To return or not to return? Is that the question?

Since 2020, the topics of "returning to the office", "remote work" and "hybrid work" have filled the headlines and texts of countless articles. I would venture to say that they make the headlines every week. It's almost a soap opera, or a series, since soap operas seem to have gone out of fashion.

Sometimes people argue that "people work well at home"; sometimes people show suspicion or accuse those who prefer not to work in the office of laziness; sometimes people discuss productivity, control, flexibility and adaptability, with alternating positions; sometimes people defend the time and money saved by commuting between home and office, and the benefits for the desired "work-life balance"; there are complaints about the endless meetings; there is the unavoidable general deterioration in our mental health; there is the claim that it is in the office that people collaborate and are creative; or that we have to respect diversity, in both the broad and narrow sense, in terms of preferences for working styles and ways of working. And organizations are torn between the fear of losing people, who seem to be fleeing like never before, and the efforts to lure them back, not wanting to lose sight of them or disregard the sometimes huge investments in creating the "offices of the future".

Let's make it simple. Who knows the future (of offices and work)? Beliefs and fictions aside, I don't think anyone does yet. Who knows what people need? Since it's much, much more debatable, it seems to me that the "everyone knows for themselves" position is increasingly valid. But even that I doubt. I'll come back to that. First, a little more soap opera.

Imagine a couple. These two people have lived together for enough years to have a vast collection of shared experiences. In this immaterial archive there are countless irritations, countless quirks and quirks, big and small learnings, tolerance and acceptance, compromises and clashes, similarities and differences, affection and repulsion, certainties that alternate with curiosity that leads to discoveries previously thought impossible. A "normal" couple, one might say, whose relationship could be described with one word: bonhomie.

At a certain stage, each person, in their own way, feels that they should get closer to the other. They feel distanced. Fortunately, they manage to have a good conversation about their situation. They decide to do things differently, to do more by being closer.

Shortly after this conversation, one decides to buy flowers to give to the other. She arrives at the front door, rings the bell instead of using her copy of the key to get in as usual, and waits with the bunch of flowers hidden behind her back. When the door opens, you notice surprise and expectation in the expression of the person who opened it. She instantly feels warmth, which she identifies as confidence, courage and affection, and a little shame, which makes her smile and reveal what she was carrying. When she shows the flowers, she notices that surprise very quickly turns to sadness and expectation to disappointment.

- "What's with the face?" asked the person carrying the flowers.

- "This is further proof that you don't listen to me..." replied the man who didn't even make a move to receive them.

- "What do you mean? We had agreed to do something different, to do more to get closer. I know you love flowers, so I bought you a bunch of roses, like I haven't done in a long time."

- "Yes, I love flowers, but I hate red roses."

This is an example of what can be called "parallel communication". Two people talking about the same subject, with apparently aligned intentions but with different understandings, feelings and, consequently, conclusions and repercussions. This is often the case when the topic in question, the source of disagreement or misunderstanding, is deeper than what is being discussed on the surface or, for one reason or another, is opaque to the person addressing it.

I'm going to entertain the hypothesis that something similar to the previous story will happen in relation to the "return to the office" theme. On the surface, it seems to be a dispute between "control" and "freedom". We realized that we could work well from home, sometimes even better, when we were forced to. By instinct, we tend to react badly when a benefit is taken away. No one likes having to return a gift they've been given and love. After realizing that it's possible, that it might even be better, to have a remote or hybrid/flexible work regime, why should I be forced to leave home again to work? On the other side, there are valid arguments. It seems that when we are in each other's presence, creativity and the ability to collaborate flourish. In addition, the culture of groups, teams and organizations also seems to be generated and maintained more easily when people are close together. And there is another argument related to isolation, which in turn is associated with mental health. Although there is evidence to support these links, it seems to me to be a rather self-serving argument.

Some people's need for control clashes with others' desire for freedom. It is reminiscent of Foucault's "docile bodies", where those who ran factories, prisons and hospices employed architectural means and strategies of bodily control in order to better control their occupants. Today, in the world of work, the body is less controlled, but the idea of control remains. It's not just bodies that are meant to be docile, but minds. Even the body has to be involved in the infamous, incessant and sequential meetings that require physical presence, even at a distance. It's a form of body and mind control, mediated by technology, even if that is the conscious intention.

One proof that little is known about the future of work is the obvious contradiction that can be seen in large technology organizations. If, on the one hand, they make remote working possible by creating the tools used by the most people in the world for this purpose, on the other hand, it is these same organizations that are calling their people back to their offices, quite vehemently. Zoom, Google, Salesforce, Meta, Amazon and Apple are just a few of the biggest and best-known companies adopting positions of strength against remote working.

The panopticon and factory floors found their corporate equivalents in cubicles, then in the open space concept and now we have the offices of the future, designed for "chance encounters and creative and collaborative environments", which are more like euphemisms. What's more, everything can now be seen and we are all seen through the technologies we carry and without which we can no longer work (I'm referring above all to the huge slice of "knowledge workers", leaving aside, although not completely, many other activities and professions that are still indispensable). Even at home, we are "trapped" by technology, as Byung-Chul Han warns us in his various books and John Berger in "Meanwhile".

The most severe prison is metaphysical in its nature, which is between our feelings and ideas. That's why it's also in our bodies. It is the worst prison of all. It's not because it's invisible, it no longer is for many of us. It's too obvious to ignore that we are "in crisis". Climate crisis, financial crisis, war crises, humanitarian crises. You'd think that with so many supposed advances and so much evolution we'd be better off. We are, but at the same time, we're also much worse off. On an individual level, there are more and more people dissatisfied with what they do; more people dealing with serious health problems (physical and mental), regardless of their age; inequalities have not diminished, on the contrary. We are consuming more, producing more, spending more, polluting more, living longer but not better.

Prison is not invisible, but it is diffuse. That's why it's hard to identify and name. It's the prison we all live in, the prison we all live with, despite the inequalities. It's a prison that goes beyond the surface. The world of work is broken and it's breaking our lives. No one is right, we are all wrong. We all need to change: people, organizations and institutions. To find out what we need to change, at all levels, we have to ask the right questions and pay attention to what really matters. Is "to go back to the office or not to go back to the office?" the one that matters most?

Written for Link to Leaders on September 22, 2023, published on October 2, 2023.