Is Your Back-to-Office Plan Doomed?
Well then, nothing like getting right to the point.
Unfortunately, when we hear senior leaders discussing their back-to-office plans, “doom” is often the first thought that comes to mind.
Many companies, having now recognized that their people like working from home at least part of the time, are rolling out hybrid plans with specific rules attached.
That’s because many companies, having now recognized that their people like working from home at least part of the time, are rolling out hybrid plans with specific rules attached, such as, “Everybody needs to come into the office on Tuesdays.”
On the face of it, that feels flexible – a compromise that offers a great deal of personal choice and that should satisfy most people. But it creates a number of unintentional problems.
For example, given that 25% of the workforce has already moved more than 50 miles from their prior location due to the pandemic, what happens to them? Do they also have to come in on Tuesdays? How about those who have moved 100 miles away? Or 1,000?
Of course the answer is no. But the result is that you will quickly create two classes of citizens: Those in the office who benefit from proximity to leadership, easy access to real time information, and informal relationship-building before, during, and after hours … and those who don’t.
Or, how about companies that leave it to the individual department heads, again, in the name of “being flexible?” Sounds terrific, until the CMO lets her staff come and go as they like, and the CFO, who still carries an, “If I can’t see you I don’t know if you are working” mentality, requires his people to come in often.
Whatever back-to-office plan you mandate, if some people have options that others do not, you are going to run into trouble.
What Does “Flexibility” Really Mean?
One of the big concerns companies have in a hybrid environment is the sustainability of corporate culture. In many ways, culture is the foundation of the way decisions are made.
But if you declare that flexibility is part of your culture, you need to be consistent and absolute. Rolling out plans that dictate where and when employees work – as well meaning as those plans may be – also dictates where they live.
For many people, that’s anything but flexible. In a labor market as tight as ours is now, you are at a serious disadvantage if you don’t embrace flexibility fully (because somebody else will).
Some Things to Keep in Mind
#1. Focus on Guiding Principles, not Problem Solving
Every enlightened organization has used the pandemic to do employee surveys, listening tours, and the like. But how much have senior leaders actually sat and talked together about COVID lessons learned: what should we do more of, less of, stop doing entirely, etc.? Senior leadership needs to listen closely and develop a fair and genuine set of principles – and live by them.
For example, maybe you have a principle that “informal time together is important.” That’s fine. But if you tackle that problem by mandating in-person time, it won’t work out well. If you believe that your people need to get together to innovate, the key is “get together” – it need not be in person.
Jumping right to problem solving without being intentional, thoughtful, and consistent with your guiding principles risks making things worse than before. You are either empowering your people or you are not.
#2. Walk the Talk
Even if your preference is to be in the office, you need to spend at least some time working remotely.
If you want employees to feel that they can have a solid career in a flexible environment, you need to make sure senior leaders are walking the talk.
Even if your preference is to be in the office, you need to spend at least some time working remotely, articulate why you come in when you do, and work hard to remove any advantages that those in close physical proximity to you may have relative to their remote or hybrid peers.
Overall, we need to make sure that everyone – leadership in particular – is operating under the same set of rules and circumstances.
#3. Put Necessary Structures in Place
As we have written about before, for hybrid to be successful, you need to “formalize the informal” by taking steps to explicitly rethink everything about the way your organization works, from onboarding, to use of technology, to internal communications, and more.
For example, design your in-person meeting spaces and activities to fully include remote worker participation. Then make sure to open the meeting at the same time for all participants (to avoid premeeting chit chat among those physically present) and don’t close the Zoom call until the last person has left the conference room, so all can participate equally. Alternatively, you could require everyone to join via Zoom, regardless of where they are located.
We Are Not Going Back to the Way It Was
A truly flexible, hybrid workplace won’t be achieved with old principles and outdated thinking. The end of the pandemic – whenever that thankfully occurs – will not be a return to the way things used to be.
Companies and the people who work for them have demonstrated the viability and, in many cases, increased productivity and employee satisfaction that occurs when people are given more choice about where and when they work.