The Benefits of Working in the Office

Where possible, London-based office support jobs are once again being done from the office. Whilst office support and PA jobs are some of the easiest to do from home, there’s now an effort to get people back into the office, at least for some of the time. Some are finding it hard to re-adjust to office working after months of working from home. Others are chomping at the bit to get back in. So what’s good about actually working in an office?

The benefits of being in the office

Like many recruitment agencies in London, we’re hearing a new discussion among employers and candidates: should a role be based in the office or at home? Here are some of the not-always-obvious benefits of working in the office itself:

• Development: Formal training is one thing, gradual professional development is another. It’s difficult to quantify the importance of working alongside a colleague, having informal interactions with mentors, and simply being immersed in industry life on the ground. Yet all of these things are vitally important for employee development. Don’t underestimate the development potential of incidental interactions that aren’t possible remotely.
• Socialisation: The social aspect of working is often overlooked. We’re inherently social beings that thrive on interacting with others. Extroverts can feel particularly isolated without the social aspect of work. Team cohesion is helped by being together, working together, and perhaps occasionally going out after work.
• Balance: Over recent years, discussions have focused on the balance of work and home life. It swings both ways. For some, working from home is akin to living at work—there’s no balance. Parents in particular are spinning too many plates. Personal relationships between couples, spending every moment together due to home working, are under increased pressure.
• Switching on and switching off: When you work in an office, work is, on a mental level, located in one place. You come to work to do your work and, ideally, leave it behind at the end of the day. Being able to physically leave work in a separate location means you return to it fresh each day.
• Creativity: Creativity is often a social process. Being able to bounce ideas off colleagues, with an atmosphere focused on creativity, means that the sum of the parts is greater than the sum of the whole. That’s easier to do in person, often on the spur of the moment, rather than on a video call.
• Induction: It’s one thing for established workers, who know each other from office working, to move their working to home. It’s another for a new recruit to come into that environment, get acclimatised and quickly become productive. Fitting into the culture and learning the ropes is much easier when done in person, rather than remotely.
• Technology: Whilst we’re fortunate that technology has enabled many of us to work from home in a way that wouldn’t have been possible even 20 years ago, we can’t compare our office technology to our home technology. It’s uneconomical and impractical to have the best technology for everyone at home.
• Health: Without the pull to the office, whether through a commute or the natural break in the day to head to the gym, office workers move more than home workers. It takes a conscious effort to replicate the amount of movement you’d do in an office day if you’re at home.

There are pros and cons to working in the office. However, there are some tangible benefits to working in the office that shouldn’t be overlooked.

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