You hear people say that work-from-home needs to end and employees need to get back to the office, or people need to continue remote work because they can supervise themselves. Who's right? One person who studies businesses says they're both wrong.
There's a forgotten element in the ongoing controversy over whether employees who've been working from home since the Covid pandemic should return to work. Leaders from the Trump White House down to small businesses are demanding that employees get back in the office. And some workers are resisting the new demands, while others are going along reluctantly and still others embrace the idea of getting back to the social aspects of office work.
But Dallas-based Quantum Connections CEO Dennis S. Holland says it's the social aspects that are among the most important parts of work, but for a reason many don't suspect -- it's the human interaction.
It isn't necessarily true that employers want their teams in the office because they don't trust them. Some do, some don't, but let's not forget human nature, he says.
In fact, "there's a need for human connection that's hard-wired into us," he says, which is a separate viewpoint from lack of trust between supervisors and employees. Trust is gone because connections between people are largely gone, and that's fueling frustration in managers and executives as well as in many employees, especially younger ones.
A CV platform called MyPerfectResume says 79% of employees are feeling "disengaged" at work, according to a recent study of more than 1,100 U.S. employees, calling it the "Great Detachment."
Many became spoiled by the business and social disruptions of the Covid era because so many were left to fend for themselves during a difficult period in the nation. Bosses grappled with new technology and new ideas, workers felt empowered by doing their office work at a kitchen table.
But things continue to change.
And it's an especially hard time right now because, unlike just a few years ago, "this the first time that we've had potentially five generations of people working in the same team."
It's often assumed that discontinuing remote work and returning to offices is a way of reining in employees because employers don't trust them to work hard at home, but Holland says that overlooks the basic human need to see and relate to another human in personal ways, something that really can't be done over Zoom.
Both employees and employers were spoiled by the fractured interactions of people during the pandemic, Holland says, when it became common to avoid close human contact. But that's slowly moved back in the other direction and now more interaction is desperately needed in many cases.
Today "the real crisis is the lack of connection between people as we work in a very complex period of time.
About 76% of employees say they feel disengaged at work because their direct supervisors seem to be disengaged at work too, and that's leading to burnout for employees and constant frustration for managers.
After these years of disengagement with each other, it's time for human beings to come back together in the workplace and try to rebuild the close human contact that all people need, whether they're aware of it or not.
"And the only way you can bring all that together is through a relationship. And when you have the basis of a connected relationship, the positive business outcomes follow."