Over the last 18+ months, we have all a) been working away from an office almost all the time, and b) done more and more Zoom/Teams calls.
I wonder how many businesses have fully considered the adaptations we have made, so the adaptations they need to make to their office environments?
As an example, a young person I know just went to the office one day this week for a job they started over a year ago, their first job post-university. When I spoke to them after that first day, while they were energised to finally meet their team face to face, they were concerned about how they can make calls in an open plan office, particularly as half of their team is overseas, and particularly if people at desks next to each other are on calls at the same time.
This is their first job post-university and they have spent over a year working (highly productively) at home and got used to being on lots of team meetings online and not having to worry about how loud they talk and whether they would be disrupted by a colleague at the next desk or disrupt them.
Yes, good headphones are one “band-aid”, so are bookable “pods” (though I feel there will not be enough in most office layouts), or perhaps we are to go back to the full height cubicles with acoustic screens of the 80s and 90s (as per the photo above) in open-plan offices so that people can talk on calls without whispering? I remember these from my first jobs, very good for acoustics, but could feel isolating, particularly when done as multi-person pods and you didn’t get on with the other occupants (yes, this was me on one occasion!)
We have adapted so much to #WFA (Working from Anywhere) and a) team calls rather than face to face meetings much of the time and b) team members distributed all over the place, what are the solutions to this for those who go back into the office?
For the moment, this person has decided that on days where they have a few calls, they will work from home, as even with a small box room the environment is better than going into the office, plus they save a 2.5 hour round trip commute.
So, not only “how will we make calls in the office now?”, but we have so much to consider about the Future of Work.