The Return to Office: Separating Hype from Reality and Creating Meaningful Office Days

Many headlines came out recently about coming back to the office:

1. More Bosses Order Workers Back to the Office as Job Market Shifts. (WSJ)
2. Want a Pay Raise? Work Five Days a Week in the Office (Bloomberg)
3. Wall Street’s biggest WFH advocate is bringing underperforming staff back into the office. (CNN)
4. Like working from home? Some companies say enough is enough. (CBS News)
5. Starbucks and Disney Forces Employees Back to The Office (Entrepreneur)
6. Is remote work becoming a thing of the past? (Today)
7. The companies backtracking on flexible work (BBC)
8. U.S. Return-to-Office Rate Rises Above 50% for First Time (WSJ)

On Monday, I asked: "Are we simply throwing the opportunity of rethinking work in the trash can now that things are 'back to normal'?"

A bit of nuance: reading beyond the headlines

A lot of these headlines overstate what's actually happening.

It's the media being the media.

Starbucks only asks employees to come back for three days per week, a perfectly balanced hybrid approach many companies are adopting. Even Disney employees who were "ordered back to the office" still get Friday as a work-from-home day.

As John Preece astutely analyzed, the Bloomberg article about "getting a pay raise for five days in the office" is actually about companies needing to increase salaries of hospitality, manufacturing, and healthcare workers (who happen to have less flexibility to work from home.)

And as recent data (see below) shows, remote is far from "a thing of the past" – although remote companies do seem to be showing more interest in creating office hubs or similar facilities for their teams if and when they need it.

So while it's true that office occupancy rates topped 40% for the first time since the pandemic, it's still only 50% of what occupancy rates were before the pandemic. (Which, in itself, reminds us that 80% occupancy traditionally was considered good!)

What are companies actually doing?

Zooming out, we see that most companies, like Starbucks, are adopting a more nuanced approach, with some days in the office and some days from home.

Scoop, a US-based Hybrid Work platform (very similar to our FlexOS here in Asia), shared data on 4,000 US firms' work-from-home policies. Besides the 49% of fully on-site firms, most of which are in industries where remote work isn't an option, like food service, accommodation, and retail, the policies break down between:

• 31% fully flexible: fully remote or employee's choice
• 20% structured hybrid: minimum days per week, specific days per week, a mix of the two or a policy based on time spent.

The larger number of companies offering remote and employee choice contrasts with what we saw in Singapore, as reported in our Hybrid Work Excellence research. Here, hybrid companies more typically adopt a minimum (fixed) days per week policy:

Last week, I was a guest on The Adrian Tan Show and discussed why we can safely ignore these kinds of headlines: as people-first companies, we shouldn't compare ourselves with antiquated enterprises and their antics.

In the often competitive industries we find ourselves in, there is no way we can get around employees' very understandable demand for flexibility.

Making the office work

In a great webinar with The PIE , Virtual Internships ' inspiring Global Head of People Operations Lucie Zajíčková said it well: employers want employees to come into the office, but employees don't have a good reason to do that.

The research backs this point of view. Microsoft found that 38% of employees say their greatest hybrid challenge is knowing when or why to come into the office. With employees sometimes having spent almost two years successfully working from home, that’s no wonder.

As I wrote in our Hybrid Excellence paper, organizations now "will have to answer a simple question: why would people come to the office when they can work from anywhere? Forcing people to come back to the office without the proper motivators will make employees resentful."

The key lies in creating intentional office days that are designed around the kind of work that's done better in the office than remotely.

Workplace strategist Corinne Murray shared a helpful framework in a recent interview, as in her eyes, "most companies are too focused on bringing employees back into the workplace rather than understanding what works best for the type of work the employee is doing."

The framework, from research consultancy Gartner , shows the four modes of collaboration that are key to successful hybrid working models: together and alone, in-person or remote.

Overlay that with other things best done in-person, like social activities that build trust, learning and development, and fun outings that strengthen relationships.

Companies can draft a schedule of office days or let managers do this for their teams. Combine team meetings, collaboration or co-working hours, learning & development, social activities, and more. 

Jam-packed meaningful days like this may drive office FOMO, but at least employees give a compelling reason for why to make the sometimes expensive and draining commute into the office.

As I shared with Adrian, this helps solve the structure and routine employees are missing from the office, which can be harder to maintain while working from home. In the office, employees have a clear schedule and can focus on their work more effectively.

It also helps combat the sense of isolation that 1 in 3 remote employees feel, according to research from Dan Schawbel 's Workplace Intelligence.

What about companies who insist on a full return to office?

Nick Bloom, Economics Professor at Stanford University and the global thought leader on remote work, discussed returns to office with Adam Grant on his TED Conferences podcast Work Life.

Adam reads him an email from a "senior, highly accomplished leader in the tech industry" that says: "I remain adamant that any engineering and product development team that I manage maximize time together in the office. Five days per week. Plus weekends! I remain highly skeptical that the kind of engines of growth development and innovation that drive Silicon Valley startups and mid-sized companies can be handled through hybrid work. I want my engineering and product teams at the office with me."

Nick responds: "It's like being read an email from a flat earther that's trying to argue with you that, you know, the world is flat. And that Elvis is standing on one side, and he's still alive."

Well said.

If you can't produce great outcomes without having your team under your nose 6 or more days a week – clearly, there's a bigger issue than just where people should be doing their work.

More importantly, companies can't claim that they are employee-centric in their employer branding, and then turn around to demand butts in seat on every workday.

Concluding our interview, Adrian rightly pointed out that employers who think they’re “back in charge” and can demand workers to return to the office will be hurt in the future. Employees won’t forget, just like they won’t forget how great companies cared for them.

In the words of Dror Poleg: “there are two kinds of bosses: those who embrace flexibility, and those who are about to lose their jobs.”

The data is clear

Adam Grant said it well: "I work with so many leaders who are heavy on opinion, but light on data." Well, the data is clear:

• People want hybrid. 52% of hybrid workers would consider quitting their job if they no longer could work flexibly.
• Hybrid work increases job satisfaction, engagement, commitment, and as proven in Nick Bloom 's own research, even employee retention.
• Hybrid work helps reduce real estate and operating costs by up to 50%. (Even Elon Musk came back on his word to return to office by sending people in Seattle to work from home due to high office costs.)

Importantly, hybrid work helps drive a sense of agency, which is critical for us human beings to thrive.

As Lucie said in THE PIE's webinar: "It’s not about remote or hybrid but about flexibility, and having choice & control over how people work." Job van der Voort , Remote's visionary CEO echoed this in a recent post: "It's not about working from home, or not going to an office. It's about changing the relationship with work."

Let's change our relationship with work and offices

In summary: there's nothing wrong with the office.

For most, it's a perfect solution to real challenges.

There is something very wrong with taking away flexibility, choice, and agency from people. This is a 'back to the future' no one needs.

Let's change our relationship with work and the offices where work used to take place by (keep) giving employees the flexibility they need and deserve to give you their best.

Have a great rest of your workweek, no matter where it takes place!

Daan