No Shoes in the Office
by Zahra Asghari
We spend 23% of our year in the office: 40-hour work weeks with an average of 2 weeks vacation comes to 2,000 hours. That’s 2,000 hours of your most alert (ideally), productive (hopefully), and social (potentially) hours - in other words, the prime hours of your day in an office. The discussion of how we got here, the socio-economic systems that have driven us to work away our lives, and whether that is a good or bad thing is the topic of a different article and is (sadly) not addressed by taking off our shoes in the office.
If we cannot shake the pebble of 40-hour work weeks from our shoes without large-scale systemic changes to our society, then we better get busy ameliorating those 2,000 hours. How can we make sure the place we spend so much of our time in right now nurtures us rather than giving us never-healing blisters till we can no longer stand punching in and out of work every day. Although I sincerely hope none of you are living in that grim reality just yet, some office environments are not very far off. Picture an endless sea of grey cubicles, t-bar ceilings, fluorescent lights, water cooler in the corner of a lifeless kitchen, forced office birthdays and stale grocery store cookies - it is almost too easy to imagine because it has been depicted countless times in movies as the prison from which our protagonist escapes. Milton burns the building down, Tyler Durden burns the city down, and Neo escapes the simulated reality altogether. But there is a better way - there always is. Up there in the blue-sky realm, there is an office where people enjoy working because they feel nurtured, comfortable, and can put their feet up to take a breather.
A nurturing environment can mean different things to people, but one common thread is the sense of safety, both physical and psychological. In an office, this stems from the culture fostered within the workplace and is an active effort made by each individual person to ensure their peers are respected, heard, and supported. To achieve this, you can take active or passive approaches. Active entails tactics such as direct communication of expectations, staff training, and workshops. Passive tactics (this is where taking your shoes off comes in) involve the creation of the fertile ground that helps the active tactics take root, thrive, and sprout new leaves. And we don’t need to reinvent the wheel here; we just need to look around us and examine the spaces that nurture us right now. Where do you experience that environment? What space do you take care of and respect? Where do you feel comfortable, supported and most yourself?
I feel that at home.
My home, my family home, my friends’ homes. I am fortunate enough to say that for me, home is where all the good things are - food, couches, bed, TV, books, plants and sometimes other people. I know that is not the reality for a lot of people, but I believe that a safe home with food and creature comforts is everyone’s most basic desire. And I like to think that if anyone is lucky enough to have that, they would love that space, want to take care of it, and they would certainly not wear their muddy shoes inside.
A no-shoes office has a few prerequisites: clean and dry floors, no forgotten loose pins lying around, awareness by everyone in the office to make sure they don’t roll over your foot with their chair, and a mutual understanding between everyone involved about hygiene. The simple act of taking our shoes off encourages us to pay more attention to our surroundings, occupy that space more consciously, and with a greater awareness of other people.
When you care for a space, you pour your heart and soul into it, making it the perfect fit. And that space, in return, nurtures you to your full potential, with proper arch support and cushioning. It is a symbiotic relationship - one cannot exist without the other.
Now, back to that 23%. What if we felt at home during our time in the office. How do you think it would affect our mental health? Well-being? Work? I think it would be a revelation, like warm fuzzy socks on a snowy winter day spent by the fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate in hand.
I should note that I’m not saying we should all subscribe to the tech office model of ‘we provide everything for you here so don’t ever leave - this is your home now.’ That approach is rooted in the concept of productivity and blurring the lines between work and everything else and is antithetical to actual work-life balance. What I am arguing for is creating an environment that fosters comfort and safety, stemming from the attitude of care and stewardship people have towards their workplace.
When you respect your space and feel a sense of responsibility towards it, it is reflected in your behaviour and how you treat the people in your ‘home.’
So, am I advocating for no shoes in the office? Of course not (ok, maybe a little), but what I’m trying to convey is the importance of making our offices enjoyable and nurturing environments where every person working there can thrive and be the best version of themselves. Because if we are not doing that, then what are we really doing here?
For further reading on psychological safety, you can go to https://www.leaderfactor.com/psychological-safety
