Does that solve other issues like wfh team mates feeling possibly justifiably left out if there is an actual tight knit office?
Okay, screw this I need to go into an office. Did that for a year, loved it. Pandemic hit...
I do think the right long term solution will be mandatory days in office for the whole team, but only for 1-3 days a week, and those days would be the same for everyone.
1. A crushing commute. If you're a mega-commuter like I was, WFH gives you back 4+ hours of your life daily. Maybe you actually like your office and in-person conversations, but not as much as you like to avoid the soul-sucking commute. For people like this, maybe the occasional jaunt into the office is bearable, as long as you dont have to always do it.
2. Needing to live in a high COL area. For others, WFH means you can save tons of money by moving to another town. For them, no amount of coming into the office is acceptable (except maybe 1x or 2x a year) because they are no longer in commuting distance.
3. Terrible, unproductive offices / social anxiety. For others, maybe they are already OK with their cost of living and commute, but they hate their loud, crazy office. Again, maybe infrequent trips to the office are acceptable, but then you need to accept severely reduced productivity during those days.
Probably others I don't think of. So, it's a solution to multiple problems. One size does not fit all.
I've noticed that WFO-proponents (especially entrepreneurs and senior execs) tend to downplay 1 (just move, lol), not care about 2 (isn't everyone rich?), and deny 3 (our loud open office is actually great for me).
Most of the time, the work is split between our worldwide teams anyway, where one team sits in switzerland, other in germany, and then some in usa and canada. Even the support for our hardware is distributed in different countries and 99% of the cases totally works remote.
I think keeping it optional is the best way to leverage happiness/collaboration. Whwnever i need to collaborate with a team member we individually agree to meet up at office.
we had been doing home office way before pandemic, now all of a sudden businesses feel the need to have people a minimum number of days in office per week. I have actually seen hostile behavior from some employees to just come to office and chill all day during the ma datort office day since its a collaboration day anyway ;)
My point is it’s like Goldilocks and the three bears minus the middle bear. The soup is either too hot or too cold. It used to be one extreme, now it’s the other. There is no just right.
> wfh team mates feeling possibly justifiably left out of there is an actual tight knit office?
That's the tradeoff they have to make, just like putting on pants and having to commute is the tradeoff I have to make if I want to come in to the office.
Come in if you want to come in, don't if you don't. If you have any particular asks for how your org should run to better accommodate either of these, it's fine to have a concrete discussion about it. What's less fine is bellyaching without action items.