Page 173 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

General discussion
as the hours that I spend in informal conversations with people during my research.
5.4.1 Redesign way of working
The office has long been a place where a company’s employees conduct their work and come together. As digital technologies have developed, many companies found themselves faced with the decision of whether to embrace or reject working remotely. Since remote work decreases “the second largest financial overhead” of facility costs (Davis et al., 2011, p. 192), many companies have incorporated it some extent. For years, work has decreasingly been conducted within the office as “the office is becoming more decentralized, and space [place] is shrinking“ (Schawbel, 2015, p. 4) and the COVID-19 crisis has expedited this development. Yet, other companies have – after trying remote work out – banned it completely like Yahoo! or IBM (Cain Miller & Rampell, 2013; Useem, 2017). Based on my research, I strongly believe that working from home, working from the office or a combination of both are not just three ways of working that can be implemented without considering three key decisions: the purpose, the infrastructure and regulations.
First, similar to a company’s vision, a purpose for a way of working helps to make more practical decisions and communicate any changes with employees that will follow in the long-term. Why do you consider a change in way of working? Potential reasons may be to attract talent from farther away or provide more flexibility to employees. In connection, question the assumptions that you make to define the purpose (Johnson & Suskewicz, 2020). During my interviews, I often came across workers and managers alike whose thoughts about working remotely were something like “Remote work will solve all our problems because then we will have flexibility”, “We need an office for our clients to see us”, or “I have always worked in this way”. Though different assumptions, they all hindered redesigning how work is done. Interestingly, the pandemic has demonstrated that remote work can be achieved for more white-collar workers than originally expected if everyone works from home and everyone tries to make it work.
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