Memo – “Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” Is A Stone Age Technology | Evolve Or Go Extinct

Any Questions or Concerns about being audited right now? Stop reading and call me on (732) 673-0510.

To listen to the podcast version of memo click here —> Podcast Version

I have always thought that being forced to travel to an office to work was a form of a lockdown. Then the in-home lockdowns happened and I realized being forced to go to an office to work everyday was actually a “reverse lockdown.”

Now there are rumblings that businesses are trying to lock down employees in offices again. My advice is to fight this, especially if you feel you are a key employee to the organization. 

It is ever harder to find competent workers today, so the top employees at a company have much more leverage to live, and therefore work, wherever they would like.

Large cities are dying a slow death, and remote work is just one in a long line of reasons.

Offices were needed during a time where long range communication technology was archaic, non-existent or limited to scratchy voice calls. 

The use of offices falls under a broader business concept that I call “Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” which was necessary for the same limited technological reasons.

“Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” is analogous to still using horses for business transportation.

Just as there are still uses for horses in business, office work spaces will always be required for certain work. 

The forced use of telecommuting over the past few years has woken everybody up to the business inefficiencies and personal harms caused by the “Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” model.

I’m personally shocked that it’s taken this long. At the beginning of the 2000s internet speeds became much faster and stable, and I thought the work from home revolution would quickly follow.

I am glad that business mentality has caught up to these advances in technology. Business owners’ concessions have not been voluntary though.

Some of the business benefits:

• Reduced or Eliminated Business Expenses
  • Rent
  • Utilities
  • Common Area Maintenance Charges
  • Commercial Insurance
  • Payroll for office maintenance related personnel
• Increased employee quality of life, such as:
  • Employees can use former commutation time to be more productive, exercise or meditate, or have quality time with their children.
  • There is no longer a need for physical proximity to an office so now the quality of where you live can be the main consideration. This is the best benefit from this shift.
• Liability Reduction
  • Having men and women physically separated can reduce the chances of someone’s actions being construed as some kind of harassment.
  • Lawsuits from workplace injuries are eliminated.

The “Work From Home” or telecommuting option has now been added to the list of employee benefits that companies must offer in order to compete for the best employees just like health insurance, pensions and 401ks were at one time.

Companies that don’t offer flexible work schedules and require on-site in-office work, will suffer. Even requiring one day per year, forces employees to live within a commuting distance from a physical office.

This restricts the talent pool they can hire to an infinitesimal % of the global labor available.  

So, they will not be able to hire the best candidates for the job, which will lead to their failure. Their forward thinking competition will have access to the global labor pool, which will make them the winners in the long run.

Even before the lockdowns, I knew this was coming. The lockdown has just accelerated it exponentially. And now that working remotely is so widely accepted, the reason why it will continue to flourish is very similar to the dynamics that we see in the dating marketplace the past 10 years. Especially for key managers and salespeople.

The dating marketplace is technology based and therefore international and with no boundaries. I can easily “Swipe Right” on a woman’s online dating profile from London sitting on my couch. 

As online dating is mostly image based, the most attractive people around the world are now getting the majority of the online dating attention. I think this is an overall negative for the majority of people, but that is a podcast or memo for another day.

The best resumes now equate to the most attractive pictures.

Imagine the competition to date the men and women in the top 10% of romantic market value now that they can be courted from every corner of the globe. Trust me, I am not speaking from experience! 

Although I think I am cute from certain angles.

Imagine how demanding those top 10% can be. They have the most leverage in the marketplace. 

Now with many companies having no requirements to be physically present in an office, the “most attractive” employees from an international pool are sought after by all companies and they can make exceedingly sky high demands as well. 

They will demand top salaries, concessions and benefits from anyone that hires them and they will get it. None of them will agree to be reverse locked down with mandatory physical office hours.

This is true especially for the top salespeople. A good salesperson is always the last person fired. 

Companies that stay in the stone age and demand on-site work, now have a limited employee pool to choose from just like the dating pool for people who don’t use dating apps.

So companies that demand the “Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” model will fail or never reach their full potential because their wiser competition will have hired the best people.

There will be non-adopters. They should look up the history of the companies in the big cities that supplied and maintained horses who ignored the introduction of the automobile. How did they make out in the long run?

The same will happen here.

I think that the benefits to everyone of this shift greatly outnumber any negative consequences. 

Some of those negative consequences are.

1. Physical isolation has been shown to have negative emotional, physical and psychological impacts on people. I think this is going to need to be addressed just as other workplace hazards have been addressed over time. We are not meant to spend the day in the same space we just slept in. That would be like a caveman never leaving his cave. Our home can become like a prison to some people.
2. Home office costs.
3. Risk of overworking.
4. Risk to productivity.
5. Distractions at home. Workers must be able to stay on task without a manager lurking to check on them.
6. Workplace disconnect.
7. Disproportionate work-life balance.
8. Less physical face time, which is important to some people.

Some people will need help adapting to remote work, and some will not be able to deal with it.

Businesses that flourished in the shadow of high rise office towers and business centers will most likely go under. Think of the deli, drug store and bar

I have often thought that commutation can take years off of your life. This is why I live two miles from my office. 

This is now eliminated. The amount of time saved, and stress eliminated, by not commuting to an office, cannot be downplayed.

Many people’s work days have become a fluid blending of business and personal time. The removal of the nine to five office bound stricture has enhanced the quality of people’s lives immeasurably.

For parents, this relates to having more face to face time with their children which is something that’s drastically needed more than ever.

Being forced to come to an office is similar to being forced to go to a physical school location when you were young so teachers could monitor us.

If your company tries to reinstate mandatory on site work, fight it. It may be harder to replace you than you think.

“Meeting In Person To Get Work Done” treats us the same way. I am glad it is finally in the rear view mirror, just like those horses.

Questions? Concerns? Call me on (732) 673-0510.