SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Years ago, Natalia Emanuel was a graduate student at Harvard, sharing a small basement office with another budding economist, and the two wound up forming a lasting professional partnership.
NATALIA EMANUEL: We had many, many years where we were only a few feet away from each other. You could say, oh, is this a brilliant idea? Or someone could very easily say, no, that's a waste of time. Please stop.
SIMON: Emanuel and her one-time office mate, Emma Harrington, have now written a book on the advantages of working side by side with colleagues. It is called "In Person," and the book comes as many businesses now contend with just how in person they want their workers to be. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The book opens with a story about Steve Jobs, who insisted that Pixar's headquarters have a central atrium where animators and engineers would naturally bump into each other. Emanuel says the man who's responsible for putting screens in all of our pockets nevertheless understood the value of connecting coworkers face to face.
EMANUEL: You do need to have some friction, the unexpected serendipitous encounter, and those things are much, much more likely to happen in person.
HORSLEY: But in-person contact on the job is less common since the pandemic. Emanuel says nearly 1 out of 4 employees still works remotely, almost seven years after the outbreak began. As economists, she and Harrington have documented some of the drawbacks of that - a 20% drop in on-the-job feedback, less mentoring, which makes it harder for young people to find jobs, and more isolation, which wears on mental health. Some companies have begun to backtrack on work-from-home policies they adopted during the pandemic. In leaked audio, published by Barron's last year, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told employees remote work wasn't working.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JAMIE DIMON: It slows down decision-making. The young generation is being damaged by this. They're being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people. I can't stand it anymore.
HORSLEY: But Emanuel says just ordering workers back to the office is not enough. In a survey this fall, she and Harrington found even when they're in the office, nearly half of all workers had no in-person meetings. Fifteen percent didn't have a single face-to-face conversation with a coworker.
EMANUEL: And that's sort of one of the most demoralizing things. So you commute into the office only to achieve a different background for your Zoom screen. And so then you feel like you have a lonely, isolated workday bookended by a pointless commute.
HORSLEY: That sounds familiar to Tom Robinson (ph), a 36-year-old data scientist who used to drive at least 45 minutes each way to a job in Austin, Texas.
TOM ROBINSON: There are days where I would just have Zoom calls. My productivity was measured by how long I was sitting in my chair versus what my actual, like, output was.
HORSLEY: Robinson ultimately took a pay cut for a new job that allows him to work from home.
ROBINSON: My perspective is completely biased because I'm also a single father. My kids - they needed me to be present. I just was never around.
HORSLEY: Emanuel, who has four kids herself, acknowledges that remote work has been a boon for parents, especially women. Though she knows parents who try to combine work and childcare often feel like they're shortchanging both. The challenge for employers, she says, is to figure out how to balance the flexibility of remote work with real connection when people are in the office. That might mean realigning schedules or locating the coffee machines in a way that encourages chance conversations.
EMANUEL: Encountering other people, fueling friendships is a profoundly important experience, and we tend to undervalue how much even small encounters are going to make us joyful.
HORSLEY: Emanuel and her co-author no longer share that small basement office, but they still make time to get together regularly to brainstorm and collaborate in person.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARC DE SOLEIL'S "MUMBO SUGAR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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