By Micah Remley, CEO, Robin
Return-to-Office (RTO) mandates are real – and creating tension. Employers feel productivity is declining and want workers back in the office a few days a week. Workers want to remain at home and use the office when it suits them.
It’s all a bit of a mess.
What changed? After a few years, in which employees were able to dictate their wants and needs, the economy soured and revenues were shrinking. Businesses were forced to lay off workers, sometimes large percentages of them. That, along with the concern that productivity has slipped with workers fully remote led companies to more aggressively push new, more stringent hybrid work policies. More than 60 percent of leaders report that in-office time was either a somewhat or very important factor in an employee receiving a promotion or salary increase.
Hybrid work has growing pains – and it all starts with employees and employers having different definitions. Employers believe hybrid work entails workers being in the office a set number of times per week (generally between two and four days) to collaborate with peers. Employees want hybrid work. In fact, close to three-quarters of employees have it. Despite this, tension persists because employees think hybrid means office attendance is an option, not a demand.
As they map out hybrid work strategies, executive leadership needs to be more thoughtful and provide structure for its employees. Employees must ask themselves if the expectation of being in the office two to three times per week – which is currently what is being mandated by more than two-thirds of employers – is unreasonable.
Trust Leads to Great Culture – and a Winning Hybrid Work Policy
Culture is the way an organization reinforces its core values. At a macro level, cultural change has an impact on the future, the productivity of our society – and everything else. The same thing can be said for a business. Culture is made up of the values that you hold dear and how you reinforce them. For companies, it’s hard to build culture and enforce values when people are remote 100 percent of the time.
Post-pandemic, remote work was working. Business performance was fantastic in the early days post-pandemic – but that changed. Employers who dragged their feet, not making a decision, are now suddenly pushing employees back to the office three to four days a week without good reason or a clear plan in place.
When we started tackling this problem at Robin, we invited functional groups to pick one day they would be in the office together. That one day in the office is what most Robin employees needed. Over time, it reinforced what most of them were missing – the camaraderie, the collaboration, the mentorship. Very few of us can work completely independently because most of us need the support system our peers and managers bring to our day-to-day. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. An entire generation of employees came into the workforce during the pandemic and can’t be faulted for thinking remote work is what’s best for them.
Unless your business is dependent on individual contributors, your culture thrives when people work together to solve challenges and achieve success. To get there, you need to reaffirm that there is trust in the relationship before taking action on your hybrid strategy.
There are four steps every business can take now to minimize the impact:
- Create a shared view of what hybrid means across the company. How many days per week do you expect workers in the office? Does it vary by function or teams? Ensuring everyone understands the expectations of hybrid work is critical for success. Remote work still has a place, but you need to ensure there are guardrails in place.
- Go slow – and communicate often. Empower your employees to give feedback on the hybrid feedback policy. Provide them touchpoints to do so in a safe environment. Most importantly, don’t rush it – remember the world we all lived in post-pandemic. Immediately pushing workers to return for a four-day work week is not sustainable. Start by getting them back for one or two days a week and build on it.
- Structure – and fun – are critical. Structure combined with workplace activities, events, and vibrancy is an incredibly powerful combination that can lead to a stronger company culture. Make the office somewhere your people want to be, attendance should follow.
- Don’t be afraid to iterate on your hybrid work policy. This is new ground for all of us and we will fail to some degree. Listen to feedback – and adopt it into your policy. As new developments and technologies emerge to meet the needs of hybrid work, take advantage of the resulting data to make informed decisions rather than guessing. Armed with the insights they glean from workplace analytics, you can make decisions that bring positive results.
What we need to recognize as business leaders is there is still time. Time to nurture our workers, build trust, and bring them back into the office in a manner that makes them feel as though we’re listening. Ultimately, that is what will drive the business performance we all desire.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Micah Remley is CEO of Robin, the workplace management platform that streamlines workplace processes for enhanced in-office productivity.
