How to Manage the Return-to-Office Phase to Ensure All Employees Can Be at Their Best

“It’s not a problem. If my employer unilaterally mandates me back to the office 5 days a week, after two years of successfully working remotely, I’ll put the word out that I’m looking to make a move. I will be re-employed in no time.”

That is a recent sentiment shared with me by a high-performer, and it is not uncommon these days. It’s been reported that over half of Canadian workers who work remotely will quit if mandated back to the office 5 days a week. Unilaterally mandating remote workers back to the office has proven to be fraught for those employers who have chosen that path.

With 40% of Canadian workers occupying jobs that can be done remotely, the labour shortages across multiple sectors due to baby boomers leaving the job market, the willingness of workers to resign, and the recent trend of quiet quitting, many employers are taking the return to the office of those working remotely very seriously.

Before continuing, I’ll clarify that this article focuses on jobs that can be done remotely.

Beyond the immediate issue of returning to the office, the larger question is how employers engage and retain a workforce that, by all accounts, will work remotely at least some of the time, as there seems to be little support for 100% remote or 100% work from the office.

Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli, in his book The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work, and the Hard Choices We All Face and noted Canadian researcher Linda Duxbury have both framed the current period as a transitory one.

Lessons learned from remote work during the pandemic

At the onset of the pandemic, workers able to work away from their office scampered to home offices, dining room tables and various improvised home office alcoves while their employers sorted out the technical issues to enable them to be productive. Employers and remote employees scrambled, experimented and, to a large extent, made that phase work.

We learned from Cappelli’s work and that of others that:

• Remote workers spent 4-10 hours more on their primary jobs per week;

• Technical issues and team cohesion went poorly the first year of suddenly working from home;

• Relationships with supervisors improved (because of more frequent and deliberate check-ins) while relationships with colleagues seen less frequently (except in meetings) deteriorated;

• Managers who empowered, trusted, and managed outcomes yielded much better results than micromanagers and employers who used invasive monitoring systems;

• The best roles for remote work were those who function independently with low interaction.

• Employers missed the brainstorming, energy, and cohesion of having everyone at the office;

• Employees missed social interaction, office intrigue, and opportunities for romance (22% of workers meet their mates at work);

• Ineffective meetings were commonplace;

• Workers needed a balance between autonomy and structure;

• Remote work did not resolve all work-life balance issues;

• Working virtually helped retain women.

Exploring the return-to-office phase

We’re now in the “return-to-office phase,” and employers are dabbling with various approaches for jobs that can be done remotely. Employers have recognized that remote work is not only suitable for some but that some of their people have a very strong preference to work remotely while others do not. And some employers are experimenting with a hybrid arrangement where select employees work exclusively from home and others exclusively at the office. It creates a two-tiered approach. One that risks creating a cohort of remote workers who we know are shown to be less engaged, less included and whose career advancement prospects suffer because they are not visible compared to their colleagues who work full-time at the office.

The other more common approach, with its inherent scheduling challenges, sees all employees working some time remotely and some time at the office. This hybrid model offers much sought-after flexibility for employees.

A PWC survey of executives showed that 3 days in the office is the most popular formula to maintain company culture, while some early research shows 1-2 days per week is the ideal. Academics and employers agree it’s too early to draw conclusions. There needs to be a post-pandemic period of experimentation and evaluation to learn about productivity and employee engagement in the hybrid work era.

Given the talent shortages in so many sectors, and the ease of remote workers changing jobs or quietly quitting, there’s a lot riding on the next phase, but thankfully there are some practices and approaches we know will help.

Employers seem to be having better luck with their return-to-the-office efforts when they:

• Treat it as an organizational transformation project and thoughtfully manage resistance to change as opposed to blindly attempting to flip the switch back to 2019;

• Have dialogue with individual employees about their roles and preferences and conversations with teams about their operational and client needs, rather than announce sweeping edicts and unilateral return to work mandates;

• Let teams and individuals decide as much as possible. It’s about treating everyone fairly, not about treating everyone the same;

• Test, experiment, and launch trial periods followed by evaluation and a flexible, iterative approach that is bound to evolve;

• Build a compelling case for the return to the office with the help of their employees and institute Onboarding 2.0.

Employers, leaders, and managers are having success engaging those who work from home when they:

• Focus on creating the conditions for people to be at their best to do their best work;

• Work with individual employees to balance their need for structure and habit with the need for autonomy and flexibility;

• Focus on well-being and inclusion to counter the risk of remote employees feeling isolated;

• Invest in sustained leadership development to enable team leaders and managers to get better at setting measurable expectations, coaching, delivering meaningful feedback, and recognition in a hybrid work arrangement.

Employers will figure out a return-to-office approach and will also learn how to create great hybrid workplaces. While these arrangements are new for many employers, the evidence-based fundamentals on what makes organizations effective are not new.

Creating distinct spaces where people can be at their best for a part of each work week, empowering people to help define their hybrid work provisions, and shaping a leadership culture that champions flexibility, well-being, and inclusion to drive remarkable results in our new hybrid work world will increasingly be synonymous with great places to work.