Corporate America has a big problem. It's called real estate. Many companies have too much of it because the workforce has decided that it doesn't need to come back to the office.
As I drove up to the office this morning, I took note of various office building parking lots along the tollway. There was Allstate's huge campus -- deserted. That property has been sold and the workers are either staying home or going to other facilities. Next up... Walgreens. Also pretty empty. Trustmark... empty. Tenneco...empty.
The Abbott Park campus for AbbVie and Abbott looked more populated, but there are a fair number of scientists and production workers who need to be there. At my office building, home to the IT folks, parking was quite good. I went in and walked to my office, saying hello to a few people. But my end of the floor was pretty empty. As the day progressed, I had some folks drop by, and I stopped to say hello to others in the office. But my meetings were on Microsoft Teams.
Pre-COVID, our building was just about maxed out for occupancy. Offices were hard to come by, and the Facilities folks were trying to hold down moves so they could get a handle of space availability. Moves have resumed and we're starting to sort out where people can be to work more effectively when they are in the office. But it is clear that something will need to change -- companies can't continue to pay for space that isn't being fully utilized. That means changes -- likely to "hoteling" sorts of space arrangements. You don't have a permanent spot, but maybe get assigned a "neighborhood" or get together with other folks that you need to collaborate with on a given day. You come to the office when you need to meet or work with others. These arrangements have plusses and minuses. As a manager, I like having a door for employee meetings or discussion of sensitive matters. And no one really wants to have to sit by the boss... People who have experienced these sorts of arrangements say that sitting cheek by jowl with folks means that the office gets loud. The noise level means that people then live with headsets and earbuds in all the time, not really collaborating with those around them. Some people like to "nest". They like to make their office or cube their own, but that is hard to do when you don't have your own space.
I'm a nester.
So it is likely that we will again need to adapt to changes in how we work -- and when we work together in person. But that also means getting folks to willingly come to the office. If you're going to spend a couple hours commuting every day, incurring public transportation or increasing gas expenses, there needs to be a good reason to make the trek. I've found myself surprised to find that I need the social aspect of the office more than I thought, but I also know that sitting in an anonymous, sterile workspace, plugged in to a headset, having meetings online, isn't exactly what I want to come back to. I suspect that we are going to have to learn how to work differently.
So how do we maximize the value of being in the office? There's the million dollar question. As you look through the window into my office, know that there is nothing in that picture that I don't have at home. In fact, as you may have read in a prior post, I have some better things in my home office. I'll quickly admit that I'm lucky in that regard. I have a dedicated office space, high speed Internet, a huge monitor, and a really nice ergonomic chair. But others love to work from their laptop in a recliner or in bed or even at the kitchen table.
For knowledge workers, then, the value of being in the office has to be realized. Management can't talk about sunk cost of facilities, "fairness" to other workers who have to come to a company facility, or collaboration benefits that haven't quite been worked out. As we adapted at the beginning of COVID, we have to adapt once again.
When I think about a collaborative workplace, my mind is drawn to the old Dick Van Dyke Show of the 1960's. The "office" scenes were Dick's character, Rob Petrie, and his office mates putting together comedy sketches and routines for a weekly variety show. The team of writers continually collaborated to put together a show. That type of creative work is all about collaboration. When I was consulting, some projects required us to document a particular business process. We'd go out and gather information from the client, then come back together and document the different elements of the process, making connections between individual elements. Ultimately, we had to find ways to streamline the process. That required some collaboration.
When I think about what I do -- and what many of my colleagues do -- we're quite siloed, working in distinct business processes, cranking out particular pieces of work. Often when we come together with others, they aren't in the cube or office next to us -- they are in Europe, or Asia, or Latin America.
In my mind, then, the question is -- how do we normalize collaboration for otherwise siloed work? We can't force it. We likely have to look at our work differently. Is this a task that we could knock out more quickly if several of us sit down and work through the task? Is there value in a more junior person scribing the decisions made (and thus learning the process and the interpretations)? Do we hold off on answering email until the afternoon? Do we set expectations around what kinds of communications are necessarily synchronous, and which ones are asynchronous? Do we have meeting free days for more focused siloed work, training, and one on one meetings with managers?
Do we change the way that we utilize our workforce? Do our most valuable knowledge workers become an internal consulting force, dedicated to one or two simultaneous projects that are completed in an accelerated manner? Do we identify subject matter experts or do we ensure that subject matter expertise is spread around? Do we silo only the complex, repeatable tasks that can't be moved to a managed service?
The other question is -- how do we hold people accountable when we can't see them every day? That's a huge learning curve for many managers. It requires a change to how we set expectations and define deliverables. Knowledge workers are often firefighters -- having to address an urgent, unexpected need that wasn't in the day's plan. That causes work to be set aside and deliverables delayed. Which then means we have to better define what is important and what can wait -- and how we measure the work we do.
The workplace has been altered in a significant way. The way we work and where we work has been changed. Companies are faced with empty real estate and unhappy employees -- employees who have to work away from home and employees who can work from home, but aren't allowed to do so. These dynamics will force the next change in how work gets done.
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