No more flocking to the office (and that might be better) | Chantal van der Leest

For many people with a computer job, their work has only gotten better since corona. You can work from home more often, you can organize your own time better and you no longer have to be in traffic twice a day. Ideal. Who wants to go back to the way it used to be? Well, I’ll tell you who: the managers. Desperately, they approach psychologists like me: how do we get everyone back in the office? Their team feels like loose sand to them. The harder they squeeze, the faster it flows out of their hands. They have completely lost their grip.

On the one hand, I understand that. Leadership is a lot of reading between the lines. The small conversations at the coffee machine, a glance exchanged between two employees, a wobbly leg that betrays tension. All information you don’t get when you stare at empty office chairs. No wonder team leaders long for the old and ask professional behavior changers for help. With some customized interventions, you can certainly tempt people to sit in their familiar place more often.

But should companies also want this? The government encourages hybrid working, for some people it is not smart for their health to show up at work every day and others really don’t want to. According to a survey by KPN, a third of employees will look for another job if they are never allowed to work from home again. Let’s face it: work will never be the same again. And that’s okay. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, there is nothing permanent except change. That’s why I think: wake up managers! Time to do things differently.

Because what a shame it would be if we just go back to the old. This is the ultimate time to say goodbye to traffic jams, micromanagement and the open-plan office and put back smart new ways of working. And no, I don’t mean installing an app so that you see a red light if an employee hasn’t typed anything for 15 minutes. With a little bit of confidence, employees can figure out for themselves how and where they prefer to work, and how they want to stay in touch. Who knows, they might work much better then.

Want to know more about psychology and work? Read Chantal’s books Why Perfectionists Are Rarely Happy, 13 Tips Against Perfectionism (2021) and Our Fallible Thinking at Work (2018).

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