What to do when they won’t come back to the office
Getting to the heart of why people are not coming back to the office can be a powerful reveal of your workplace dynamics, and shine a light on critical points to target to create a more human-centric organisation.
A senior HR professional from a large company (1 000+ employees) told me that they were having issues getting their people back to the office. They’ve issued communications, assigned people “days to be on site” and cajoled as much as they can. Nada. Five people out of an 80 desk open plan floor pitched up to say farewell to a fellow senior staff member on their last day.
It seems nobody wants to come back to that office.
I enquired as to whether it was really necessary that they get their people back. If everyone’s happy and productive working from home, why not just get rid of the office space entirely?
It turns out that this business needs IRL (In Real Life) face time. They’ve done their homework and recognized that while WFH is nice in the short term, they need people to be back in the office, at least for some days a week, to maintain the long term business objectives around growth and innovation.
What would you do in this situation?
I know what I’d do.
I’d go through some analysis to get some answers, and start to map a way forward where everyone wins.
I’d engage with the workforce and find what’s driving their decision-making and behaviour in this situation.
Are they avoiding the commute?
Is it fear of infection? Or social anxiety?
Is it about money?
Do they make a decision to come in or not based on the weather?
Do they just not want to be around their colleagues, or their boss?
Or is it something else entirely?
The simplest way to do this is through an anonymous employee survey, verified by cross-sectional interviews.
This can give a broad understanding of the current situation and experience, and help to identify what perceptions are impacting the situation. Developing user personas based on these insights will also help the organisation to understand how different employees want to work.
These studies are most helpful if undertaken by a reputable external party, who employees can trust to treat their feedback without bias, and with absolute confidentiality, and thus ensure the highest possible degree of accuracy of the study.
Neuroscience tells us that behaviour analysis can be just as revealing, if not more, about people’s perceptions and decision-making. For this reason I recommend an additional analysis exercise to map the various user journeys. These involve individual engagements with a set of employees from across the business. These can be incredibly valuable in helping to understand the needs and behaviours of employees, as well as identify the pain points of the employee experience.
The insights from the survey and user journey mapping combined can help leaders to gain a deeper understanding of what’s really going on, and help to identify tactics to address the critical issues.
So what sort of tactics could this sort of study lead to? Anything really! Each organisation’s situation is unique and you could find the solution in a simple office layout change or communication exercise. Or you could find that a broader solution is required. I list some possibilities below:
You might need a culture change.
You might need to make some adjustments to your space. Eg social distancing, signage and visual budges, changes to ventilation
You might need to set up your hybrid workplace strategy differently
You might need to instill some new behaviours (and offload old ones)
You might need to redesign the workplace experience
While possibilities are listed above, but it’s really not something one could guess. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so it’s important to approach it rationally, using credible assessment tools and methodologies, implemented by a trusted, external expert.
Getting to the heart of why people are not coming back to the office can be a powerful reveal of your workplace dynamics, and shine a light on critical points to target to create a more human-centric organisation.
Demonstrating that employees are heard, and that their health and wellbeing are vital for your organisation’s functioning, might seem like an insignificant action, but the impact can be great. Actions like this are not only likely to improve engagement and help retain talent, but can also lead to improved productivity and stronger organisational performance and resilience.
And while people and organisations might be focusing on short-term fixes right now, we all need to adapt our thinking and extend our view beyond. We’re all going to have to accept that ongoing adaptation is going to be the new normal. You’re going to need an engaged and supported workforce for that.
Space Sense has developed its own employee workplace analysis toolkit to assist business leaders in understanding and leveraging the dynamics of their workplaces. Our analyses provides the insight to support leaders in making the right decisions for high performing teams and more efficient operations. Contact Space Sense today to find out more.
Image credit: Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash