After four decades of chief economist at the American Economic Development Commission, Frank Schiff, in the columns of the "Washington Post" about what can be done to encourage the idea of ​​working from home, we have a clear answer to that.

In a report published by the Australian "The Conference" website, the writer Andrew Wallace considered that the Corona pandemic represented the best opportunity to shift towards teleworking as experts had expected since the seventies, but that does not necessarily mean the end of the era of office work.

The open office model needs to keep abreast of current developments in order for it to achieve its primary goal as a collective workspace promoted by remote work, and to achieve the required integration with remote work.

The open office model must keep pace with developments as a group workspace (Pixels)

Entrenched culture

Organizational culture has consistently represented the driving force that keeps us in offices, which is what Jack Nils, one of the leading theorists of e-business in the 1970s, went to.

Nils published with his colleagues at the University of Southern California three decades ago a report entitled A comparison between "Communications and Communications: Ideas for the Future" in which he dealt with the idea of ​​teleworking, but concluded in 2015 that "what was the case in 1974, remains so to this day." ".

In his 1979 article in The Washington Post, Frank Schiff identified three main objections to working from home, how to ascertain the quality of employee performance, or whether they work mainly, the need for employees to communicate with colleagues, and multiple distractions at home.

Schiff refuted those objections, explaining that the experts agreed that it was better to measure performance through production and achieve goals, and he demonstrated that working in the office might be more distraction than working at home.

The author believes that the situation that resulted from the spread of the "Covid-19" virus came to support the theories of those who have defended the idea of ​​working remotely for decades, as most employees and managers welcomed them in the last period and stressed that they were able to fully perform their tasks and expressed their desire to This situation continues after the end of the Corona crisis.

Working in the office may be more distraction than working at home, according to experts (Pixels).

Direct communication

The argument, which is difficult to refute from among the arguments of the protesters of remote work, is the need of the employees to communicate directly with each other and its great role in strengthening the teamwork system.

"One of the most important findings of sociology is the fact that proximity or convergence," said researchers Ethan Bernstein and Ben Weber in an article entitled "The Truth About Open Offices", published in the Harvard Business Review in November 2019, Promotes social interaction. "

Weber has demonstrated through practical experience, that the possibilities of interaction between employees in one office - whether personally or electronically - depend mainly on the distance between them.

The interest in promoting cooperation has sometimes led to disastrous experiences in the workplace. One of them was the building that Frank Gehry designed for the Chiat / Day advertising agency in the late 1980s. Agency head Jay Shyat envisioned his headquarters as a future step toward "flexible work" but the workers lacked personal space.

The design of the headquarters of Pixar Animation Studios - which opened in 2000 and was supervised by Steve Jobs, the largest shareholder and CEO - on the project was heavily focused on things like putting the bathrooms close to the building's main hall. In this context, Steve Jobs said, "We wanted to find a way to force people to meet and create a lot of random encounters between people."

The writer noted that the Weber and Bernstein research showed that the tendency is strong in "campus" buildings designed to foster "interaction by chance." He says that in order to enhance interaction, workers should work on the same floor.

The idea of ​​telecommuting has been welcomed by most employees and managers in the recent period (Pixels)

Between the office and home

The writer notes that the "Covid-19" epidemic imposed new rules in office design due to its ease of spreading indoors for long periods.

In Britain, research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed that workplaces are the most transmissible environments among adults between 20 and 50 years old.

The writer emphasizes that one of the new rules that everyone must follow in the workplace is wearing masks, disinfection of surfaces and floors, and disinfection of hands, as it is possible that touching any handle or button may endanger your health and the health of others.

Companies began to implement new concepts in the workplace taking into account the developments imposed by the Corona (Pixels) crisis

New concepts in the workplace

Multiple companies have begun to implement new concepts in the workplace that take into account the developments imposed by the crisis of "Covid-19 ″, including the idea of ​​a" 6-foot office "that focuses on leaving more space between offices and placing a lot of signs that remind employees of the need to leave the appropriate distance between them and their colleagues, This, in turn, requires that some employees work during certain days of their homes.

In the future, it will be necessary to find the optimal equation between the advantages offered by the office and the common spaces, the most important of which is the vision and communication of colleagues, and the advantages offered by teleworking.