Office or Home?

For most of the pandemic, Daniel’s company had let everyone work from home. When that arrangement ended, the managers announced that employees would be expected in the office three days a week. Daniel, who worked better in silence, wasn’t happy. He thought it was time the company asked its staff what they preferred.

On the first day he remembered his laptop but forgot to book a desk. He tried working in the cafeteria, but it was too noisy, and the headphones he tried next only gave him a headache. He would have liked his manager to warn him, but he said nothing. After two weeks he stopped taking the early bus and started working from the library on his free days.

The company’s survey seemed to confirm his worries. According to the results, most employees were less productive in the open-plan office, although the managers insisted that the figures didn’t tell the whole story. Meanwhile, the HR director suggested that everyone should come in on Tuesdays so that teams could meet face to face.

Daniel proposed a compromise. If each team agreed on its own schedule, he said, people could work from home on two days. Employees would still attend important meetings in person, even if they lived far away. The managers wanted fixed rules, but he preferred a flexible system in case someone needed to look after a child.

The idea was not accepted at once, but the director agreed to a three-month trial. The results were encouraging, so the company adopted the plan permanently. Daniel no longer had to work from the library. He regretted only that he had not spoken up sooner: he had assumed that nobody would listen, and he had been wrong.