Humans are social beings. It’s what separates us from other living species. Our desire to love, interact, and form communities are driving forces in our decisions, whether conscious or not.
Take away socialization, even at work, and we are a swarm of insects buzzing, tunneling, and marching in a drone-like fashion.
We know the massive impact that COVID-19 has had on the world. According to Johns Hopkins University, the worldwide death count has hit 1.11 million people, as of October 2020. The Pew Research Center found that unemployment rose faster in the three peak months of COVID-19 than in the two years of the Great Recession.
All bad news.
But some effects, less highlighted perhaps, have longer-lasting implications. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to make major changes in how we live our lives. From canceling trips abroad to experiencing personal financial instability to attempting to support our local businesses in the most-toxic times, we’ve experienced a new normal. Notably, we learned how to work from home.
Unfortunately, work from home “works” — technically.
Environmentalists celebrate less pollution as transportation declines, and economists revel in cost-cutting. There are undoubtedly benefits of the work-from-home transition — yet we’ve lost other benefits of living.
Work life was once a cornucopia of shared commutes down Madison Avenue, workplace connections, and a more-organic cadence to conversation. With work from home, we’ve cut the abundance and color that came with gathering in groups with co-workers. We wake up, complete a task, eat, sleep, and complete another task. We have little to no interaction in our work-from-home days with coworkers, clients, and others who make up the ecosystem of our careers. We’ve become less human and more just being.
Don’t get me wrong: Working from home may still be crucial in moving successfully past the pandemic. But we suffered through months of boredom, loneliness, and even fear with a distant, motivating light at the end of the tunnel. If there were no light, just a pitch-black tunnel promising a perpetual cycle of desultory Zoom calls, would we even get out of bed in the mornings?
Some believe this is the future. As more businesses shut down or downsize their offices and consider smaller communal footprints, I can’t help but worry that we are leading with strict logic instead of necessary emotion.
From a business standpoint, collaboration is crucial in making the best decisions. Sure, some argue that team video calls emulate these alliances, but participation is lower, innovation and creativity lack their needed flow, and energy does not transcend screens. The work gets done, but is it really done well? When human capital is a business’s biggest asset, does work-from-home nurture that asset?
When COVID-19 finally subsides and is well-addressed, advocate for energy. Pitch the importance of teamwork, share the payoff of the commute. By investing our energy in keeping the office alive, we cultivate a profitable future and a more human existence.
Live, raw, interpersonal energy is what drives the youth to America’s most renowned cities and important jobs. It’s what propels business innovation and catalyzes cultural development. It’s what makes humans human.