Rodd Wagner Contributor
May 26, 2020,04:54pm EDT
It could get really
weird going back to the office.
There could be
staggered shifts at some companies to reduce the number of people at the doors
and in the hallways. Arrive at your assigned time.
Someone in a
spacesuit might insist on taking your temperature, which is both intrusive and an
imperfect indicator of whether you’re carrying coronavirus. Let
it go.
You’ll need to keep
the same distance from your coworkers as you would if they had not showered for
a few days. Bring a mask. Wave and smile enough that they can see your eyes
squint, since they won’t be able to see your mouth.
Don’t touch the
copy machine, a stapler, a coffee pot or anything any of them touched unless
you wiped it down before or washed your hands after, or both. Bring hand
sanitizer.
Meetings will be
held in the big conference rooms. Keep your distance as you file in. You’ll
have at least two empty seats on either side of you. Bring disinfectant wipes.
You’ll have to sit
by yourself or eat at your desk during your assigned mealtime. Bring your
lunch.
When you first
return, the pipes in the building may have been unused for so long that you could catch
Legionnaires’ disease from them. Bring water.
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While it would be
great if those cubicle walls were a barrier against the virus, the current
evidence indicates they are no
guarantee. “Many workers will find a mess of masking tape, plastic
sheets, police tape, floor decals, and a host of half-baked design solutions in
the name stemming the spread of Covid-19,” wrote Quartz’s design
and architecture reporter. Bring your newfound germaphobia.
Be prepared for new
experiences, like watching the guy with asthma run from the building when the
woman with seasonal allergies has a sneezing fit. Or being notified to stay
home when someone in your building tests positive. Or not being able to go to
the funeral of the woman who was planning to retire next year, the one who was
your mentor. Or being mad at whoever brought the virus into the office – until
you realize it might have been you. Bring your patience and compassion.
It’s a lot to think
about, and not a single neuron of it is aimed at the latest project, the new
batch of code, the next contract or anything related to what your company
sells. This is just what it takes now to get to work and back.
If you’re one of
the millions who have been working from home (one poll found
47% of those employed had not left home to go to work in the
previous week), chances are you haven’t had to consider all the adjustments
that the coronavirus will impose on office life. But leaders at your company
certainly have. They’ve been running cost/benefit analyses on the various
options. They’re seeing a lot of costs and not many benefits to calling you
back.
What you’ve had to
do in the past to get to your desk – whether late trains, driving through
snowstorms, day care cancellations, car trouble or even battling the flu – has
been your problem. This time it’s also the company’s responsibility. By
government fiat and its own imperative to avoid interruptions, the onus is on
the business to redesign the office, stagger the shifts, install
hand-sanitizing stations, hire more cleaning people, play hall monitor and keep
paying the lease on a building where they must now find more space for you to
work, further away from everyone else.
The leaders of many
companies are, of course, wondering how much work you’re getting done. Is the
time lost to the kids studying from home and the chaos of the new puppy
compensated for by not having to make the commute or care much about what
you’re wearing from the waist down? You might be disoriented, distracted and
subsequently less productive, they worry.
But then they
imagine you at your desk with your hand sanitizer, wipes, mask, water, lunch,
and your brain all keyed up about what and who is safe. They calculate the
expense and time of getting you to your desk, where you will be potentially
exposed to the coronavirus while using resources needed by fellow employees
whose jobs can’t be done from home. And they project that while a vaccine may
not be here until early 2021 or later, you’re probably figuring out a workable
routine with the kids and the puppy. And pants.
Not surprising,
tech companies are jumping in first because digital output produced from a home
office is indistinguishable from ones and zeroes assembled at the corporate
headquarters. “As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company,” CEO Tobi
Lutke tweeted on Thursday. “We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that
we can rework them for the new reality. And after that, most will permanently
work remotely. Office centricity is over.”
Others will follow,
perhaps not with such blanket declarations, because desk workers at those firms
may sometimes need to interact with production teams or do something hands-on.
But the hassles of working safely at the office are so great, the previous
routines have by now been so disrupted for so long and new habits are now so
well on their way to being locked in that the “default” option on most days for
office workers will be working from home.
“If you are coming
and working at your desk, you certainly could do that from home,” Nielsen CEO
David Kenny told The New York
Times. “We have leases that are coming due, and it’s absolutely
driving those kinds of decisions. . . . I have done an about-face on this.”
“We’ve proven we
can operate with no footprint,” Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman told Bloomberg.
“Can I see a future where part of every week, certainly part of every month, a
lot of our employees will be at home? Absolutely.”
Just as companies
are “withdrawing guidance” on their future financial outcomes, no one knows
exactly where the flight to home offices will lead. Will office hours become
stricter to maintain work-like balance or more relaxed to accommodate the
midday demands around the house? Will brand-compliant digital backgrounds for
video conferences replace the décor of the guest bedroom? Will digital
surveillance replace the boss who dropped by your desk unannounced, or will it
spark a worker revolt and new privacy laws? Will socializing in the
neighborhood replace the office water cooler? Will the days of the week
continue to blur? It’s too early to say.
What seems clear is
that for huge swaths of the population, the nature of work and teamwork has
changed. And there’s little chance of going back.
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