Mastering the Office Comeback: Your Ultimate Guide

The last few years have been an absolute whirlwind of changes, some good, many bad, but the one thing that can’t be denied is the amount of innovative ‘firsts’ we’ve seen.

Among these is the mass adoption of hybrid and remote working in organisations across the planet.

The realisation that we don’t all have to be in the same building to get work done has been enormous, but the tide seems to be turning back the other way now.

Many companies are looking to bring their staff back into the office, and there are some mixed feelings about this, to say the least.

So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at a simple guide for getting people back to the office effectively, without pissing them off!

First, ask why you want them back.

Is there a genuine reason to have people back in the office?

Has the data shown you that collaboration or innovation is lacking?

Is there a new project launch that requires a physical presence?

Or, is it more so managers can keep an eye on staff and make sure they’re doing what they said they’d be doing?

When you’re asking staff to break from their routines and come back to the office, make sure there’s a good reason that you can stand by.

Consider your ROI on returning to the office.

With more staff on site, you’re facing increased in-office costs, increased managerial attention, lost time commuting, potential increased stress, decreased autonomy and flexibility, potential decreased goodwill, increased distractions, loss of time for healthful activities, and a potential increase in turnover of staff wanting to work from home.

It’s important to consider this along with your reasons for having staff back to see if they stack up and to make sure you’re gaining more than you’re losing.

Ask employees what they want.

The people that work for you are (hopefully) smart, independent, knowledgeable workers with good ideas, so utilise these traits when it comes to working out what’s best for them.

They will have opinions and ideas for how a back-to-the-office transition might work best for both them and the company so make sure to tap into those.

If you ask your people what they want and take it into proper consideration, chances are you’re going to get a better result and happier people at the end of it.

Communicate expectations clearly.

When you have your plan, whatever that plan ends up being, make sure you communicate it clearly to all staff.

This means letting them know why the decision was made, what you expect to get out of it, what you expect from them, and how they can practically make it happen.

If you can’t communicate all of these things very clearly then something is missing from your strategy and you need to go back to the drawing board and figure each point out until you can explain it in simple terms.

Create a desirable, collaborative and productive work environment.

If you’ve satisfied the first few points and coming back to the office is still the way forward, the next step is to create an environment that your people actually want to come back to.

They like their homes, now it’s time to make them like the office too.

This could mean creating time for socialisation, separate meetings just for innovation, wellbeing initiatives, free food, on-site massages, health and wellbeing workshops, exercise sessions, in-person learning opportunities, regular face-to-face time with some of the executives or a range of other things.

Create a space that they want to come to and benefit from and you’ve won the battle.

Measure ROI.

Like anything done in the workplace, there should be tangible benefits to implementing it, and these should be measured whenever possible.

Subjective wellbeing, engagement, morale, and if possible, productivity should be measured before and after the return to the office to see what effect it’s having.

If these metrics are increasing then you’re on the right track.

If they’re decreasing then the strategy may need to be rethought.

In this new way of working there is no such thing as ‘best practice’ for every company.

Some organisations will thrive when fully remote, others will do better with a hybrid approach, and there will be some that perform best when everyone is together.

The role of leaders is to discover which is best for their people and put a plan in place to make it happen.

This takes trial and error and a lot of iterations but it’s worth it to get to what works.

The trap we don’t want to fall into is doing things because everyone else seems to be doing them or, even worse, ‘that’s the way it’s always been done.’

For help with this, send us an email at [email protected] or fill out the contact form and we can steer you in the right direction.

Question

Are you considering a move back to the office? Do you have a plan for what you want and how that will look?