Originally Posted by
Atticus
It will be interesting what the future holds. That being said, I don’t think 100% work from home is going to continue long term in many situations.
About 8 years ago, a company my spouse worked for let everyone [[that could) work from home. They found that for the first year or so it worked fine, and that productivity was about the same as being in the office. However, over time productivity began to slide as new employees entered the workplace, and as existing employees took on new roles and positions. Basically, the in-office experience was needed to build that trust and relationship needed to effectively do the work long term, especially for new team members. And as team members changed, you needed to rebuild the team with more in-person interactions.
As such, that work space shifted back to an in-office environment, with the flexibility to work from home half of the week. Everyone still has laptops and can still do their job remotely, which is great for snow/ice days and for parents who need to stay home with sick kids. But they still want to have my spouse come in and interact with the rest of the team.
I suspect that will be the case for a lot of other office environments as well, once the Covid situation passes.