Since the start of the pandemic, a lot of business discussions have centered around the office, hybrid work and getting people back into the office. After a year and a half, people are starting to question why go back at all? Some things have worked better while working remotely. Most people think of the office as the standard way that people work, but it’s a relatively recent invention. The office sort of parallels the industrial age with office and factory taking ques from one another for the last couple centuries.
Our 300th Office Anniversary
I’m not sure if there are any celebrations planned, but the office as we know it is about to be 300 years old. Be sure to put 2026 on your office calendar. The first office was built in London in 1726, and it was known as the old Admiralty office. It was setup for two reasons; they needed a central location for paperwork that they were generating. And they wanted a central meeting place. For the last 295 years, paperwork and meetings have largely been the reason for offices to exist. Even if you didn’t get the memo about electronic files and the internet, you would have thought people would take notice of video conferencing. Now you have no paper and no face-to-face meetings. So why do we need an office?
The Legacy of Frank Taylor
Before we try to answer that question, lets stick with the history of office for a little longer. Fast forward to the early 20th century and steel changes things a bit. It allowed larger factories and larger offices to go with the factories. If it weren’t for machinery in one and people in the other, in some cases you couldn’t tell the difference.
Enter a mechanical engineer named Frank Taylor, who created what is largely known as the modern open plan office. It was designed for maximum productivity of the workers, and CEOs bought into the concept, hook, line, and sinker. There were just two problems. Since he couldn’t get the numbers to work, he faked them. He also didn’t take any human or social elements into consideration with the studies that he did. Facts didn’t change company’s embrace of the modern office. But what we were left with was a factory like environment, except for humans. This has largely been the model for the office for the last 100 years. The bottom line is that the foundation that the modern office was built on is essentially wrong, and we’ve simply compounded this over time.
Our Natural State
So what is our natural state for work? The first actual office dates to Roman times, and really was just an organized place for work to be done. There’s not a lot of evidence to show that it ever grew past a certain size, but it did provide an opportunity for people to come together when they needed to. The need for people to come together is really at the heart of the question of why we need an office. If there isn’t a need, then all we have done is created an artificial factory for people. An office needs to create value to the work being done. It should not simply be the standard by where work is done.
If companies look at remote work as the default for how work is done it become a much easier exercise in justifying what the need for an office is. Just because you have one, doesn’t mean you need to keep using it. When you start with the assumption that work is done in the office, you will always be building on the fact that the core needs for an office, paperwork consolidation and face-to-face meetings, no longer exist. And if you are basing your assumptions on 20th century productivity studies, you would be wrong there too.
Is there still need for offices? Absolutely! But not for the reasons most people think. At its core, an office should further collaboration and improve productivity. It’s time to rethink our needs for an office, rather than rethinking our needs for remote or hybrid work. Think remote first for a better work model.
