Future Space

Loads of people are proclaiming that future mingling will be much less prevalent than in the past.  There’s even discussion of whether we’ll need offices in the future, for example here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210721-whats-the-purpose-of-the-office-and-do-we-still-need-it

There are compelling reasons to believe, however, that after we’ve all been vaccinated we’ll continue to find ourselves in the same places with others—for reasons way beyond our desire to simply be sociable.

We will continue to gather because we can only really communicate with each other when we are all in the same place at the same time.  We send messages to each other in a number of ways and with technology that’s currently available, many of those channels are blocked.  When we need to work with others to develop a strategy or come up with a creative or innovative solution, for example, we only really understand the nuance of what others are presenting when we’re in the same place at the same time.

We’re used to using words and the inflections in our voices to talk with others.  But our facial expressions, gestures, body orientations, eye contact, distance from each other, and even our scent (not whether we’re sweating or not, we actually smell differently based on our mood, for example) all provide vital information to whomever we’re spending time with.  For example, whether someone maintains eye contact or not as they’re presenting an idea is a tremendously important signal that we use to better understand what they are truly communicating.

When we specifically start to think about the value of offices we have to remember first of all that not all of us have options in our homes for work places where we could possibly work to our full potential—we share our homes with other people who aren’t as committed to our excelling at work as we are, for example.  Some people need to go into the office, literally, to get any solo or group work done.  With the rise of activity-based workplaces, for more and more people, there’s a place where they work that supports the sort of work they’re doing, alone or with others, strategic or tactical.  Also, the physical forms of workplaces send us important messages about our employer’s goals and values, in ways websites and electronic links just can’t, and when we’re away from work those fade from our mind and without those signals being top-of-mind our commitment to our employer can fade—just the way it does when we can’t really, really effectively communicate with others we work with.

Keep investing in those work-at-home clothes because there are signs that we’ll be working from home more in the future than we’ve done in the past, but don’t ditch your at-work outfits just yet.