What You Need to Know Before Heading Back to the Office

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- It was the socially distanced snacks that made me stop and think. I had smiled at the security guards and waltzed through the temperature checks and newly modified, one-way doors of Bloomberg’s London offices. But at 7 a.m. on an empty stomach, food is hard to ignore. The breakfast cereal dispensers were gone, replaced by individually wrapped portions; on a nearby countertop, a half-dozen bananas were arranged around the edge of a large platter. Below were granola bars and potato chips, keeping well apart on half-empty shelves. Inadequately sanitized hands would struggle to cross-contaminate this Covid-19-secure zone.

For many employers, working from home remains the norm at all levels of the organization. Yet, after four months working from a home office that, while nicely set up, offers me a good view only of the beige bricks of a garage wall, my mind had begun to wander. I didn’t exactly miss my hour-long bike-plus-train commute every morning and evening. But I did miss London, and I did miss seeing colleagues. And I missed the snacks.

Even as concern grew in the U.K. and Europe about the prospect of rising Covid-19 infections, official guidance on working from home changed on Aug. 1. Workers in Britain are now encouraged to go back to their places of work if they can do safely—though few seem keen to take up the offer. With more of us taking summer holidays and venturing further from home, I found myself wanting to peek back into my old normal—and get a sneak preview of the new.

“People crave some ‘normalcy’ by this point in the pandemic,” says Andy Yap, professor of organizational behavior at Insead business school, who says he recently taught in-person classes in Singapore for the first time in months. “The experience was odd,” he says, “but sort of exciting, given that the safe distancing measures in Singapore are pretty strict.”

Others aren’t so sure. For all those who crave a change of scenery and a return to the office, there’s a vast, emerging cohort of workers who either don’t intend to return to life as it was, or whose employers won’t ask them to. There is an active debate about whether such places as London, New York, and Tokyo—which thrive on tides of commuters who sweep in and out every day—can ever be the same without office workers. Some people like the slower pace of their pandemic-era lives, while others are anxious about the reality of resuming close contact with thousands of strangers.

“It comes down to people’s personal perception and what level of risk they are prepared to take,” says Maire Kerrin, director of the U.K.-based Work Psychology Group. Most people’s natural inclination is to be risk-averse, she says, but that could be tested when senior managers start returning to the office. “Organizations will have to get that communication right.”

I had war-gamed a host of scenarios in planning my return: I visualized flinching from close contact in a crowded train; I imagined cycling into road closures and diversions while on my bike; I had nightmares about forgetting my door-entry badge. None of these horrors came to pass.

My early morning train was almost empty, and so were the streets at lunchtime. Neighborhoods typically crowded with workers jostling for sandwiches and salads felt sullen and silent, with pedestrians ambling along as if it were a weekend afternoon, not Thursday at 1 p.m.

There were some genuine upsides. There was a certain thrill in face-to-face (masked) chats with co-workers. My office chair was undoubtedly more comfortable than the torture implement at home that is gradually ruining my lower back. Small children did not interrupt my labors. But with most colleagues still working from home, a hush had fallen over the building by mid-afternoon. Nipping upstairs to refuel, the snack shelves suddenly looked less like a masterpiece of social distancing and more a simple statement of fact: We won’t put out all the nibbles until there are more people here to eat them.

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