By letting people choose their own office adventures, employees can gain back some of what’s sorely missing in American work culture: self-determination. Need to plow through a task that will take you a full day? Stay home. Need to talk through some plans with a few co-workers? Everyone goes in. Kid got the sniffles? Expecting a delivery? Have dinner plans near the office? Do what you need to do to manage your life. Being constantly forced to ask permission to have needs outside your employer’s Q3 goals is humiliating and infantilizing. That was true before the pandemic, but it’s perhaps never been as clear as it is after a year in which many employers expected workers not to miss a beat during a global disaster unlike anything in the past century.
david