How Successful Leaders Are Getting Employees To Come Back the Office

Most employees have rational reasons for wanting to continue working remotely. Leaders who are successful in encouraging their employees to return to the office recognize those concerns and address them up front. 

To overcome office return resistance, leadership strategies include redesigning the office, subsidizing some commuting costs and offering flexible schedules in order to overcome childcare challenges. These leaders also recognize that time in the office is precious so are focusing on organizing the time spent there is collaborative, collegial, productive and enjoyable as possible. JL 

Alexandra Samuel reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Remove the pain points. Chief among them, health worries. Let people know how you’re reorganizing the office to create more space, and share details on ventilation upgrades, sanitation procedures and any other measures. Institute flexible schedules or subsidized transit. Update your dress code. Open an on-site daycare center, or invite parents to work a split day so they can pick up children at school, then finish work at home. Remind people of the creative, collegial and collaborative benefits of work on site: give priority to projects that involve people working together. Employees may be happy to hit rewind on the rebalancing of work and home; draw a line between them.

There is a magical land where the temperature is always 72 degrees, the Wi-Fi never goes down, and there is always somebody to talk to.

You and your employees may remember this place from ancient times—that is to say, 2019. It is called the office.

Where the office was once the daily default, it is now a distant memory for many workers—and a lot of them don’t miss it. Employees who once rolled out of bed and onto the commuter train without question may now think twice about trading their sweatpants for suits and their bedroom desk for an open-concept floor plan.

Survey after survey shows that the majority of employees want to spend at least three days a week working remotely, and very few want to return to the office full time. Eighteen months of remote work means that people have restructured their homes, their family schedules and their personal priorities in ways that may not make it appealing to spend more than the occasional day back at the office.

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But many bosses are eager to get their employees back to the office, at least a few days a week.

Little perks like office supplies and personal use of the copier can help the workplace compete with home.

ILLUSTRATION: RAMI NIEMI

Yes, managers could force them back to the workplace, but they risk losing their best talent and ending up with a discontented, disengaged workforce. It is far better to lure them back: make employees want to return to the office, if not full time, then at least two or three days a week.

It is up to the bosses to help them remember what the office has to offer. For instance: All the minor inconveniences of the home office—the lousy printer, the uncomfortable desk setup, the unpredictable Wi-Fi—get addressed in an environment where there are actual people whose job is to make sure everything works. But it isn’t just that. There are people they like and opportunities to get things done that are far more cumbersome at home. People have just forgotten much of that.

Here are some things bosses can do to remind them of the old, good things and to make the office a more attractive place to be.

Remove the pain points

Your strategy begins with understanding the reasons for your employees’ reluctance to return.

Chief among them? Health worries.

Office vs. Home

For employees, the case for working remotely after the pandemic isn't clear-cut—or so many companies are hoping

Perks at work: Surveyed employees who have returned* to their office cited the following as advantages of being there

Separates home from work life

46%

Easier to collaborate in person

44

See work friends

39

Face time with managers

37

Better Wi-Fi and desk setup

32

Improved mental health

28

Getting to know new co-workers in person

23

Other perks, such as free food

21

Blurred lines at home: The percentage of employees who said they do the following on most workdays when working remotely

Start and end work at consistent times

49%

Take breaks throughout the day

40

Move around the house or go outside during work hours

39

Unplug/Disconnect from work communication when not working

33

Eat regular meals without rushing

33

Set clear boundaries for my time availability (e.g., block off my calendar)

29

Have a ritual to mark the beginning or end of the workday

27

I don’t do any of these things when working remotely

16

*Returned to the physical office in the previous 12 months and work from the office at least one full day a week.
Sources: Envoy/Wakefield online survey of 1,000 US workers, August 2021 (office advantages); McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.Org Women in the Workplace 2021 survey of more than 65,000 employees, June-August 2021 (working remotely).

Let your team members know what you’re doing to keep them safe and healthy. If you’re requiring that everyone on site be fully vaccinated, share that policy widely. Let people know how you’re reorganizing the office to create more space, and share details on ventilation upgrades, sanitation procedures and any other measures.

Once you’ve addressed safety concerns, you should turn your attention to the other inhibitors. Are employees concerned about commuting times or costs? Institute flexible schedules or subsidized transit. Dreading the return to suits-and-ties? Update your dress code. Stressed about child care? Open an on-site daycare center, or invite parents to work a split day so that they can pick up their children at school, then finish their work at home.

