The debate about returning to the office
As organisations are mulling over return to office, what are the factors to consider?
Since March 2020, organisations have been caught in a mass-scale social experiment, never seen before, never imagined! Last year, every organisation went into a massive work from home experiment, overnight. Most were unprepared and several took months to adjust. Sixteen months on, with most of us double vaccinated, the question that looms in our minds now is - whether to return to office or not. Organisational pundits have predicted a hybrid model - one that can work in a few different ways.
Before deciding what is the best ‘return-to-work’ strategy for a particular organisation, there are several factors that need to be considered – some tangible (like productivity, cost, and employee preferences) while others not so tangible (like impact on innovation and collaboration). Let’s look at it from a three-fold perspective:
- How work is delivered in your organisation?
- Where are your business’ touchpoints?
- Who is your mission-critical talent and what inspires them?
1. How work is delivered in your organisation?
Deconstruct your business model and take a bold look at which pieces can be digitised or have already been automated. The pandemic has forced most organisations to adopt a digital-first approach. If most of your suppliers, employees, and customers are technologically enabled and connected, the advantage offered by a return-to-office approach is limited.
Having said that, digitised organisations too have a need to unplug and come face-to-face. If your business model is based on intense and ongoing research, innovation, and team brainstorming, the need for these teams to come together occasionally and safely must be catered to within your return-to-work strategy. Whether this is through periodic team meetings or a quarterly retreat – options abound!
Another important factor to consider here is the organisation culture. Organisation cultures, like people’s personalities, are unique and often intangible. This is where you need to have maximum conversation with team leaders and listen intently to your employees. Does your organisation display the resilience and agility needed when working remotely? Are your leaders equipped to uphold the organisation’s culture without traditional levers like face-to-face town halls or physical meetings?
Reimagine your work across all functions from the lens of digitalisation, automation, culture, and adaptability to narrow down to the right mix of in-person time your teams need.
2. Where are your business’ touchpoints?
The location of your current business points of contact will have a huge impact on what kind of hybrid model you want to adopt. The approach will vary widely for an organisation that has multiple retail outlets versus one from a core manufacturing sector.
Another factor to be considered here is how your workplace supports and enables productivity. Most organisations have reported that their employees are more productive while working from home. However, a study of 61000 Microsoft employees revealed that
while productivity rose during remote work, collaboration became “more static and siloed”
Organisations need to identify their primary channels of communication – formal and informal, internal and external – and these channels ought to cover both work and non-work aspects like organisational engagement and team bonding. Some teams are immensely comfortable bonding over Slack or Teams chat while others lose tacit knowledge if they don’t meet at the water cooler. Where these conversations take place within your organisations is critical to identify and feed into your return-to-work policy too.
3. Who is your mission-critical talent and what inspires them?
One of the main reasons organisations are rethinking the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of work in the future is because a significant population of their workforce wants to keep the flexibility. In fact, according to one EY survey,
more than half of employees globally would quit their jobs if not provided post-pandemic flexibility
If this talent that you will lose from return-to-work policies is easily replaceable, the answer is clear. On the flip side, is your mission-critical hard to find where your physical offices are located? Or, have you been trying to drive an inclusion and diversity agenda for years with no luck? This is the time for you to bolster your talent strategy – make it agile and inclusive. You no longer need to be limited to one city, state, or country to find the right talent.
Also, consider the capabilities of your team leaders and managers. How does your organisation develop talent? Is coaching a structured intervention within the organisation or do managers like to mentor their teams over a face-to-face meeting?
Last but not the least, consider role definitions and how can the talent be built to fill those roles. For fully remote roles and hybrid roles, talent sourcing is easier but you may need to invest more behind upskilling. However, roles that are fully on-site or hybrid by exception need more investment behind talent access.
Blending in-office and remote workers present organisations with new challenges. As this future of work faces us, we need to look at the larger purpose of offices and how they enable organisations and teams to support their unique cultures and brand personalities.
