Going, going, back, back, to the Office, Office

I hope not to jinx where we are in the pandemic by writing on return to office scenarios – fingers crossed as we see variants continue that we do not reenter a global lockdown.

Much has been written on this topic starting as early as the end of 2020. More recently, we’ve seen a deluge of media on big tech and the return to the office. Return to the office and how companies handle it has been a factor in what is being called the Great Resignation. Talent has options and if employers do not prove to be the best option for their employees, they will lose talent. I’ve even read theories that some tech companies are using return to the office to avoid layoffs. Much to unpack on the topic but today let’s just focus on how leaders can reframe their thinking to optimize for culture and ultimately team performance.

My goal today is to continue the conversation by giving leaders a framework for consideration as the workplace as we know it evolves.

Regardless of how companies handle return to the office, leaders should be intentional about the process and the impacts to culture, team dynamics, and productivity. There is no right answer, just the best answer for your team.

The Options

First, let’s cover the widely considered return to office options as well as some less widely considered options:

1. Fully remote: Everyone works remote
2. Fully in office: Everyone works in the office
3. Hybrid: Something between 1 and 2 above (almost an infinite number of possibilities)

• Employees can choose to be in the office or not
• Company standardizes on remote days and in office days for entire organization
• Company lets departments and internal team leaders set return to office guidelines
• MANY other flavors of mixing remote and in office

The Impacts

Next, let’s cover the impacts of each. Regardless of which choice is made, culture will be impacted.

• Fully remote: I don’t think anyone will argue that having everyone work remote 100% of the time provides less opportunities for serendipitous collaboration than the alternatives. This does not mean great companies have not been built with a 100% remote model, they have. Automattic, Zapier, Toptal, and Atlassian just to name a few are all companies that have always been 100% remote and employ thousands of folks across the globe. I also don’t think any of them would say they have bad culture. But as a leader, if you make a switch to 100% remote from a pre-pandemic in office norm, you must understand you will possibly take a hit to culture and could lose team members that value in office collaboration.
• Fully in office: I believe this option is no longer as straight forward as it once was. Employees who signed up for a job that was a fully in-office work environment pre-pandemic may believe productivity (no commute, more flow time) went up and may desire not to go back to an office 100% of the time. As leaders, we must understand that demanding everyone come back to an office comes with risk. You may lose talent. Leaders must be okay with that reality when making the decision. I personally thought this is how this story would end for management and technology consulting. Pre-pandemic, I was a firm believer that our teams had to be on site to accomplish the rich collaboration and problem solving with our customers that they were accustomed to. I was wrong. We still did amazing work together. However, I do believe building new relationships are very challenged in a fully remote environment. There is nothing like talking face to face with other human beings and solving a tough problem together to build trust. Building trust virtually is possible, but just becomes harder. We are human, not robots. Virtual hi-fives are lame! Real hi-fives are pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, Zoom is great in a 1 on 1 setting, almost as good as sitting in a room together – I’d say 80% as good as in person. However, my point of view is that each person you add to a zoom meeting after the second person reduces collaboration effectiveness by 50%. If someone has their video off for the call, you lose probably 75% for each additional person.
• Hybrid: I think this is where most companies will land. Hybrid means nothing other than we are not doing exactly what we did pre-pandemic because the world changed – we will have a mix of in office and remote work for our team. I am not going to go into the various hybrid options but I am going to hone in on one that I think works well. We’ve had clients adopt all versions of the models and I have first hand seen the impacts. My personal favorite hybrid model is a client that asks all team members to be in the office 3 days a week and remote 2 days a week. But what I think works very well about this model at this client is that the days of the week for remote / in office are standardized. For example, everyone is in person Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and everyone is fully remote Wednesday and Friday. This works great as you do not have to worry about who is in the office on a given day.

Food for Thought

I do think it is up to all employers to up their in-office game. It is incumbent upon leaders to make working in the office better than not working in the office. Make it fun.

I also think it is incumbent upon employees to prove the remote model. Moreso than employers making the office fun. Employees must not give managers a reason to think they are less productive simply because they are not in the office. Remote employees who fail to engage in a rich way do put themselves at a disadvantage than the team members who do engage in a rich way. For example, the number of individuals who join a Zoom call and do NOT have video on seems to have increased significantly since mid 2020. At the start of the pandemic, everyone was accustomed to video on. Anecdotally speaking, I have seen a significant drop-off in the number of team members who keep video on across our clients. A couple of interesting points from a survey Forbes conducted of 200 executives with 500 or more employees:

• 96% of executives said employees who primarily work virtually are at a disadvantage over those who work mostly in a brick-and mortar-office.
• 94% said remote employees were less connected and have fewer opportunities within the company than their office-working counterparts.
• Executives view the lack of employee engagement as a sign of subpar performance to come: 93% of executives said employees who turn their camera off are generally less engaged in their work overall.
• The lack of engagement opens the door to executives making assumptions about the behavior of employees. More than 2 in 5 executives (43%) suspected that those who are on mute or off-camera all the time are browsing the internet or social media, texting or chatting (40%).

The lack of engagement opens the door to executives making assumptions about the behavior of employees. More than 2 in 5 executives (43%) suspected that those who are on mute or off-camera all the time are browsing the internet or social media, texting or chatting (40%).

Whether any of the numbers of productivity are real or not, just the fact that executives are prone to make assumptions on what is happening when video is off is worth noting if you are a remote employee.

Conclusion

In summary, both leaders and the employee talent base have responsibilities in making the post pandemic workplace work. Also worth noting is that the right solution will depend on the organization and culture of the firm – there is no right answer for everyone.