So I guess this is a hot take. It’s the best of both worlds right? We get to wear pajamas two days a week and not commute, and then we get to go into the office and have lunch and happy hours and ride the train and be cool in the city etc right? Isn’t that amazing?
No, hybrid work sucks. No one actually wanted hybrid work. Hybrid work came about because in 2021 when people got vaccinated from covid the workers had more power than the employers who were spending a ton of money on office space, and it was the great compromise during the great resignation.
We are still suffering the side effects of that as hybrid basically means you’re in 4 days a week now and maybe you’re home Fridays.
Either way, no one is happy.
As a manager, I think we need to be in office 5 days a week. Not because I love commuting, or because I own commercial real estate because I don’t. But I think there’s a reason we evolved to work in offices.
Now I understand 75 years ago, you had to be out of the house because the physical infrastructure needed to do a job was not in your home. We’ve evolved past that, but our entire lives and ecosystems are built around leaving our houses to do things.
There is not just the economic impact of commuting, buying lunch or dinner, spending money, but there really is a psychological benefit to leaving your house and interacting with others.
We weren’t meant to sit around our houses all day and look at screens. That is not better for everyone.
I understand the appeal too. You have a sick relative, an older parent or grandparent, a child that needs caring for. I get all of that.
But you’re not giving 100% to your work by sitting around and managing all your home responsibilities while also trying to work. To me, hybrid work very often feels like you’re doing everything as a B+. That includes whatever other responsibilities you have that aren’t work related.
Personally I don’t think anyone wants it either, its just a great compromise made in the wake of the pandemic.
I don’t think people mind going to work, I think they hate commuting. They hate sitting in the office until 5 or 6pm when they are done with their work at 2pm.
Everyone just wants the flexibility to do whatever it is they want to do. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that either,.
I think flexibility can be achieved while still going to work a few hours a day.
I challenge all of us to do better because hybrid work is not great work. And part of the problem is there are just too many people who took advantage during the covid years that put a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
It also does nothing to inspire and train the next generation of workers.
You don’t learn anything sitting in your house all day or twice a week getting on transaction zoom calls. The bigger conversation should be around efficiency in the office and the work that everyone is doing.
If we’re all doing busy work, or work that doesn’t matter, and sitting at our desks 2-3 hours a day doing nothing, having a conversation to solve that should be the bigger problem to solve, no whether or not we can work from home 2-3 days a week.
I’m sure if I wasn’t a manager and a leader, I would want to be remote all the time too. But I am not, and I know deep on my bones, that we’re not helping anything in the long term by this arrangement.
If employees don’t want to come in, ask yourself why. Ask yourself what more you can do to inspire them instead of just feeding them. What can you do to support them so they are learning and being more efficient and getting more done..
Robert Statsky 