Home is where the office isn’t

Radosław Górecki: Does working from home make sense from a psychological point of view?

Andrzej Falkowski, the head of the economic psychology and business department at SWPS University in Warsaw: Working from home only makes sense under certain circumstances. A mother with a sick child might find it useful to do so. Some freelance professions can be done from home, but these are only very specific cases.

The pandemic was also such a particular case…

Yes, and with technology and all the tools we now have, we were able to get through it. Maybe not without losing something, but we were somehow able to operate.

Surely we’ve now grown used to it. Most people don’t want to go back to the office. I’ve been told by many managers that they are wondering how to encourage people to return…

Your opinion might result from what is known as ‘the representativeness heuristic’, which can often lead to mistaken conclusions. You’re taking your own observations from your surroundings and extrapolating them onto an entire population. This effect has been well documented by Daniel Kahneman. The reality, however, is quite different.

So, we don’t want to sit at home – I mean, work from home?

I believe that the vast majority of people are returning to the office because they want to. This obviously doesn’t mean that we are going to stop using the technology that became so commonly used during the pandemic. Working from home is only going to be something we do under specific circumstances.

Why?

Work is a key part of human existence. But you need to separate work totally from your home life. People process information sequentially. When I’m at home, I’m not at work – and vice versa: when I’m at home, I’m not at work. We can’t just suddenly jump from being at home to being at work and from work back to home again, because if that was the case we’d become schizophrenic. That’s built into the nature of our cognitive abilities. We can’t be in two places at once.

What happens when someone works all the time at home?

Productivity falls, which results in the costs of labour rising. Moreover, we are not able to foster an organisational culture. Without physical contact, this is simply impossible. Studies have been done that show that when workers lack contact with other people and are not in a working environment, their desire to work falls and so does their opinion of it.

But nonetheless, many companies have stated that they are going to reduce their office space because it’s no longer needed when such large numbers of employees are working from home. Their calculations are that they can save on office space while at the same time making their workers happy by letting them stay at home.

In my opinion, such an organisation has no chance of surviving. Remote working as a permanent solution is absurd from a psychological point of view.

In one of your talks you criticised one of the concepts of co-working, which was to promote it as a place where people can feel at home and at work at the same time.

Because that’s also absurd. We can’t be in two places at the same time. Trying to bring two such worlds together does not work. I’ve seen that some companies are trying to provide such space, but in my opinion it won’t work. It’s one thing to provide a working area with easy access to a relaxation area. Offices that offer employees many different zones, such as kitchens that are more like cafés and even gyms, can improve productivity – that is, areas where we can relax and fulfil our stimulation needs. This allows us to unwind our minds. Even spending just a short while in other surroundings clears the mind and makes it much easier for us to return to work.

So you agree with having different zones, but not offices pretending to be homes?

Exactly! An office that pretends to be a home will not work. We need to have a clear boundary between the office and the home. I believe that employees don’t want their offices to remind them of where they live. The very act of leaving home and going to work is a fulfilment of our psychological needs. It also provides us with the right stimulation. Changes in our environment are psychologically important to us. If we don’t experience change, we are not stimulating our brains properly and bad things will start happening to our mental health. In extreme situations, we might even start hallucinating. Such psychological disturbances were recorded many years ago by such renowned psychologists as Ernest Hilgard, who carried out research into the effects of sensory deprivation on people deprived of outside stimuli.

And what about the idea of having an office in the home? Isn’t this a good solution?

Well, then, we are returning to the communist era. Back then, people did set up offices in their flats to work in. They made rooms into dental surgeries and lawyers’ offices, but as soon as modern office buildings were built with space actually designed for working in, those businesses left their apartments behind. I have to stress this once again: work has no place in the home.

But what about the youngest generations on the labour market? They don’t want to spend all their time in office buildings. They want to travel and work in different parts of the world. They’re often described as latter-day nomads.

That’s still just a phenomenon related to a rather narrow group of people. They’re not going to work like that forever. At a certain stage of their lives, for example, working on an exotic island might stimulate them, but then they will return to normality. A situation such as that isn’t possible permanently.

Are you saying that we are creatures that are attached to a single place and we have to return to it?

