The Productivity Commission’s 2021 report identified enormous social and economic advantages associated with working from home, but it stopped short of claiming that employees were more productive, acknowledging that this would probably happen over time (p. 3).
The counterargument is that working from home reduces collaboration and idea generation. Even if one can objectively prove that productivity is higher, critics argue that it’s still not enough.
The CEO of Morgan Stanley provided a more honest perspective; he wanted to keep things the way they are because he knows that the existing model works. There’s too much money at stake for experimentation.
While a full return to the office is highly unlikely, it doesn’t mean corporates won’t keep trying. For them there’s no need to fix a model that’s not broken.
In the meantime, the door is wide open for visionary leaders to build new employment models that drive collaboration and knowledge diffusion.
Companies like Morgan Stanley will ultimately have no choice once someone cracks the code that makes the whole organisation productive, regardless where employees choose to work.
