Pictured Above: My pandemic personal assistant!

Click here for Part 1: Introduction

Companies were experimenting with remote work arrangements well before COVID-19 forced their hands. Somewhat infamously, Marissa Mayer made waves early in her tenure as Yahoo’s CEO (in 2013 to be exact) when she issued a mandate to all employees working from home – return to the office or find another job. Yahoo had fallen well behind their competition (see: Google) and was coming off four straight years of declining revenues. The need for more “communication and collaboration” was the justification behind her mandate. It’s impossible to say how much their remote-work-friendly culture contributed to their struggles versus other factors, but this experience certainly did no favours for the remote work advocates of the day.

On the other end of the spectrum is Automattic – the company that powers the service upon which this very piece is published (WordPress) as well as, oh, about a third of the internet. Their deliberate efforts to build a work environment where distributed (i.e., remote) workers can thrive has helped them reach a valuation of $7.5 billion (2021) with no sign of slowing down. The key takeaway here being that organizations who intentionally adapt their structure, workflows and communication styles to the medium through which they primarily operate improve their odds of being successful. Wondering what that looks like in action? Have a skim through this.

Enter COVID-19 & Remote Work

The pandemic hit quickly and most companies had just days to figure out a remote work strategy. These were originally supposed to be short-term patchwork solutions until better times returned. (Who remembers “two weeks to flatten the curve”?) Then Shopify declared itself a “digital by default company” a mere two months into the pandemic. Other notable companies to follow their lead included Twitter, Spotify (no, I didn’t repeat myself) and Dropbox. Time will tell as to whether Shopify (or the others) goes the way of Yahoo or Automattic, but their bold commitment to a distributed organizational structure was an astute first step.

This brings us to the not-so-small matter of those with ownership stakes in commercial real estate. They have a lot of reasons ($$$) to encourage their current, former and future tenants to get their people back into the office – even if that doesn’t look exactly like it did prior to 2020. For instance, one can only hope that this is the end of the abomination that is was the open-concept office on account of health considerations. Not to mention that it touted increased collaboration and productivity but, in practice, delivered neither. Instead, we can hopefully look forward to technology-enabled “Smart Offices” designed to deliver a more enjoyable and productive employee experience. 

It’s very much worth keeping an eye on cities such as Calgary. Already experiencing relatively high office vacancies prior to the pandemic due to sluggish oil prices, what they do to refill, repurpose or replace (i.e., demolish) their empty offices will be telling. They may very well write the playbook for what’s to come in other major cities. With that said, some cities are already starting to make proactive moves. Toronto recently brought the majority of its remote public employees back into the office on a hybrid schedule. Their strategy is to set an example for others while breathing some life into a downtown economy that has struggled considerably these last two years. 

Where do we go from here?

Unless you work for a progressive (likely tech) company (see: Airbnb), you’re probably heading back to the office soon. That’s assuming you’re not back already. It’s widely expected that hybrid arrangements will become the new “new normal,” although some experts predict that about a third of the companies that attempt a hybrid model will ultimately be unsuccessful. Why? Due to their leadership’s failure to adequately reconfigure their previously face-to-face corporate structure to suit their new reality. This may eventually push these companies to choose one extreme or the other. That is unless wonky hybrid sleep schedules compel employees to force the issue first.

Others are speculating that as high as 25% of professional (i.e., white-collar) jobs will be fully remote by the end of this year. For tech companies, that number already sits around 22% based on a February 2022 review of job postings. We now know that most people can be trusted to capably work from home without a drop-off in productivity. Meanwhile, the technology required to facilitate remote work is already quite effective and only going to continue getting better. This genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in (to pre-2020 levels, anyway) without a fight. 

On the other side of the coin, I personally appreciate the occasional reminder that there’s a real human attached to that name that keeps popping up in my inbox. Putting on real pants and going into an office from time to time isn’t that hard and has at least some positive impact on mental health and happiness. That’s because exclusively working from home, as you might imagine, can increase feelings of isolation and lonliness. For this reason, it will behoove fully remote organizations to maintain some level of real estate footprint. These might be smaller offices in hub cities that act like co-working spaces or one large central location for all-hands gatherings and departmental meetups. Humans are social creatures, after all.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that in a world where remote work is ubiquitous, you’re not just competing for jobs within a defined commuting radius. You’re now potentially being measured against every other person on earth who does what you do. This is another reason that getting back to the office life might not be such a hard pill to swallow for some people. This is especially true if the pandemic has indeed rid us of certain types of optional-but-not-really team-building events that always had good intentions but usually just felt like more work. Instead, organizations would be better served investing in the aforementioned “Smart Office” buildings that create a state-of-the-art environment that employees actually want to work in.

Final Thoughts

Prior to the pandemic, part of me frequently wondered why most of us continued to endure lengthy daily commutes to sit in a confined space all day given the technology at our disposal. Now that we’ve “taken the plunge,” I believe remote and hybrid work opportunities will, by and large, persist. However, most organizations will maintain at least some real estate for team-building, strategic meetings and “just in case.” Meanwhile, owners of commercial real estate will need to improve or repurpose their “product” (i.e., office buildings) quickly in a world where supply far outpaces demand.

Keep a close eye on the major players that pivoted to remote-first during the pandemic (e.g., Shopify, Twitter, Airbnb, etc.) and how they respond when they hit their next rough patch. Will they “pull a Yahoo” or do they stay the course? Equally worth monitoring is what elected officials start saying if and when their employment metrics take a dive. Does remote work become the scapegoat in higher cost of living cities whose major employers start dipping into the (cheaper) remote talent pool? Or perhaps remote work is merely a pandemic-driven novelty that a lot of people will tire of when they can’t adequately replace the social element it once provided them. Although on that last one, I’m skeptical.

So, where we will be working is one thing, but equally important… How much will we be working?