R.T.O. , R.I.P.

So what is my problem with these three letters; RTO?

The letters and those words behind them seem so innocuous. So banal. So basic… Return to office.

At one point a couple of years ago, they were very much what they seem. And I would argue they were positive… with good intentions. They were representative of all of us in the workplace industry trying to make the offices we all quickly vacated at the start of the pandemic as safe and healthy as possible to give individuals the piece of mind that it was truly okay to come back and try to pick up where we all left off. 

And for those companies who never really spent that much time away from their offices (and yes, there are many of them… I have seen them with my own two eyes), RTO was something they did, and successfully accomplished sometime around 2021. So for them, this conversation about return to office feels like someone else’s problem (that they can't believe is still being discussed).

But for many more companies and organizations (for clarity: this conversation is not just about corporations but also about public institutions and the offices of higher education), the letters RTO have come to mean something far less innocent, hopeful and positive. 

In most instances, what these letters have come to mean is something more like:

you’d better RETURN your lazy self TO the damn OFFICE that I’m wasting tons of money on right now or else. 

I have had a number of people say to me directly that many leaders are sick and tired of this whole conversation and they just want to stop the madness and make everyone come back to the way things used to be. They worked very well for decades and it’s just ridiculous that we would all just stop doing it now and let everyone just do whatever they want.

The problem is, what we used to do was not really that great. Even in the best cases.

This is not meant to toot my own horn, just to make a point. Since about 2015, I (along with a few others) have been talking about the fact that workspaces have never really been designed for how people want to work. They have been designed to manage the masses to the lowest common denominator.

Most offices have been designed so that 50-60% of the (useable) floor area is comprised of desks. 

The remainder is made up of conference rooms (and a mix of amenities whose percentage and quality varied widely depending on the value an organization put on the importance of the workplace experience).

The reality is, desks (in most organizations) were usually only occupied about 25% of the time and the conference rooms were almost always overbooked. Most meeting rooms were used by 3 people or less, regardless of the number of seats. Our lives were dictated by onerous back to back meeting schedules and most people were basically trying to escape to a conference room to work alone whenever possible. 

So, what did we have?

60% desks, occupied 25% of the time. 

30% conference rooms, occupied 90% of the time.

Why did this happen?

Open plan desk areas have (for the great majority) never been focused on the quality of the individual experience. In most instances, at least 80% of the provided desks (yes I have studied this extensively) were not actually places people would choose to work, if actually given the choice. Many desks don’t allow for visual privacy. Many desks are too close to common areas and paths of travel. Many desks have glare/heat issues from exterior windows. 

Conference rooms are almost always even worse than the desks. I spent many years working with numerous highly talented designers around the world to develop guidelines to make the conference room experience the best it could possibly be. It took a lot of time. It cost a ton of money. And yet, even in the best case scenario, the rooms still had room for improvement and still did not fully enable truly equitable meetings. For the vast majority of organizations, conference rooms actually SUCK. They are terrible from a human comfort perspective. They enable bad managers to amplify negative practices. They have really poor air quality. They are not well equipped in terms of AV and other technology. They are sad dark boxes in the middle of a larger hermetically sealed box, meant to keep track of individuals while they work.. But they were the only option most people had to give themselves the privacy they desired.

So what’s happening now?

Technology has enabled individuals to have things they didn’t ever really have before; Choice, Control and Equity.

So it’s no wonder at all that people aren’t interested in returning to the office… especially when most organizations have not made any fundamental changes to improve the conditions for how and where people work. Instead, many have actually made them worse. 

Once leaders realized this whole thing wasn’t going to blow over, they began to reduce their footprints to stop the bleeding. They selected properties that were their least attended pre pandemic or that had leases that were close to coming to term. 

Many of them have begun to believe that the solution is to put the same number of people into less space, to ensure they will run into one another and collaborate… some are even deciding that the answer is to just add even more desks so that every person has their own desk and never has to share. And while the most well funded and progressive companies have worked hard to make conference rooms more well equipped to deliver successful and equitable hybrid meetings, the vast majority have done nothing material to improve them.

So where do we go from here?

In order for people to want to be physically proximate to work together, three things must be in place.

1. Intentionality - going to a workplace, just to go in, without purpose or focus, may sometimes yield an unexpected positive outcome caused by people serendipitously engaging, but in order to justify the ask and in order for people to want to make the effort, there must be a clearly defined purpose, a “why” that resonates. 
2. Resources - places people work must have the things they need to create an experience that they will volunteer to repeat. Whether that is the technology, the environment, the choices, the services, the programs, the people; the experience needs to be curated to meet the needs of the individuals and enable the success of their teams.
3. Value - what is the ROI for an individual making the personal sacrifice/investment of their time to be physically proximate to other people for work? From my perspective, if you can demonstrate that empowering teams to come together with intentionality can lead to better outcomes for those individuals, the teams they are a part of and the companies they work for… then you have begun to find your own solution to this equation.

Goodbye, RTO. Welcome, PPW!

Instead of focusing on RTO, let’s change the conversation to PPW… PLACES PEOPLE WANT (to be). I truly believe that if we focus on creating meaningful experiences where people want to be, we can have fundamentally better outcomes.

Soon, I will talk more about the concept of team and how well designed and intentional physical proximity can lead to better outcomes for the collective as well as more fulfilling experiences for the individuals. But in my next article, I will begin sharing thoughts about what makes a place that people want to be. Fundamentally speaking, what are the characteristics of places that appeal to individuals such that they choose to overcome inconvenience and hardship to spend time there. 

For now, please share some of your favorite places to be and what about them makes you want to spend time there. They can be very specific places or just a type of place. It can be for work or for leisure. Just think of the places you first choose to be.

R.T.O. may you R.I.P.