Maybe it’s some mass anchoring effect that has us tethered to the office as a key tenement of what it means to work. Or perhaps sunk cost fallacy has us so invested in the idea of an office that we can’t unthink it. Whatever it is, offices — and the typical working structures they represent — are a testament to how hard it is to change a pervasive culture. In some sense they are like the aeolipile — machines outside their time, one lost in the past and the other in the future. Written about in De Architectura, a book by Roman author and architect Vivitrus, the aeolipile showed the world the capacity of steam powered engines in the 1st Century BC. Why didn’t the industrial revolution come about then? Why did we have to wait till Thomas Savery stumbled upon the idea again in 1698 — thousands of years later?
One theory speaks to context. Coming into a world that was more ready to harness the power of mass production, Thomas Savery’s steam engine triggered a series of events that led to the industrial revolution, defining how we think about labor through to the mid 1800’s. By 1940 we had the key elements that make up what we broadly define as office culture — a 5 day work week, 8 hour working day and fair(ish) labor standards, and little has changed since. In a curiously behavioral way, the context had to change before the idea could even be seen. Just like a global pandemic has forced us to fully appreciate the value of Zoom, Slack and QR codes, despite them being over 10 years old. Unlike the aeolipile, which was a machine before it’s time, many offices now stand empty as tall and awkward-looking reminders that the last time we really reshaped the labor landscape was before the invention of color television. Looking at these buildings we can’t help but wonder — will, and should, office culture survive this?
Understanding the Future of Work
What does the future of working even look like?
At Busara, we find it curious that even though the content of our work has changed, office environments have largely stayed the same for decades. When we halted in-person research in the wake of COVID, it seemed like one of our main service offerings had suddenly and completely broken away. It took this sudden change in environment for us to properly explore Busara Online and understand the new possibilities it offered for research — why? Why has the less than a year we have been working from home been dubbed the new normal when companies like WordPress have been running for years without any formal office space? Even though it has been technically feasible for years, our perceptions of barriers to change (status quo bias) have kept us in our hamster wheel — until a shock to our world like COVID forced us to examine our attachment to the way “things have always been done” in research and in the structures that govern the office workplace.
With these changes in place and new knowledge about what is possible — how will we move forward? If work from home could be an org-wide success, even bring unanticipated benefits for many staff, including 2–5 hours of reduced daily commuting time, then what else in our ways of working could be reformed and updated from the status quo? We set up a Future of Work working group within Busara to further explore these questions systematically. The group pulls from the diversity of talent at Busara bringing together directors, associates, communications and people teams from around the world. They are tasked with taking the leap and experimenting with alternative working arrangements at Busara, with the goals of boosting staff productivity (i.e. accomplishing more with fewer total hours) and wellbeing (i.e. happiness and satisfaction in our professional and personal lives). At Busara we believe that only optimizing for both of these objectives will ensure sustainability in the long run.
True to our commitment to nimble yet rigorous research methods, the Future of Work group has adopted a holistic approach to identifying opportunities for innovation in the workplace, beginning with unpacking challenges within our own office culture. We’ve learned from the perspectives of other organizations leading in work/life innovation, and gathered internal perspectives to ensure we design new ways of working that directly respond to pain points that staff experience. Leveraging our expertise in behavioral science, we are designing new interventions that optimize for productivity and wellbeing. To see if these ideas are doing the trick we will test them on ourselves.
Examples of future work concepts might include a 4-day work week, wellness leave days (including for mental health and menstruation), or the option to “work-ation” for longer periods of time. Such policies directly address novel problems faced by modern society and help our mission to increase productivity and well-being. The 4-day work week recognizes that two-day weekends are not enough to rest, recover and take care of personal and family obligations, particularly for households where all adults work full-time. Condensing the work week may lead to more focus, increase productivity, and an extra day for rest, recreation and quality time spent at home. Taboo health topics like mental health and menstruation have gone unrecognized in the workplace for decades, yet put a strain on both employees and the organization. Lastly, a truly global team with global relationships will feel happier and more connected if there is a possibility to mix up one’s workplace every once in a while, whether it’d be a favorite vacation spot, one’s original home, or simply a feel-good environment.
Most importantly, we aim to not only improve our own operations, but hope that our initiative will also support and influence other organizations. Together with our partners, we wish to discover what lies beyond just theoretical deliberations and be intentional in our reimagining of the future of work.
Interested? Shoot us a message if your organization would like to come on board and think through opportunities as well as practical implications of such novel work arrangements together.
