‘Fear of Missing Out’ Will Drive Workers Back Into the Office
Working from home leaves them bereft of “useful updates, critical intel, and key connections,” writes Gensler co-CEO Andy Cohen.
Imagine the rest of your team has gone back into the office post-Covid-19 but you’re still at home, avoiding that long commute and enjoying the sweatpants life. Just one problem. When you Zoom in, you see your colleagues laughing at jokes you didn’t hear, remarking on gossip you missed, comparing notes on projects you weren’t aware of.
You feel FOMO—fear of missing out. This is what will drive you to suit up and get back to your old desk, at least for a couple days a week, says Andy Cohen, co-chief executive officer of Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm by revenue. “The person who’s home says, ‘They’re meeting after the meeting. I’ve got to be there,’” Cohen says in a joint interview April 12 (via Zoom) with his colleague, co-CEO Diane Hoskins.
Cohen covered FOMO in a LinkedIn article this month, stressing the importance of “useful updates, critical intel, and key connections.” He wrote, “Information shared in person contains rich layers of nuance and context that simply cannot be conveyed through a computer screen. People want and need face-to-face interaction to excel at their jobs.”
The Gensler Research Institute conducts an annual survey to find how workers divide their time between four activities: focus, collaboration, socializing, and learning. In 2020 there was a drastic drop in the amount of time spent on collaboration, to 27%, down from 43%, and a corresponding increase in time spent on focus, says Hoskins. Given that research also shows that the most successful companies are the most collaborative, “that’s a red flag right there,” she says.
An online survey of 2,400 U.S. workers for Gensler last summer found that only 19% wanted to work at home full time. That number might go down as FOMO sets in. Working from home is draining, especially for younger workers, Cohen says. “The high productivity that was going on a year ago is masking an exhausted workforce. Frankly, Diane and I are exhausted, 15 Zoom calls a day.”
As for architecture, Hoskins says Gensler’s research shows that while most employees don’t want to work strictly at home, they’d like to work near home. That, she says, could involve more housing being developed in downtown office zones as well as the opposite, with more office space being developed in suburban bedroom communities.
