From home office romance to office reality
This article was published as a piece by Martina Rahmfeld on OfficeRoxx, the blog for new work.
Why should employees return to the office? What are the hopes? Primarily, most companies are concerned with better communication, living a shared culture, fostering innovation, and encouraging unplanned exchange—in other words, serendipity. Perhaps there is also a degree of control involved. But by and large, these are entirely understandable aspects that companies hope will improve or simplify things when employees are back on-site more frequently.
What if remote work itself isn't the problem at all?
The problem is that many of these issues existed before. If you look at studies on remote or hybrid work, they all reach different conclusions—whether from Stanford, the OECD, or EBS. Does this perhaps show that the location of work is less relevant than factors like internal communication, culture, and leadership? And what does that mean for better collaboration?
I am a strong advocate for individual solutions. There are companies that function perfectly well entirely remotely, but that is not true for everyone. For the others, I believe it is essential to focus on three things:
- A clear understanding and commitment regarding which location—and that includes the office—is best suited for which purpose.
- Creating a space that actually meets these requirements.
- Clear, transparent communication. As soon as a company works remotely, this means that communication must take place digitally so that those in the office and those working remotely are equally included.
Mastering the balancing act between home office romance and office reality
On one hand, it is about viewing the "home office romance"—such as undisturbed work and less time wasted—in a realistic light. Because as soon as I lack solutions for handling formal and informal exchange digitally, friction will occur, and teamwork will suffer. This doesn't mean everyone has to come into the office, but strategies for collaboration must be found.
On the other hand, it is about understanding that a simple return to the office will not solve old problems; on the contrary, they will be compounded by employee dissatisfaction.
Let us therefore try to use this apparent balancing act to collaborate better and take the best of both worlds: good, suitable spaces both in the corporate office and outside it, combined with functional, transparent communication and, above all, employees and teams who can consciously leverage these advantages.