Concurrents: WFH. RTO. BFD. 

Bill Wittland

It appears that you can predictably expect that if a phrase becomes overused it will soon be shortened into an acronym and, in turn, that acronym will become nearly as overused as its origin phrase. Some cases in point in the above title. Rather quickly the phenomenon of working from home that exploded during the recent pandemic became, you guessed it, WFH. As the pandemic subsided and employers began calling their staff back to the offices they had previously occupied, that phenomenon became RTO. I’m guessing I don’t need to explain the type of big deal this all became and continues even. 

The progression of those workplace patterns has spawned, it would also seem, a barrage of dueling data points. What percentage of workers are just as effective working at home and shouldn’t be required to return to their centralized company offices? There’s a survey for that. How much time is saved by not commuting to corporate offices? That was a study. What’s the impact on the corporate carbon footprint of all the commuting? More reporting. How is the corporate real estate market contracting, especially in larger cities. More percentages. And the surveys and studies continue. In short, there has been a lot of commentary and no small measure of rush-to-judgement conclusions. Most of them misguided, or at best, incomplete. 

And, of late, we are hearing about prominent corporate leaders issuing mandatory return-to-the-office edicts. Yeah sure, that will work well. 

There is an increasing danger that these issues are potential distractions from the less flashy, yet fundamentally crucial issues that should be driving our thinking and conversations and planning about the role of the office workplace. For years, the best designers have been focusing on a set of core concepts for all of that, but as corporations and organizations formulate ideas about how to use the workplace, who should be there and when, and the contours the workplace needs to be able to assume at different moments, these concepts now must be considered by a wider range of other business decision makers. These organizational leaders need to pay attention to core issues, such as: 

  • Tasks — the office workplace is populated by an array of people doing a variety of different tasks; it’s time that decisions about where and in what setting those tasks should be performed should be shaped significantly by the tasks themselves; and if that means dividing time in different places because of changing task demands, the workplace needs to conform.
  • Optimal Interactions — even more important than task-focused design, the workplace location needs to be chosen and the space configured based on optimal interactions; that may mean not merely settling for a remote connection between people when a face-to-face interaction will create a proportionately and significantly enhanced interaction; we are learning the shortcomings of video-based interactions and need to take those shortcomings seriously. 
  • Outcomes — for too long, there has not been a great deal of precision achieved in shaping work processes in ways that fuel the desired outcomes of the group, team, or department; if the processes are not deliberately identified and strategically implemented, how can the location possibly be selected, and the space configured to effectively support the work being done? 
  • Engagement/detachment — there is significant focus these days on the importance of a sense of belonging, and that seems nowhere more important than in work teams, organizations, and related social groupings; the choices about where work is performed and how people are supported in doing that work are central to achieving appropriate degrees of engagement and belonging. 
  • Culture — finally, the enlightened priority for many organizations today is the impact of workplace culture, paying attention to the behaviors, symbols, rituals, and attitudes that shape an organization and its workplace; shaping the culture of a group of people —and using the workplace to do it — can make a significant impact on performance, loyalty, and overall success. 

These types of issues are the real BFD in configuring workplaces that truly support people, their work, and company success. These, and others, are the workplace design issues that matter today, not heavy-handed mandates by corporate leaders about who comes to the office which days.  

In addition, it is important to note that these planning decisions are more effectively made by groups and subsets within an organization. Overarching mandates that try to impact an entire company are likely not going to effectively address the real needs of specific departments and teams. CEOs need to bite their tongues about company-wide policies about the workplace. 

Finally, indulge me in another terminology rant. The sooner we abandon any focus on hybrid work, the better. In reality, all work is hybrid. Always has been. Except for some rare jobs or tasks that are monolithically repetitive (and most of those have been or are being automated, and should, by the way), most work has always been a mix of tasks, places to perform them, people with whom to collaborate, tools to use, new goals to achieve, etc. Work has ALWAYS been hybrid, always a mix. The pandemic didn’t cause that. We simply have improved the technology tools that expand our options for the places and processes that impact our work. It’s not a matter of embracing hybrid work or not. False distinction. It is, instead, the more complex and more important challenge to design workplaces that align with work and the people who get it done. Designers have always known that. Corporate leaders need to catch up.