Is working from home better than working from an office?

Serendipidous moments are missed when working from home

Question: Is working from home better than working from an office?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, working from home is not better than traditional office work
Argument‹3 of 4›: Serendipidous moments are missed when working from home

Water-cooler interactions, bumping into someone in the hallway, the random lunch meeting are all missed when working from home. Having a healthy social life is important to a person's mental health, as well as to the success of the company.

The argument

Socialization within the workplace is important in building strong connections with coworkers and in meeting the human demand to be social. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the need to feel belonging is the third most important thing that humans require, which places it below survival and safety but above the recognition and achievement that work is usually thought to supply. When working from home, people are not able to fulfill their desire for socialization, and they miss out on the small, meaningful moments that happen in traditional offices — the unplanned exchanges that no one schedules and that a remote day gives no occasion for. The loss is not only personal, which is what makes it an argument about work rather than about preference. Work relationships increase employee productivity and engagement, which benefits the company. Having socialization at work improves teamwork skills and widens the amount of knowledge being shared, since a good deal of what people know reaches their colleagues incidentally rather than through any formal channel. Establishing and building relationships within a workplace can make employees happier and encourage them to be more productive and focused. The same mechanism runs the other way when those relationships are absent. Without socialization at work, stress levels can rise and performance can diminish. Working remotely makes it difficult for people to have meaningful relationships with coworkers, which lowers their motivation — and motivation, once lost, is not recovered by better tools or clearer instructions. By opting to work from home, employees miss out on typical office interactions that would be beneficial to both their happiness and their work.

Premises

[P1]Workplace socialization builds strong coworker connections and meets the human need for belonging — the third level of Maslow's hierarchy — which working from home cannot fully satisfy, missing the small meaningful moments of a traditional office. [P2] Work relationships raise productivity, engagement, teamwork, and knowledge-sharing and make employees happier, whereas their absence raises stress and lowers motivation and performance. [C] Therefore, because serendipitous moments are missed when working from home, working from home is not better than office work.

Counter-arguments

It is entirely possible to have strong relationships with coworkers, even when working from home. People can socialize and collaborate with coworkers online throughout the workday, proving that people are still able to build relationships despite working remotely.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] It is possible to build relationships with coworkers while working from home.