Uno Reverse: Zoom Edition

The worst leaders will often practice the following: do as I say but not as I do. Apparently, there is a level below that where leadership decides to ignore the very thing that allowed them to thrive. 

Zoom, a well-known and to this day greatly used video conferencing software released a statement that the company has decided to adopt a hybrid attendance policy such that employees who live near an office building are required to be onsite two days a week. Ironically, the return-to-work initiative was announced to employees via a Zoom meeting. 

Zoom is not the only company that has been pushing its employees back to the office. Large companies like Google, Amazon, and FedEx have also been pushing return to office policies despite employee backlash. Since January of this year the average weekly occupancy rate in a sampling of cities hovers at about 50% with occupancy measured through entry swipes. 

Logically, if office space is rented and not used, the utilities and facility costs are wasted if a certain number of employees are not present, then the companies are losing money on collaboration spaces. More than likely, the contracts for building space have been renewed or have not lapsed yet and that has an impact on "back to office" efforts. 

Remember, we would not be having these conversations nor debates on "in office vs at home" work without conferencing software like Zoom. If a pandemic like the COVID-19 pandemic were to happen in the 1980s, prior to the invention of video conferencing technology, remote collaboration would primarily be via phone. 

In fact, though video conferencing has been around for longer than you think, initially, it was not accepted. The story of modern video conferencing begins with a debut in 1927 with AT&T's Bell Labs. Networks were not as sophisticated as they were now and demand was low, so the need or want to transmit visual calls was both not easily accomplished and not desired by the public. In 1964, AT&T introduced the Picturephone complete with a cross country call to Disneyland. AT&T then opened Picturephone rooms in New York, Washington, and Chicago, but interest dwindled and by 1973 any effort to develop something that could be individualized fizzled out. There were some additional milestones, but it wasn't until 2010 when Apple released Facetime that video calling for the individual became popularized and accepted. 

Needless to say, video conferencing has come a long way and has allowed for better production in the current technological environment. Can you imagine working your current position with your only mode of communication being a wired home phone line or what life would have been like during a pandemic in the times before common video conferencing? 

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