If we aren’t going to be getting together every day in the office, will anyone still need white boards? Will Gen Z know what an office party even is?
People discovered by circumstance that a lot of their work could be done at home, and they don’t want to go back to driving daily in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour. Are employers going to be okay with that?
The jury may still be out but workplace culture consultant Daren Martin suggests they embrace reality soon.
“Unfortunately a lot of them are not going to be okay, and that’s just lunacy. If one thing has been proven by Covid, people can work from home,” he says. West Coast big tech companies like Microsoft and Google and Facebook who spent fortunes developing “campuses” with “food stations” and “recreation spaces” with indoor bicycle paths have a lot of unused square footage on their hands these days.
Embrace the change, says Martin. “Most jobs these days are more ‘thinking’ jobs, more creative jobs, and those can be done within the confines of someone’s home.”
Two years ago corporate America wasn’t even considering the possibility of no one coming to the office anymore. Now, the have to reimagine why anyone would want to.
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