The Home Office Debate: A Pragmatic View

A topic that has been on everyone’s lips since Covid at the latest.

It comes up on LinkedIn all the time, and almost always in a polarizing way. Every time, it reminds me of cheering for a sports team, whether football, ice hockey, rugby or whatever your sport is, as long as two teams play against each other. Cheering for your team is perfectly fine there. Win or lose, team A against team B.

Why we carry this attitude over into factual discussions, or even use it for political debates, is beyond me. It is dangerous in any case.

The trap of two options

My pragmatic approach: When you are offered only two options, it is usually a trap. There is always at least a third option.

The first step is to recognize what the actual goal is. Once the goal is clearly defined, several ways to reach it usually appear.

The real question is: How do we create an environment for every employee that allows efficient work in their particular role? That should be the goal, rather than “we have to fill the office space”… and heaven forbid anyone should suspect other motives.

Not every job is the same

A nurse cannot work from home. In production, logistics, engineering and so on, it is difficult to impossible depending on the task, because the work content is different.

But where people stare at a screen all day anyway, sit in online meetings and generally work on a computer? That is exactly where the discussion is worthwhile.

“People are less efficient at home”

You hear this sentence often: At home, the person works less efficiently, because laundry gets done or a walk gets squeezed in.

Two things on this. First, studies show that efficiency in the home office is significantly higher. Second, and this comes from my own experience: I was able to slack off long before home offices and PCs existed, whenever I wanted to.

Employees who slack off do so in the office just as much as at home. That is a leadership topic, not a topic for the home office debate.

The pragmatic approach

Home office is not suitable for everyone. Some people need the distance between office and home, others simply lack the space at home to work or hold meetings undisturbed. During Covid, pictures went around of people taking their meetings from the bathtub because everyone in the household was in calls at the same time.

Showing up at the office regularly is, depending on the company, generally sensible to necessary. Some topics are simply easier to clarify in person. And the people in the company should know the faces behind the names. Personally, a direct conversation with logistics achieved more for me than several meetings when it came to understanding delays in an order process and getting it moving again.

What I learned from a former boss

A sentence that still holds true for me today: Real leadership means creating the right environment for your own employees, so that goal-oriented and efficient work becomes possible. Far from dogmas, far from outdated ideas, and far from a convenient solution that is supposed to be the same for everyone.

What is your third option in the home office debate? Feel free to tell me, I am curious.

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