It’s likely you’ve noticed more high-profile Return To Work (RTO) mandates.
In the past year and a half, we’ve seen them from companies like JPMorgan, Dell, UPS, Boeing, and most recently Amazon.
Company leaders provide varying reasons for why they “need” workers back in the offices, but they all sound vaguely wimpy and familiar, usually orbiting some corporate jargon that sounds written by GPT, containing buzzy phrases like “serving our culture,” “doing what’s best for teamwork,” “creating an environment of innovation,” yada yada.
Last month, however, we got a different kind of statement from the HR chief at Spotify, Katarina Berg, who reinforced their commitment to working from anywhere, saying:
“You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grown-ups and then treat them like children.”
Someone on LinkedIn paraphrased with this image:
//
This is what we must understand…
Return To Office is NOT about the office.
We are having a huge misunderstanding regarding what an office is FOR.
Here’s the best way to think about it:
The office is a tool.
When we think of the office as just another tool that can help us get certain kinds of work done, everything starts to make a lot more sense.
Are there reasons to be in an office?
Sure, just like there are reasons to use certain software for accounting, or reasons to use a scalpel in the ER, or reasons to use a hammer on a nail.
But there a whole lot of reasons to NOT use those tools when you don’t need them.
This means RTO mandates are mostly a bad idea because they are treating smart adults like they are children who don’t know how or when to use their tools.
We can do better.
//
P.S. Came across this cool site if you’d like to see how companies in the Fortune 500 are working! Fortunately there’s still a LOT of hybrid and remote happening.