Granted, some of those changes may be pricey, and not every company can afford to add big-ticket amenities. Be warned, though, that these kinds of benefits may be necessary to lure back employees who have gotten cozy at home.

Make it fun to see each other

Removing the pain points isn’t enough. If you want your employees to be thrilled to return to the office, you need to give them positive reasons for looking forward to the grand reopening.

Employees can be pulled in by the delight of reconnecting with one another.

ILLUSTRATION: RAMI NIEMI

First and foremost: Remind people of the creative, collaborative and collegial benefits of time on site. That may mean reorganizing their work so that you shift people away from tasks that are best done solo (like writing or data analysis) and toward work that really thrives on in-person collaboration (like brainstorming or strategic planning).

As much as possible, give priority to projects that involve people working closely together. This is a great time to bring forward a neglected project that requires a lot of creativity and intellectual engagement, and is likely to be fun and engaging for your team.

Also remember that as a manager, you are just as big a draw as fun, creative work. Organize your schedule so you have as much time as possible with your direct reports. Time with the boss is a big incentive to come into the office, especially for employees who were hired while the office was closed and haven’t yet had a chance to bond with you and the rest of the team.

The joy of face time isn’t all about productive meetings or one-on-ones with the boss: Your employees will also be pulled in by the delight of simply reconnecting with one another. You want your team members to remember the pleasure of starting the day with a casual chat in the break room, the camaraderie of a team lunch, and the serendipity of solving a problem that would have required three emails and a scheduled video call, just because you happened to run into the right colleague on your way to the washroom.

Offer a range of spaces that encourage conversation, gathering and collegiality: Not just enclosed boardrooms for 20 but small meeting rooms for two to six people, conversation clusters made up of a few easy chairs or sofas, cafe tables with two or three chairs, and big communal tables where people can perch and chat if they need to check email or take care of a little work in between meetings. (After all, there’s no point in sequestering people in solitary cubicles once they’ve come into the office: For quiet, focused work, it makes more sense to spend the day working remotely.)

Get Back

Most companies expect that less than half of their workforce will be remote by mid-2022. Overall, companies are taking a measured approach to the future of remote work. Only a few companies expect that no employees will be remote.

What percentage of employees do you expect to be working remotely a year from now?

1 – 20%

of employees

21 – 50%

of employees

30.3%

51 – 90%

of employees

3.0%

4.0%

14.3%

48.5%

Percentage of companies with this expectation

Almost all

employees

(91 – 100%)

No

employees

Note: Total adds to more than 100% due to rounding.
Source: McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.Org Women in the Workplace 2021 survey of 423 companies, June-August 2021

To get people back in the swing of socializing after all these months of isolation, schedule plenty of breakfast, lunchtime and after-work events. These should be genuinely fun and engaging—and eclectic, to win over the widest range of people possible.

You can help this dynamic gather steam by making it easy for the party to continue after hours. Stock the office kitchen with snacks, bring in catered meals and revisit your entertainment budget, so that team members feel free to go out for dinner or drinks at the end of the workday, or linger over a long lunch to reconnect. The more time your team members spend socializing, the more they’ll reinvest in their workplace friendships, and the more they’ll want to come into the office.

Remind them home isn’t so great

Just as there are office pain points that may inhibit your employees from returning, there are home-office pain points that are resolved by coming back to HQ.

So if you’ve run the kind of workplace that discourages people from photocopying their child’s homework assignment on the office copier, or that rations pens from the supply closet, it is time to adopt a more generous strategy. Lure your team back with abundant, low-cost conveniences: Fill your kitchen with higher-end snacks. Spring for 3-ply toilet paper, free tampons and luxury hand cream in the bathroom. On the higher end, you might provide giant, high-res monitors for anyone who’s in the office more than a couple of days a week.

Spaces that encourage conversation can attract employees and spark collaboration.

ILLUSTRATION: RAMI NIEMI

Even some of the “benefits” of working from home have a downside—which your employees may become more conscious of, once you underline the alternative they can experience by returning to the office. Yes, it is great to have all that time with your family—but at the office, there are no toddlers to interrupt your phone calls!

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Finally, remember that your employees may be happy to hit rewind on the rebalancing of work and home. What started as welcome flexibility has now turned into overwork and even burnout. The ability to draw a clear line between work and home is something many employees say they miss—and it is exactly what you can offer if you adopt a policy like “no after-hours email on days you’ve been at the office.”