"You can live anywhere" Goodbye Office New normal in America June 17 13:08

"I can work reasonably well without going to the office." I think that there are not a few people who have such a feeling after actually experiencing telework after the new coronavirus. In April, the National Institute for Economic Research, an American think tank, released a survey result that "37% of jobs in the world can be completed by telework." In the United States, the spread of telework has led to a movement overturning the traditional concept of work and homes. (Washington Bureau reporter Yosuke Yoshitake)

Customer service under the blue sky

"I have received many phone calls on this deck." A seaside town near Silicon Valley in California. Under the blue sky, Mr. Andrew McMillen, an office worker, answered the online interview from my garden.

The man works for a consulting company with an office in Boston on the east coast. Nevertheless, about two months ago I moved to a remote part of the West Coast. The trigger was telework introduced by the company. While working from home, I thought, "This way I can work from anywhere."

Mr. McMillen
"The need for office workers to live in the same area as the office, which has been the norm for a long time, has almost completely disappeared. My friend moved to Hawaii."

However, is it okay for employees to move to such a remote place? We interviewed CEO Ian Campbell of Nucleus Research, a Boston venture company where McMillen works.

Then, once in a while, "Employees can live anywhere". He then told me that on this occasion he was planning to relocate his office to his favorite resort, Miami, Florida.

Lose office

I feel that the spread of telework, triggered by the new coronavirus, is definitely beginning to change American companies and workers. Some companies have made a bold decision to "eliminate the office itself."

New York Manhattan has become a seriously infected area of ​​the new coronavirus. Rafat Ali, who heads the 45-employer venture company Skift, who lives in a central office building called Midtown, decided to withdraw from the building at the end of July, leaving the office.

This company is a company that researches travel consumption trends. This information is sent to the member tour companies and hotels through the Internet. The daily work of employees is research and information collection. And collecting members and advertisements, which are sources of income. It may seem like a trip, but he says that during this time, many of his employees have been able to respond to work by email and phone from home. And if he needed to meet his customers directly, he would have to visit or travel each time, and decided that having a “place” of office was not so meaningful.

“There are so many new technologies that we could never have imagined in this era that we were able to keep in touch with our customers even if we didn't meet face-to-face,” said Ali.

And there is another reason that helped Ali CEO's decision. It is the most expensive office rent in Manhattan, which is said to be the best in the world. In fact, the company's business performance has deteriorated due to sluggish tourism demand due to the new coronavirus. Letting go of the office was the most effective way to save money.

These company decisions are already changing employees. Similar to the companies mentioned above, there are a series of changes in housing. Employees who lived around Manhattan moved to Tennessee in the south and Colorado in the west. Ali predicts that 20% to 25% of employees will change their homes outside New York. Especially in New York, it is said that there is a resistance to subway commuting, which is said to be one of the causes of the spread of infection.

According to a survey of 900 people by the real estate company "RED FIN", 61% in New York and 51 in San Francisco said, "If the company completely switches to telework, consider moving to another city." It went up to %. Will telework bring about dispersion of the population concentrated in the city?

Communication is the challenge

However, is it really okay to lose the office? When I asked Ari CEO this question, he said, "The biggest challenge is to build employee communication." Ali CEO has the philosophy that the trust and solidarity of employees are essential to the operation of a company. An online lunch meeting taught me "I'm already trying." Two people a week to eat together using online calls.

When I asked them to see it in late May, a total of 17 people participated on that day. Have a chat while eating rice at home or on the terrace. Most of what I'm talking about is chat. The story of a male employee who took part in a newborn baby while pondering about the time when his child would be most affected. In response to the opinion that 2-3 years old is tough, CEO Ali, who has a 5-year-old child, said, "It is the most difficult now. Then, another male employee said, "Adolescents are 13 years old most," and a pregnant female employee smiles.

While I was impressed that it would be possible to create this kind of time even without an office, conversely, if there were few conversations between employees, it made me think that it would be meaningless to have an office. ..

Although work style reform has advanced in Japan these days, from the standpoint of experiencing an era in which staying in the office for a long time leaves a sense of value as evidence that you are doing your best, it is truly extreme that the company does not have an office, You may feel that.

However, returning to the starting point of how the "workplace" was created in the first place, it was for the purpose of carrying out tasks such as making things, sharing work information, holding meetings, and becoming a base for sales activities. , Because it was most efficient to get together in one place.

With that in mind, it seems not surprising that the conventional way of working and the way employees work is changing as the technology that improves efficiency develops.

Washington Branch Reporter
Yosuke Yoshitake
Joined in 2004
After working at Nagoya Bureau and Economic Department, currently affiliated