Most People Would Rather Work From Home, But Here’s Why That’s A Mistake
Whenever I talk to people about their grand goals and dreams for the post-Covid world, most seem to have an assumption that there will be a flurry of socialization and outpouring of communal love once this dreadful pandemic is behind us.
And, yes, in the first days and even weeks after we can all gather in groups again, I wouldn’t be surprised if people flocked in celebration on the streets hugging and kissing each other like we see in old footage from 1945 when the war ended. After all, we have a LOT of pent-up desire to socialize after a year of keeping our personal company small.
But I have legitimate worries that such massive in-person gatherings and a new sense of community will only be a large flash in the pan. Once we settle into our “new normal” after we are all vaccinated, we are at risk of becoming even less socialized than our pre-pandemic selves. Allow me to explain.
If there is one thing I’ve noticed while covering this pandemic, it’s that Covid-19 has sped up a lot of trends. Industries that were slowly dying, like movie theatres, were now quickly being put out of their misery.
In a world where people are cooking less for themselves, the social isolation of the pandemic increased the trend ten-fold of people ordering takeout online, leaving even the smallest of restaurants scrambling to hire third-party delivery services, even if they all can’t afford the huge service fees.
And the trend that’s taken off, which we will unfortunately never reverse, is the working-from-home one. Even before March of 2020 when our lives changed forever, the rapid advancement of digital and computer technology gave people the ability to turn their home into an office.
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Pre-pandemic, however, a lot of businesses were still iffy on allowing employees to work from home. Many employers were worried that people would be less productive. But now that the pandemic has proven how easily office workers can make due away from the headquarters, companies must be giddy about the amount of money they can save in the future from renting less office space.
I recently interviewed Jason Brunt from Clayton Developments who is hoping to build 900 apartment units on a Dartmouth site. He, out of the blue, mentioned that he envisions constructing some of the apartment buildings with office space for tenants on the lower floor since he predicts more and more people will be working from home in the near future. So, the writing is definitely on the wall that the time of hundreds of people working together in cubicles within one building is coming gradually to an end.
Not surprisingly, most people I talk to applaud this change. There are undeniable benefits to working from home. If you have young children you would like to spend more time with, it’s a huge bonus to be able to work from home. You also save so much money and time (and reduce environmental damage) from not commuting back and forth every day.
But such benefits will come at a huge cost. Before the pandemic, we lived in a society that was already becoming decreasingly detached from one another. Social media and “smart” devices have pushed us to a digital world where we no longer have to take the risk of meeting in-person to feel like we’re socializing. More and more people would prefer spending the weekend talking over a headset to strangers while playing Call of Duty than organizing a dance party.
Human beings are animals that love convenience. Gathering in large groups and socializing face-to-face takes time and, most importantly, effort and stress; but it can also be rewarding. “Socializing” in a virtual form takes no effort and is, unfortunately, less rewarding.
For many people, the traditional workspace is one of the last places where people are forced to interact in a normal social setting. Depending on your work environment, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. But I would argue that a workforce benefits way more, on average, from having employees mix and mingle in person versus having Zoom calls!
When you socialize in person you quickly realize that using words is only one fraction of what it takes to have a conversation. Things like using facial expressions and body language are much more pronounced in real life compared to a virtual meeting using web cameras.
When I look back at my first reporter job for a small newspaper back in 2012, it’s hard to picture what things would have been like if I didn’t have an office space. If I were to have that same job today, there’s no way the company would pay to have an office for just four employees; we’d definitely be working from home to save on expenses if nothing else.
Having a communal meeting space meant that story ideas were shared through open, natural conversation, on a daily basis. Residents of the town knew to call the office or drop by physically if they had a big scoop to share with me. I would have missed out on a lot of good stories if we didn’t have the common ground five days a week, for 8.5 hours a day. If it wasn’t for the office space I also wouldn’t have become good friends with two of my coworkers who I still keep in touch with to this day.
But what I worry most about this new reality of working from home is the fact that it promotes further isolation in a world that seems to be getting lonelier, more divided, and fractured. So please keep the office space open as it is quickly becoming one of the last daily meeting spaces left.
Derek Montague is a reporter with Huddle. E-mail him your thoughts or story ideas: [email protected]