Balancing Remote Work With The Casual Office Environment

Friday, 15 July 2022, 6:11 am
Press Release: Hugh Grant

For a number of years prior to the COVID pandemic, many American employees were prompting their employers to allow them to work remotely full time. While many employers were still resistant to the idea, the trend was slowly gaining traction and, of course, was a sudden reality for the majority of American workers when the pandemic drove us all into our homes for weeks at a time.

Working from home or in some other remote location, is still a preferable option for many employees, and has also proven to be a mostly positive change for businesses as well. Everyone, including businesses, is saving money. Companies have been able to lower their overhead costs by doing things like using fewer office supplies and even downgrading the size of their offices as larger spaces are no longer needed.

Employees are also benefiting financially with the decreased fuel and fewer stops for coffee or breakfast on the way to the office. They’re also now able to move to less expensive places and still maintain their current employment. Employees are also enjoying more flexibility and more time to spend with family. For the most part, working remotely has been overwhelmingly positive.

However, more than two years in, we are also discovering the downsides to this “utopian” idea. Some of the issues are things like a lack of casual human interaction, the time wasted on video conferences, and the unnatural consequences of being on camera and interacting with coworkers on camera far too much. All of these things have negative psychological effects, as well as negative time management and productivity effects which we simply cannot ignore.

Concerning the issue of human interaction, employees are missing the simple conversations and person to person encounters that naturally take place in the office environment. They miss seeing their coworkers in real life and they miss things like water cooler chat. They’re also fatigued by the constant camera. Women in particular, are experiencing negative psychological effects of having to see themselves on camera throughout the day, and all employees are affected by the unnatural closeness of faces on cameras and the unnatural ways that video conferences cause us to interact, with over exaggerated expressions and a lack of natural body language.

Beyond the psychological effects, there’s also simply wasted time. The average American worker spends about 11 minutes per meeting just waiting for it to start. They also spend up to 30 minutes just looking for the link. All of this, along with wasted time within the meetings as well as meetings that are altogether unnecessary, adds up to days of wasted time annually.

Considering that remote work is here to stay, any solution must encompass both physical needs as well as the current situation of working remotely. A virtual office can help meet these needs. Virtual offices have physical addresses and are built like a physical office building, including rooms, water coolers, and different floors which all require identification to enter. Virtual offices can help to cut down wasted time and to bring back more natural and casual interactions to the remote office environment.

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