“No man is an island entire of itself.” - John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions 1624
“I don’t want to survive, I want to live!” - Captain B. McCrea, Wall-E, 2008
The definitive fork in the road for the return to office has officially arrived.
On 5 May 2023, the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) announced the end of COVID-19 as a global health emergency. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that, amidst the downward trend of COVID-19’s severity in the past 12 months, most countries have “returned to life as we knew it before COVID-19.”
Part of that return to life as we knew it, is the return to the office.
Since mid-2022, some of the world’s biggest companies have been implementing return-to-office mandates: Amazon (3 days), Apple (3 days), Chipotle (4 days), Disney (4 days), Goldman Sachs (5 days), Google (3 days) IBM (3 days), JP Morgan (5 days) , Meta (3 days), Salesforce (3-4 days), Starbucks (3 days). Twitter (40 hours), and Uber (50%).
But the working-from-home era is holding on strong. Employees worldwide have been resisting the pushback to their cubicles. According to WFH Research, the majority of office workers able to work from home do so: 46% of full-time employees work from home some of the time, and 19% are home-based exclusively.
While there is resistance on the side of the workers to return, the decision-makers are answering back in kind. Amazon knocked back a petition with 30,000 signatures from employees opposing their return-to-office policy. Apple and Google are allegedly enforcing their three days per week mandates by tracking office attendance via building access cards and factoring office time into performance reviews. At Twitter, Elon Musk emailed his workforce at 2.30 am stating the “office is not optional.”
This civil/cold tug-of-war for the fate of the office and the modern worker continues to be fought in businesses around the world. Each side is at an impasse. But now that we’re officially out of the global health crisis, it’s a bad omen for the hybrid working era. We’ve already seen the Great Resignation. We’re about to see the Great Return.
Productivity is moot, this is about governance
Businesses are pushing for a return to the status quo, despite the workforce cry, “We’re just as productive at home.” But that productivity counterargument is not the Uno Draw 4 card we like to think it is. As has already been demonstrated by the existing return-to-office policies, businesses are not concerned with the productivity question. For the same reason, Lionel Messi has moved to the United States to play for Inter Miami, rather than remotely dialing in during the games via Zoom. Businesses are team sports. They want to observe and control the field of play. The bosses can’t run the team if the players aren’t all on the same field, playing the same game.
The push for the office isn’t about productivity. It’s about governance. In a May 2023 Staff Reports study, it was observed at an American Fortune 500 firm that “workers who initially chose remote jobs were 8 percent less productive than those who initially chose on-site jobs.” This difference came down to worker selection. Working from home doesn’t rewire your DNA. Unproductive employees don’t necessarily become more productive at home. Productive employees don’t necessarily become unproductive at home.
Tech sector effect: a first-world white-collar problem
The tech sector in the United States were the trendsetters for remote work during the heights of COVID-19. They’ve also been the key influencers for the return to the office. With the digital economy comprising 15% of the global GDP, they’re at the forefront of the office vs hybrid work war. They were the canary in the coal mine at the height of the pandemic. Now, that canary is dusting the soot from its wings, picking up an axe, and flying back down into the Heart of Darkness.
But let’s wrestle with this fact. Being able to question the idea of returning to the office is in an enviable position of privilege. It’s sobering to keep this fight in perspective. The return to the office dilemma is primarily a first-world, white-collar problem. As such, workers need to tread with caution. So far, employers are holding back all their cards. Merely because their hands have been tied. We’re still feeling the effects of the Great Resignation. The labor shortages, demands for competitive wages, the threat of a possible recession, and office lease struggles have employers’ backs against the wall.
But business won’t be disempowered for much longer. The further away we move from the pandemic, the more power and control businesses will reclaim. We’re not in a transition. We’re in a negotiation. My advice to my fellow workers: we run the risk of losing it all if we hold out for more. Once upon a time, three days in the office would have been the dream. If the return to the office doesn’t mean all the time, that’s a win for work-life balance. We need to cash out now before our hot hand ends and big business’s lucky streak kicks in.
We’re forgetting the social contract. The trade-off for coming into the office is a salary. But let’s not forget, working in an office is a cushy predicament. It’s not driving trucks on ice roads or mining three miles underground. Before you complain about the three days when you need to come into the office, take stock. Working from home any day with the stability of a full-time salary is enviable to blue-collar workers or anybody who is self-employed. We should count our blessings.
No man is an island: time to land Spaceship You
I want to propose a perspective. Rather than see the return as a great tragedy. Can we not see this return as just great?
In Pixar’s Wall-E, 22nd-century humankind has become unfit, infantile orbs of pleasure and instant gratification. They kill their brain cells with mindless entertainment and consumerism. They outsource everything except breathing and eating to artificial intelligence and technology.
In the film, humanity’s indifference to ecological imbalance destroyed Planet Earth. Any humans left alive escaped our world on a spaceship, waiting until their home planet was safe to support sentient life again. Retreating into safety while waiting for life to return to normal… sound familiar?
Here’s a similarly cartoonish, but stark, portrait of life in 2023…
The modern worker rolls out of bed at 8.50 am. They boot up their laptop in their pajamas to start work by 9.00am. They use ChatGPT and other AI tools to do their work. They order lunch with Uber Eats. They power down their laptop to numb their minds with whatever Netflix or streaming service series they’ve been recommended that week. They have members of their team, who live merely blocks away from them, that they have never met. Those same workers then outcry when their boss asks them to come to the office a mere two days per week…
This isn’t hyperbole, the fight for the office is a fight for humanity. If we’re not careful, we are on a fast track to losing what makes us human. The whole point of lockdowns was to retreat into isolation to protect our way of life. We didn’t each board our “Spaceship You” to stay in orbit around the planet perpetually because it’s comfortable. Life is uncomfortable. We can’t experience the full Albert Camus volume of life from the sanctity of a web browser. We worked from home to survive the pandemic. We survived it. It’s time to step out of our spaceship, off our island, and rejoin civilization. It’s time to continue living again. It’s time for the Great Return.
