Why insist on office mandates?
Perhaps the need for collaboration and social connection isn’t being met well by any work arrangement. — Navneet Alang
Do people want to return to the office? For many, that question is one that has already been answered with a resounding “no” — regardless of what their employer actually wants.
It can be hard to argue with the view. For one, in a predominantly suburban country like Canada, commuting can exact a draining toll. There are also myriad benefits to working from home, whether cost savings from not having to go in, to parents being able to easily pick up kids from school.
Perhaps that’s why, at least according to one study, that 99 per cent of companies that instituted a mandated return saw a drop in employee satisfaction.
Despite the pushback, though, the return to the office has essentially happened already. Near the end of last year, barely 12 per cent of Canadians were working from home exclusively. Another study put out by Cisco suggested that just over three-quarters of Canadian companies have or will mandate a partial or full return. So much for the work-from-home revolution.
But that same study also provided another surprising data point: “64 per cent of employees positively support their organization’s decisions” regarding inperson work. Their reasons, at least according to this particular study, were that they wanted to collaborate, ideate and socialize in person.
Sure, it’s worth being a touch circumspect about a study about hybrid work from a company that builds hybrid work solutions. All the same, the disparity is interesting.
On the one hand, you have a pretty clear resistance to in-person work. On the other, companies have all but clamped down, with the vast majority at least having switched to hybrid work. Yet, some workers do in fact want the benefits of in-person work. So what is it that’s going on?
One answer: perhaps the need for collaboration and social connection isn’t being met well by any work arrangement.
In one sense, trying to foster those ideals of mutual creativity and socializing by bringing people back to the office gets the cart before the horse. After all, how people interact in their jobs isn’t simply a question of proximity. It’s about culture.
The difference between a company that makes concrete choices to foster collaboration and one that merely expects it to happen are clear.
For one, people need both time and space to collaborate. In-person, this might be about dedicated spaces in offices for joint work that are not meeting rooms and are not offices.
But in a hybrid environment, there also needs to be the appropriate time and technology to allow collaboration between colleagues who are not in the same space.
It is, again, about intentional choices made by companies to do so that will result in greater co-operation rather than simply hoping it will happen by default.
In that vein, rethinking workspace design may be key.
The Cisco study suggested that technology is vital to the new hybrid workplace, which makes sense.
Trying to live up to those corporate buzzwords of ideation, creativity and collaboration can be a lot harder when one is hunched over a conference call speaker.
Newer video technologies, particularly with larger screens and interactive elements that allow for, say, live handwritten notes can make a significant difference.
That same focus on technology is necessary for remote work, too.
Perhaps, then, what is animating at least part of the animus against RTO is not just the downsides of having to go in, but what one is going in to.
If, for example, one shows up to a mostly empty office in which one simply sits at a desk, just as one does at home, the purported benefits of in-person work are far from being realized.
Yet, despite what needs to be done to make the return to the office better, it’s worth being a touch wary about what is driving the push for RTO itself.
Research from the University of Pittsburgh states that part of what is behind back to office mandates is a power play by management, a kind of assertion of power and a reminder of who is in control.
Moreover companies who were performing poorly were more likely to blame employees for that performance, and in turn, then ask them to return to office on the assumption that it will improve productivity.
But the jury is still very firmly out on that assumption. Research also from the University of Pittsburgh says that workers who are forced back are less productive, and that firms that had mandates to return experienced no positive financial effects from doing so.
The takeaway here is the same: companies trying to foster collaboration or improve productivity by asking people to come back to the office may in fact be barking up the wrong tree.
If what a company needs is more mutual, creative work, and a more productive team, it’s something that has to start not with mandates, but a focus on workers themselves: where they want to be, what it is they need to excel — and the idea that a team and healthy work culture is not something that simply happens, but is a product of deliberate, purposeful action.