Work is more than a place. It’s an ecosystem.

It has been a year since the COVID health emergency officially ended, and the debate over in-office work continues. Publications still post stories about return-to-work mandates, coffee badging, quiet quitting, and other responses to post-COVID work life. I think the debate misses the obvious — the issue isn’t where we want to work. The issue is how we want to work. What if we examined what it would take to optimize the work experience instead of arguing about location?

Work experience isn’t dependent on a single place; there is an ecosystem that supports our work life, including roads, public transit, gas stations, restaurants, childcare options, and other elements. Challenges in some of these areas can’t be addressed by companies alone, and many do not have simple solutions.

For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 140 million people spent an average of 50 minutes commuting roundtrip to work in 2022. An INRIX survey indicated Americans lost an average of 51 hours being stuck in traffic that year. How can businesses and local, state, and federal governments come together to address the commute with better public transit and infrastructure planning? Are there different ways for us to approach these challenges?

Flexibility is another hot topic. The reality is we’re still operating under structures and working hours that were designed for a different time. Having your workers gathered together during designated factory shifts made sense for an economy dominated by manufacturing. That model doesn’t necessarily work for knowledge workers. Creativity can’t be scheduled. There are benefits to giving teams the flexibility to schedule their in-person and collaborative sessions when it makes sense for the team or the project. That doesn’t mean teams and projects don’t need oversight to meet business deadlines. However, one solution does not fit every situation, so companies may need to experiment with approaches other than mandatory in-office hours.

Companies also may need to use various collaboration methods across different functions. The trick here is thoughtfully implementing those solutions. Companies that use multiple collaboration tools or platforms ultimately introduce complexity, which erodes productivity. Making decisions on a single file-sharing tool, a single office suite, and other unified company systems can help. Training employees on these tools and their capabilities is low-hanging fruit. If everyone understands how to use those tools, employees are more likely to use them consistently, which can reduce friction.

There are many other things that organizations, governments, and employees can do to optimize the work experience. What would improve your work experience? Share your thoughts in the One-Question Poll here.