So you have to go back in the office? Here’s the real reason why.

Hint: It’s not because of productivity.

Those that know me, know that I work just as much at my full time “hybrid job” than I did, before the pandemic, at my office job.

Which is to say more than 40+ hours a week.

The only thing that’s changed is I’d just spend less time commuting and, being at home, less time “switched off”.

So what’s driving the push back into the office?

Well, to understand that, we need only look at us as individuals. The most frustrating and unsettling sensation for humans to deal with is uncertainty.

Since everyone has spent the past 2 years in a state of uncertainty, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that some individuals are trying to gain greater control over their lives.

This ultimately extends to how an executive views their employees in an office setting. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is trust and comes into play with the discussion of being a remote worker.

So, when you hear the discussion from executives wanting their employees to be in the office, one answer is a simple lack of trust and a focus on what they can control. They don’t trust their workers to budget their time effectively, they don’t trust them to show leadership, and those executives want to have some semblance of control back in the same way as they had pre-pandemic.

However that trust ends up being just a convenient agent for control. Ultimately, as I’ve seen first hand, it’s that type of sentiment will eventually bleed employees dry.

Don’t some people take advantage of that though?

Sure.

In these trying times, there’s a certain amount of human nature you can’t control for unless you’re doing something draconian like monitoring staff 24/7.

I’d argue that those people are the same people who would spend their days online shopping and looking at their phone in the office when they think no one is looking. Never mind their coworkers putting in the effort.

So where does that leave us?

It’s not all “doom and gloom”, so now the good news.

One way or another, as employees, our relationship with the workplace is changing. Businesses now need to provide support for workers on a more human level. We’re not resources to be managed, but people to be cultivated.

Working from home occasionally makes these more interpersonal encounters possible. Think of it. The working from home environment makes interpersonal. relationships more accessible than ever. By simply turning of the camera, we can discover a great deal more about our colleagues and cowworkers interests, hobbies, and home life. Things that don’t naturally come up in discussion and that may have taken months or years to master in a workplace setting.

By removing some of the control executives gain so much more as well. They gain employee trust, goodwill and a more productive human.

Executives still have the chance to develop a more human-centered method of doing business. Enabling individuals to perform at their best also entails making sure that they have the finest possible working environment.

Help assist people in determining, for themselves, which forms of work are best completed in the office and which ones are best completed from home.