The Challenge of Getting People back to the Office: Creating Attractive Workplaces

It’s all over the news: organizations want people back in their expensive office spaces. There are good reasons for this: research suggests that prolonged remote working can weakened organisational identification and culture. It can have a negative effect on creativity and innovation. But many people are resisting the call and one can see a mix of carrot and stick approaches responses, cajoling and seducing or insisting and threatening.

Why is it proving so hard and is there any way to make the workplace more attractive to those now wedded to the benefits of remote working?

There is a great quote in Cunha and colleagues’ book (see below) from a journalist, Skidelsky who writes, ‘Offices are often spirit-sapping places, incompatible, for many, with a sense of agency and self-respect. People also dislike having bosses...’

He goes on to note the attractions of freelance work as including, ‘having the freedom to work where you want, in your own time’ and that these are, ‘things that people increasingly value, and not only those at the top of the pay-scale.’

For people who like the security of a pay packet, remote working can be the nearest thing to going freelance. They’ve had a taste; they’ve made the adjustment. The commute, disruption and forced interactions of the office hold little attraction.

Can the office fight back?

Research suggests three key areas to focus on.

1.     How good are your managers?

Managers account for a significant variation in worker engagement, up to 70%. So, are your managers great? Do their staff relish the opportunity to spend time with them?

Gallup research suggests five key features of great managers

·      They motivate employees and engage them with a valuable organisational mission

·      They express the level of assertive and grit necessary to get things done and to overcome adversity

·      They create cultures of accountability

·      They build positive relationships

·      They make decisions oriented to productivity not politics

I want to look particularly at the last two of these

They build positive relationships

When staff are in, managers need to be focused on their needs – not on the paperwork they could as well do at home. On office days they need to find ways to work with the team, not on the team.

They make decisions oriented to productivity not politics

Being asked to come into the office because, ‘this valuable real estate is going to waste’ is politics, not productivity. It is not likely to be a pull motivation for anyone. Neither is ‘Come into work so I can keep an eye on you and see you working.’ Nor,  ‘Come into work so I can stroll by and interrupt you and grab your attention without have to make a phone-call’ (pace Rees-Mogg).

We have to do better: coming into the office needs to help people be productive, do better, feel good, keep up good friendships, have informal time with people. And ideally, laugh and have fun together. Then people might be interested to sacrifice their immediate productivity, to put the energy into getting somewhere, and, to risk having to engage with their least favourite person!

2.     How well is time in the office used?

People have discovered how productive they can be beavering away at home. If they come into the office to do the same work they do from home, they will be very frustrated at the drop off in productivity.

This means people need to do different things when they come into the office. These different things need to be focused on relationship building or maintenance or restoring. On working collaboratively on collective ambitions, endeavour or projects. On stimulating co-creativity and innovation. They should be days of excitement about ideas and possibilities. They should be motivating.

3 How positive is your organisational culture?

‘A positive organization,’ say Cunha and colleagues, ‘is one that sustainably obtains superior performance in a virtuous way via an emphasis on strengths.’

By definition, people enjoy exercising their strengths. For most people that enjoyment is heightened when they can use them to help other people, people who are important to them, people they like. So, when people come into the office, call on their strengths to further the common ambition, to help colleagues, to build a better future.

Previous blogs about positive emotions and relationships and hybrid working

Build in wellbeing from the beginning

How a dose of humility helps leaders succeed

Some Challenges posed by Hybrid Working and How we can meet them

 For those interested in creating attractive workplaces, you might find the Positive Organisational Development Cards of interest

With thanks to

e Cunha, M. P., Rego, A., Simpson, A., & Clegg, S., 2020 Positive organizational behaviour: A reflective approach. Routledge.