A short time perusing media is sure to turn up at least one article related to the struggle between employers who want to get their workers back into the office full time and employees who push back against it. Labour disputes are occurring and employees are leaving. Before getting into the concerns of organizational culture, legislation, policies, technology, and others, let’s examine why this is a struggle in the first place by asking the question ‘why is it so important to employers to have their employees in a particular location’?
Let’s categorize the motivations for mandating a full-time return to office into four groups: tradition, comradery, creative desire, and productivity concerns. Some organizations, especially those that had no hybrid or remote work practices in place prior to the pandemic, feel a strong pull to have everyone sitting in the office simply because that is how it was always done. Remote work may be seen as a response to a crisis that has now passed. For these organizations, the changes brought about by hybrid work may be unsettling and seen as a threat to effective operation of the business rather than a growth opportunity that can benefit the business.
Other organizations may have a mix of knowledge-based workers and those with physical jobs like stocking warehouses or running trains. In some cases, there is a sense that the knowledge workers in these organizations have a duty to their colleagues to show up to work in person, with Elon Musk going so far as declaring that working remotely is ‘morally wrong’. For these organizations, a full-time return to office is the only way to show solidarity and must be embraced wholesale, rather than developing a more nuanced approach to which roles and tasks need to be done at a particular location and which can be done effectively anywhere.
The third motivation for a full-time return to the office is a perception that effective creativity and innovation require in-person presence. Images of rooms full of whiteboards and animated conversations by writers, designers, and others spring to mind, rather than imagining a blend of in-person and mixed location sessions using modern collaboration tools.
Finally, many managers are concerned that employees will not perform if they are not being watched, or that they will not be able to measure performance if they can’t see them. For these organizations, physical supervision is the rule, with some resorting to various software and hardware tools rather than setting clear objectives and tracking performance by measuring results.
Watch this blog for deeper dives into each of these, and other related topics, and remember – you are not alone in dealing with the challenges of hybrid work!
SCG Hybrid Work Solutions works with organizations to develop a comprehensive and tailored hybrid work strategy. Contact us to see how we can help your organization achieve its goals.