may well necessitate looking at introducing a universal basic income programme to ensure that everyone is able to get by comfortably in life. However, according to a paper published by Andrew White, the digitisation of the economy is going to widen inequality on account of its ability to deliver greater profits to a small number of already rich organisations and individuals. While the structural flaws of the digital economy may need to be investigated to find redress, one needs to focus on providing a universal basic income guarantee to support workers in extended periods of enforced idleness.
The need for a universal basic income programme in a country with its vast inequities of income and resources is glaringly obvious, in light of the disruptions witnessed in large parts of the Indian economy after the pandemic. During the first wave of the pandemic, Anil K. Antony argued on The Hindu that a universal basic income programme is the way to deal with an impending job crisis. It is also looked at as an effective poverty alleviation tool.
That after-work beer may be the least of one’s worries in the times to come. Future workers may be more concerned with sharpening and upgrading their technical skills to make themselves qualify for the evolving available jobs over the next decade. Conversely, with machines taking over, humankind may solve all its existential problems and live off the bounties provided by this efficient world, without human supervision. This new reality would throw up its own existential dilemmas. A Matrix Resurrections—without the resurrection of work?
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Vipin Labroo is a content creator, author and PR consultant. A member of the Nonfiction Authors Association, he has years of corporate experience working with an eclectic range of clients, writing press releases, articles, blogs, white papers, research reports, website content, eBooks and so on across segments like technology, business & marketing, internet marketing, healthcare, fashion, real estate, travel and so on. You can find him on Twitter: @labroovipin and Instagram: @vipin_labroo.
