Cougars or Commuters?

Why COVID Won’t Kill In-Person Meetings

Will things ever return to the way they were? Will we ever commute regularly on crowded trains to bustling offices, meet colleagues over lunch at packed restaurants, and spend a moving hour or two listening to an intimate concert by an up-and-coming artist? Will the commercial centers of the world—New York, London, Shanghai, Tokyo—return to their pre-COVID busy days? This first issue of a p s a looks at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have on human living going forward. After well over a year in which most humans on earth have spent considerable time on their own, working from home and avoiding public gatherings of any kind, it’s a question that needs to be asked: did COVID-19 kill in-person meetings? As is turns out, though, there is good reason to think that the answer to this question is yes.

As we are emerging out of more or less stringent lockdowns and self-imposed isolation, and as restaurants, offices, and concert venues are reopening, it is becoming abundantly clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to some big shifts in how we live. Many businesses and industries had been moving towards more home-working for a while, even before COVID-19 struck. Having workers complete their tasks at their own kitchen table (where possible) can be cost-saving, help employees balance home and work life, and reduce a company’s carbon footprint. The social distancing protocols that came with the fight against COVID-19 further broke down this already opening door. The last few months have been a crash course for both companies and workers in how to home-work most effectively. It is unlikely that this door will ever be fully put together: working from home, in some form, is here to stay.

However, despite these arguments, a look at our biological history suggests that full-on home-working and its ilk—i.e. a world without offices, meeting, or major social congregations—will, in fact, not become the new norm. Humans are inherently social creatures. While this has been noted since antiquity, it is easy to lose sight of the depth of this fact. In our evolutionary history, our survival depended on being able to live together in groups. To thrive in a deeply social environment, we needed to be laser-focused people-readers. We needed to keep track of who is friends with whom, what others are trying to achieve, and when those around us are angry or happy. In short: Our major adaptation was not a thick fur, but the ability to harness each other’s thoughts.

To be effective social creatures, though, we need to be close to each other. Sure, we can ask each other about what we think or feel. However, what people say can be a misleading guide to what they are actually thinking. Others don’t always tell the (whole) truth. They may also be unsure what they think about someone else. Hence, we, as humans, learned to pay attention to how others move, where they look, and how they react to what is going on around them to tell us about their inner mental lives. This, though, requires that we are physically near each other. We need to be able to see the whole person, and we need to be able to do so in the same environment. I cannot monitor your reaction to an unexpected smell or a novel sound if you are not in the same room with me. I cannot know if you are happy or angry with me if I am not sure if your facial expression is triggered by what I said or by an unexpected tap on your leg. Reading your body language requires more than paying attention to the facial expressions on a screen. Communicating at a distance, over phone or video conference, cannot fully replace the in-person meeting.

Because of this socio-biological nature, there is every reason to think that, as the thread of infection recedes, people will look to leave their home offices and return to their real offices. People will want to return to working alongside each other—literally. It may be that the pandemic has shown us that in-person meetings aren’t necessary for many work-related activities. Business trips will continue to often be replaced with Zoom meetings. People won’t go back to coming in to the office every day. Companies will cut their real estate footprints and invest in more remote-working technology.

However, this does not mean that the time of the office—the real one, not the one on the kitchen table—is over once and for all. While some in-person meetings may not be needed, we cannot avoid them all. Especially when it comes to open-ended, collaborative, and creative problem solving, bouncing ideas of each other face-to-face and in the spur of the moment is crucial. The ability to respond in real time both to each other and the rest of the world around us makes it possible for us to align our thought processes—for the benefit of all. 

In short, therefore: given our social biology, humans won’t want to always work in their own silo, connected to others only via video and phone. We are not cougars. We are humans—and we need each other.