First Day Back in the Tokyo Office After Lockdown
In Tokyo, we had a stay-at-home request issued by the government that lasted for the majority of April and May 2020.
When the emergency declaration was lifted, some companies were quick to bring everyone back (despite few adjustments to the work environment), while others, like my company, are moving towards trying to work out a balance.
I went back to the office for the first time in early June as we are trying to get team members to be in the office at least twice a week.
I made a vlog to show how that first day was.
Returning to office work makes you reconsider its value.
What I realized was that while office work and remote work each have positives and negatives, it depends on the person and tasks at hand.
As a non-native Japanese person who isn’t fluent at Japanese but works primarily with Japanese colleagues, being in the same physical space helps eliminate existing barriers when it comes to understanding meanings or contexts.
It’s also beneficial when working on a team project or if there’s a lot of collaborations happening to get things done.
On the negative side though, it really made me question the need of commuting every day.
Despite it only being about 40 minutes door-to-door for me, the stopping of what I’m doing, getting ready, then commuting twice per day is an interference in production. While I can work on my phone, it’s often not as easy as a laptop.
Tokyo trains also can become very congested, and with the virus still around, it’s a little nerve wracking to be body-to-body in a box with little ventilation.
Working in the office isn’t comfortable as well due to mask-wearing and no new seating arrangements or protective adjustments.
Because of this, I noticed that I drink far less water throughout the day.
How will companies adapt moving forward?
It will be interesting to see how companies continue to adapt. There is a need to due to changes in people’s psychologies and behavior.
People like Andrew Yang have said there’s been 10 years of progress in the last 10 weeks. How much that’s true with regards to Japan is unknown, though.
A survey revealed that in mid-April, a couple weeks after the emergency declaration was made by the Japan government, 64% of small to medium-sized businesses did not move to remote work. [J]
There’s also the issue of Japan as a whole being resistant to let go of traditional work practices - many of which require a physical presence. And of course, there is the workforce that is accustomed to it.
On the flip side, there are companies like Twitter and Shopify saying they will be making efforts to move to 100% remote work.
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
— Tobi Lutke 🌳🌲🛒🕹 (@tobi) May 21, 2020
While I think that may be a bit farfetched for most, the boldness of the move is admirable.
What companies can’t do is simply go back to exactly how things were. The world has and is changing since this global pandemic.
Let’s see what happens.