Much of the research and discussion about the workplace reboot is about safety and trust.
The safety conversation grapples with how people interact in offices and on the shop or factory floors. How we’ll travel to and from work. The focus is on touch-points and cleaning, record-keeping and ‘density quotients’.
The trust conversation is about how we feel about our return to the workplace. How safe we perceive it to be. Whether commuting once more will negatively impact our lives and our households. The lack of confidence of some managers about staff productivity when working remotely. And if anyone is really ready for the small talk, water-cooler chats, birthday cake get-togethers and coffee catch-ups.
The research shows that many of us don’t want to go back to the office full-time. We want to maintain a level of flexibility and remote work is an eminently desirable thing.
I wonder if there’s a different conversation waiting to happen?
Should we be thinking about using our team face-time more strategically?
We could think less about getting back to those interstitial and inconsequential interactions and more about using our time together to do good thinking and deep work. We could continue the flexible arrangements so many of us love but book regular problem-solving and strategy sessions as a team.
Software giant Salesforce seems to be doing some of this thinking. What about your organisation?