Does the Office Have a Future?
In offices around the country, mail has piled up. Plants have died. Coffee cups sit unwashed, with a ring of old espresso cemented to the bottom. In some buildings, the lights have been left on since March \u2014 and who knows when someone will be back to turn them off.
\n\nAccording to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, we\u2019re in the middle of \u201ca structural, seismic shift\u201d in the workplace. The majority of employees booted out of the office earlier this year don\u2019t want to come back, says Liz Fosslein, head of content at human resources company Humu. So have we seen the end of the \u201cout of office\u201d email, water cooler talk and cubicle-sharing? When people finally return to the office, what will it look like? And where will it be?