In a certain way, yes. But when we’re talking about the young, they are at the stage of seeking new sensations and changing jobs all the time. They’re always looking for and are open to new experiences. But when they’re at work, it’s important for them, too, to be attached to a place. Of course, we have always got to bear in mind that a small percentage of society will always act differently. It’s the same with those people we call nomads. It is not a normal phenomenon and it won’t become the norm. But nonetheless, some variation on this theme may occur.

So what you’re saying is that office developers have nothing to fear and that it’s not the case – as some have been predicting – that office buildings will no longer be necessary?

Absolutely. Look at the US and all their huge office blocks. They’re bustling with life. For our own psychological well-being, we need to separate work from our home life. Nobody is going to get rid of office blocks, because we need them. Limiting access to offices is pointless. I’m aware that there are such companies that have been doing this, but they are backing out of it.

In that case, how should a working area be designed? How can an office be arranged so that it’s attractive to employees while avoiding any reduction in productivity?

You have to give workers some freedom in terms of how the office they work in can be arranged. We can’t stop employees from rearranging their immediate surroundings and putting nick-nacks on their own desks. But employers should allow them a bit of personal space.

What you’re saying is interesting, since many companies are now opting for models where people don’t have their own desks. You keep your things in a locker and each day you install yourself in a different working area. These desks are cleared at the end of the day and there are no personal items left on them.

To put it bluntly, that’s a terrible approach. Businesses are doing this for their own interests, but they are not recognising the needs of their employees. Businesses often suffer from what’s known as ‘marketing myopia’, in that they are short-sighted and insensitive to the needs of their staff. Taking desks away from people means taking away their private space, which is a basic need for each individual. The need for private space has been part of our lives for generations – it’s hard-wired into our nervous system. When we don’t have a desk and anyone can sit in the place we regard as our own, one of our fundamental needs has been denied us, which is above all the need for a permanent place.

So, we have to have our own territory – even in the office?

Yes. We must have our little piece of territory in the office, which we can shape to a small degree. Leaving home, we need to know what lies in store for us at work and where we are going to sit. Without this sense of a private space and this constancy, stress levels will increase and this, in turn, will reduce our productivity.

“People only want to work together when they know that others our watching their behaviour” – those were your closing words at Eurobuild CEE’s 13th Polish Office Market Conference. You highlighted an experiment carried out at the University of Newcastle, in which researchers stuck posters up above the kettle as well as the coffee and tea in the kitchen. Sometimes the posters were just pictures of eye looking out from them and others were pictures of flowers. Each poster was left hanging for a week. Those who helped themselves to the tea, coffee and milk were supposed to pay a small contribution for this. But when the poster had eyes on it, the effect was that they paid more…

Because if someone’s looking at me, then I have to show myself in the best light. This is all about personal reputation. People are more willing to work together when others are watching them. It’s something we do automatically. Those who saw the poster with the eyes wanted to be seen in the best light, even though this was a subconscious process. It’s a very interesting phenomenon and, interestingly, you can also try this experiment for yourself and see if it works.

But you need office space for that, because that’s where people interact…

Office space is necessary for normal functioning. It’s also necessary for our psychological health.

So, would you say that all these reports of the death of the office building have been much exaggerated?

I would say that the death of the office would be the death of mankind. Work is a fundamental thing that we are obliged to do and office space gives us the opportunity to do it effectively and in a way that ensures our mental health.

A PSYCHOLOGIST WHO KNOWS HIS BUSINESS

Prof. Andrzej Falkowski is the head of the economic psychology and business department at SWPS University in Warsaw, and a member of both the International Society for Ecological Psychology and Association for Consumer Research. From 2011 to 2014, he was a member of the Science Policy Committee for the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland and a Fulbright Scholar. He has acted as an expert court witness on trademarks, and works with law firms on trademark protection on the open market for such companies as Maspex, Hortex, Reckitt Benckiser, Wedel, Fakro, FSO, BP, Polkomtel, Polmos, Bakoma and Broker FM. He is the author and co-author of many articles published in the world’s most prestigious magazines on cognitive psychology and the psychology of consumer behaviour – both as regards markets and as an electorate.