The Big Question: Can We Go Back to Our Offices?
A Q&A with Joseph Allen, author of “Healthy Buildings,” on the costs of remote work and the playbook that can help businesses to open safely.
This won’t last forever.
Photographer: Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve today’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been condensed and edited.
Sarah Green Carmichael: After a year of isolation and overwork, lots of us are feeling beyond burned out. A survey by researcher Jennifer Moss and Harvard Business Review found 89% of respondents said their work life had gotten worse this year. With vaccines now rolling out, more businesses are weighing how to bring employees back to the workplace. As an associate professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Healthy Buildings Program, you study the impact the built environment has on human health and well-being. At this point, does it make sense to just wait until everyone’s vaccinated and then reopen offices? Or can we start to have people come back to the office sooner?
Joseph G. Allen, director, Harvard Healthy Buildings Program: I think people can come back to the office sooner. There’s a real cost to working from home, and I think we’ve seen that over the past year. When I talked to executives last spring and summer, they were impressed with how productivity was up. Now it feels like the conversation has switched instead to culture and burnout, as well as socialization and innovation — all these things that we know we benefit from by being around other people in offices.