As CEOs bring workers back to the office, they’re hoping to see in-person interactions that boost collaboration and innovation—but those magic moments don’t always happen. Is it because some employees hired during the pandemic have never experienced office life? Are workers still filling their days with video calls? Or is the office layout inherently toxic to connection?
Ben Waber was ahead of his time in studying all those workplace issues and more. In 2012 he wrote a Bloomberg Businessweek article advocating for working from home. A year earlier he had cofounded Humanyze, a behavioral analytics company focused on the workplace that grew out of the MIT Media Lab, where he was (and still is) a visiting scientist. Today he’s also Humanyze’s president, advising companies on workplace design, corporate culture, and other issues related to their most valuable asset: human capital.
The Media Lab pioneered the collection and analysis of data from emails, chats, and meetings to draw insight into which factors nourish or kill creativity, productivity, and team effectiveness.
In a recent talk with Fortune, Waber, 39, explains how most companies approach RTO (haphazardly), how to do it right, why working from home is bad for innovation, the awesome power of the office coffee machine, and much more.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: How well are companies managing the way they bring employees back to the office?
Waber: I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing. Some CEOs have a subjective belief about what physical office space does, but normally the decision is being made like this: The CEO wants people in five days a week, but the company ran a survey, and if we did that, a lot of people said they would quit. People say they’re willing to come in one day a week. Three is between one and five, so let’s do three.
That is typically the decision-making process. Sometimes the CEO just rams [five days a week] through, and sometimes it’s the…
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