Home or office? Is it time to return to the workplace?

In the aftermath of the Covid-fuelled shift to working from home, there was initial relief that the transformation seemed to have had little impact on productivity. Now CEOs and their staff are examining what they’ve lost and if it’s time to return to the office.

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For Projectworks CEO and founder Matt Hayter, the debate around whether working remotely is better than working from the office slightly misses the point. The true modern working model is no longer one-size-fits-all.

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“It’s a nuanced, case-by-case conversation. You have to create the environment that works best for your business,” says Hayter. 

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“We see it as having an overhead on having someone work remotely so it’s not that we won’t do it, we just need to have a very good reason, because we find there’s so much more benefit to having people in the office.”

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Projectworks kept its entire team of about 20 working from its Wellington office through pandemic disruption, aside from during mandated lockdowns and with the exception of a handful of employees based outside the capital. The team still works from the office four days a week, with everybody having the same, one work-from-home day each week.

Hayter says it is clear there are efficiencies with teams being in the same physical space. “The speed of what we offer is really critical, especially for the product development side of the business. People being co-located is just more efficient in terms of feedback loops. We can operate a lot faster.”

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Learning and social connection

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The benefits of returning to the office are not being driven solely by CEOs. Founder of tech specialist recruitment agency Talent Army Troy Hammond says more candidates, particularly those early on in their careers, are looking to return to the office, driven by concerns about their professional development.

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“They want to come back to the office because they’re lonely, and because they’re not learning as fast as they were. They want to get in a room with people and problem solve. They’re starting to realise the only way to get cross-functional learning is by being back in the office,” he says.

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For employers, flexibility that allows for family commitments and commuting is important, says Hammond, but so is providing social connection, and a shift to 15-minute problem-solving, in-person standups rather than a calendar full of hour-long video meetings, which can negatively impact productivity.

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“Working from home, there’s too many people taking a long time to think about something independently, which would be solved more quickly with three or four people around a table,” says Hammond.

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Returning to the office

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He expects a hybrid model of working two days at home and three in the office will be the norm for most companies in the foreseeable future. John-Daniel (JD) Trask, co-founder and CEO of application monitoring software company Raygun, believes that too comes with fishhooks.

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“Once annual leave, sick leave and statutory holidays are factored in, you’re pretty close to a four-day week, so if people are coming into the office three days a week, they might only see a colleague four or five times a month,” he says. “I don’t think you’re getting the benefits of camaraderie from that.”

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Trask recently brought Raygun’s engineering team back to the office five days a week, because he was seeing the impact of a hybrid model on productivity and knowledge sharing. Instead of incentives, he simply told the team to return to the office, with a week’s notice. 

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“What was interesting was that about 80 percent of that team were really keen on coming back.” Of the other 20 percent, some later admitted that while the decision had annoyed them they had realised they were happier back in the office, he says

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“I think the problem is not so much coming into the office, as getting out the door.”

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Trask believes there is an onus for senior staff members to return to the office, though the lack of distraction at home may suit them. “Those senior people aren’t just there to be high-performing ICs [individual contributors]. They’re also there to lift others up and we weren’t seeing the same level of camaraderie or teamwork, particularly with junior staff members.”

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He believes company leaders have been hesitant to call staff back to the office for fear they’ll quit. “But those people aren’t in on your mission. Are you the leader if you refuse to make those difficult decisions?”

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A hybrid approach

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CarbonInvoice is one company committed to a hybrid policy, though CEO and founder Carlos Chambers says the company may amend what ‘hybrid’ looks like going forward.

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“The thing is you can do whatever you want as a company, you just have to be very clear about what you’re doing, then back yourself and your team to make it work,” he says.

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Chambers says he’s confident in-person outperforms remote working in terms of productivity. That’s why he remains committed to keeping a physical office.

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“If that wasn’t true, we might go fully remote. I am very keen on having a place where we can work and collaborate. You can get pretty far with collaboration in a remote environment but you can’t beat an in-person conversation.”

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Talent acquisition is also still a consideration in maintaining a hybrid model, he says. “The talent market does value flexibility. I feel like it would be a potential disadvantage in the talent market if we couldn’t support a semi-remote workplace.”

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Hybrid working at CarbonInvoice is balanced by team sprints and strategic retreats so the small team remains connected, says Chambers.

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“I think coming back to the office is a bit like exercise. People don’t like to do it, but it’s really good for them and they feel great afterwards.”

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