The Office

It's been nearly twenty years since I worked full-time in an office. Even then, for the last couple of years, I only went in four days a week. My deal with my boss was that I'd work from home on Fridays, with the understanding that unless there was a meeting I had to all into during the afternoon, my work from home day ended at noonish. This worked out pretty well and got me on the glide path to freelance work that eventually put me on the glide path to retirement. 

These days, I do work a little. Very little. Last year, what I made covered charitable and political donations. I have a couple of clients I do regular writing gigs for, and a couple of clients I do (small) projects for on an ad hoc basis. For 2021, whatever happens happens. But whatever happens will be worked from home.

But for the millions who've been working from home thanks to the pandemic, 2021 will likely mean some sort of re-entry to The Office by later in the year, once the vaccine has been widely distributed. 

So what's going to happen to all those who've been commuting by rolling out of bed and shuffling from bedroom to home office (which may well be in the bedroom). Who've been working in clothing that's so casual it makes good old "business casual" and "jeans on Friday" look like white collar and cutaways for the men, and ball gowns and lorgnettes for the ladies. Who've gotten used to lunch with their kiddos, and being able to rest their feet on their puppers when they're Zooming.

Inquiring minds at the Washington Post:

...asked human resources advisers, workplace designers, employment lawyers and compensation analysts to share predictions for a year that could bring back some normalcy while returning people to workplaces that may never be the same. (Source: WaPo)

Here's what the experts are thinking about the brave new work world.  

Location, location, location

If home is where the office is, recruitment will go national, and that has salary implications. A survey done this fall by an HR advisory outfit found that a bit over one-quarter of respondents would be tying compensation for full-time work from homers to their location. 

This is going to be a tricky one. On the one hand, why pay someone working from Sheep Creek, Montana, the same amount you'd pay a worker who chooses to live in San Francisco. But for a Silicon Valley firm, those salaries got inflated by geography to begin with. And for all the hype about working remotely, face time (not FaceTime) still matters, for both employers and employees. So everyone is not going to be able to work fulltime from Sheep Creek. 

The guess is that there'll still be a location premium paid for those who work and live in the expensive areas, as there is still a perceived value to having workers work at least occasionally in person. Those who can work fully remotely and decide to decamp to lower-cost areas may get to keep their pay, but are likely to see salary increases that are lower than what their city mouse colleagues get. 

Video meetings aren't going anywhere but the technology will use AI to get, ahem, "smarter."

Some of the largest platforms will begin using artificial intelligence to recognize and track certain gestures participants make, automate to-do items and help manage the challenges of workers split between work and home.

Zoom will introduce a feature that lets everyone participating in a meeting room while sitting together in a physical conference room be depicted in their very own Zoom box so that the in-person workers and the work from homers will be, Zoom-wise, on an even playing field. 

Of course, if the person running the meeting is sitting in the physical conference room with some of the attendees, they'll still know who's there in person. And their interactions will be different. 

Cisco (WebEx) for their part will be rolling out something called "gesture recognition," doing away with the need for surveys or thumbs up/thumbs down emojis when the meeting host wants to "read the room." Wonder whether there'll be some gestures that just don't get recognized. And yes, I am thinking middle finger. For now, Cisco is focusing on gestures, but they may be moving on to facial expressions like eyerolls. Ugh.....(Where ugh = eyeroll.) 

Microsoft is concentrating on features like keeping track of to-do items attendees have signed up for. I was often the default note taker at business meetings. I like to think that's because I was a really good note taker, capable of clearly and succinctly boiling down what happened rather than reporting out verbatim. And not (just) because I was often the only woman at the meeting. But this sounds like a good feature, even though I'm betting that my notes would be just plain better than AI-derived ones.

The "hybrid" workplace will be in. And I can absolutely see this model taking hold. 

Google, for instance, is planning a “flexible workweek” starting in September 2021, when, under a pilot plan, employees would be expected to spend three “collaboration days” in the office and work from home the rest of the time.

Sounds like a plan. 

Part-time arrangements will make a comeback. I don't know how widespread these arrangements were to begin with such that putting them in place would represent a comeback. But if someone can get their job done part-time, or share it with another employee, this is an excellent idea. Why not let parents or those with other responsibilities (caregiving for their parents) or avocations or community interests or looking for a glide path to retirement work part time? I'm all for this one!

Other predictions are that, as the pandemic continues through much of 2021, employers will be more focused on worker burn out. And, when workers do start coming back in, there'll be more of an appetite for privacy. Except for the most social of employee animals, anyone who's gotten used to the privacy of working from home is not going to be entirely happy being plunked back down in the middle of an open-office environment. Bubbles will be set up, so that workers are in clusters with those they work most closely with. But the wide open office may become a thing of the past. (On behalf of workers: Yay!)

Then there's the will they/won't they question about vaccinations. Will employers be able to require their workers to get vaccination before returning to work? Or will they offer incentives to nudge them in the vaccination direction?

Whatever happens, ain't no one predicting that things will go back 100% to the way they were in the before times. 

Other than Zoom spying on employees, I say GOOD.