Return to Office: Making It Work for Everyone
Written by SOAR Facilitator + Blog Contributor: Dr. Meredith Lepley
Remote work works. That was a key lesson from 2020 after millions of office workers were sent home and instructed to work remotely. Leaders were pleasantly surprised to discover that employees were quite productive and satisfied working from home (Pew Research Center, 2022). It was so successful that several companies even publicized that their employees would never return to the office full-time (Hern and Kollewe, 2020).
KEY POINTS
Increasingly, however, organizations including Google, Amazon, IBM, and Starbucks have mandated that their employees return to the office. Leaders’ rationale is that in-person work is necessary for the organization’s culture, collaboration, and performance (Elliott, 2024). Some will quietly admit that the requirement is due to their existing office facilities or that they simply don’t know their employees are working unless they can see them.
But nationwide surveys reveal that employees have enjoyed the convenience, flexibility, work-life balance, and autonomy that remote work provides and are resistant to returning to the office (Elliott, 2024; Gallup, 2021; Gibson, Gilson, Griffith and O’Neill, 2023; McKinsey and Company, 2022).
Return-to-work mandates are associated with increased stress, work-family conflict, exhaustion, and lower levels of well-being (Fan and Moen, 2023; Pandita and colleagues, 2023). Up to 75 percent of people who are dissatisfied with their flexibility report that they will quit jobs at companies requiring them to return to the office in favor of companies that will allow them to work remotely—particularly women, caregivers, underrepresented groups, and, unfortunately for companies, high performers (Elliott, 2024).
However, there’s another important reason employees prefer to work from home: the office may no longer support the work they need to do! After working from home, the office spaces employees are returning to are now considered too loud and distracting (Lepley, Weber, Gerock, Farid-Nejad, Ramesh, 2023). Employees complain that they can’t focus and get things done. Some are frustrated that leaders are pulling them back to the office, requiring them to spend their time and money on a commute, and yet not providing them with the space they need to do their jobs effectively.
Environmental psychologists have known for decades that open offices, common right now, are disliked due to noise and lack of privacy. Ironically, instead of fostering collaboration, they actually reduce collaboration and face-to-face interaction (Bernstein and Turban, 2018), one of the key reasons leaders are bringing employees back to the office.
In my research with a client company with 25 offices around the U.S. (Lepley and colleagues, 2023), we discovered that although employees were initially happy to return to the office a few days per week, over a few weeks the inconveniences of working in the office (commuting, traffic, parking, office noise, and interruptions) quickly became bothersome like never before. Employees reported that if they had to come to the office, they at least wanted:
to be as productive as they were at home
for their presence to be for a good reason such as for mentoring, learning, or networking opportunities rather than mere obligation
Can we make the return to office work for companies and employees?
Employers, listen to environmental psychologists. The physical workplace has a strong influence on the behavior that takes place there. The workplace has the potential to spark creativity, fuel connection, and collaboration, support productivity, influence employee job satisfaction and well-being, and thus drive organizational success (Dul, Ceylan, and Jaspers, 2011; Hua, Loftness, Heerwagen, and Powell, 2011). But if an office is not supporting employees, frustration will rise, engagement will drop, performance will suffer, and employees will leave.
Employers, recognize that if you require employees to come to the office, you must create spaces that attract and retain them. Gensler’s Global 2024 survey revealed that employees today expect more from their offices than mere functionality. At a minimum, a workplace must support all four modes of knowledge work: focusing, collaborating, learning, and socializing, but for a workplace to be considered great, it must also be beautiful, welcoming, comfortable, and inspire new thinking. It should also support other aspects of employees’ lives by being near amenities such as a grocery store, restaurants, a gym, pet care, childcare, as well as entertainment (Freed, 2024; Gensler, 2024; Haworth, 2024).
Employees, if you’re returning to the office, how can you make it work for you?
Move! Find spaces that support the work you need to do. If you need to focus and your primary workspace is too loud, look for a quiet room or niche away from people where you won’t be disturbed. If you need to collaborate, look for a space appropriate for teamwork where you won’t disturb other employees trying to focus.
Set boundaries. Be clear with your colleagues about when you’re available for collaboration and when you need quiet time.
Block focus time on your calendar. For focus, work at the time of day when you are most energized (Knapp and Zeratsky, 2022).
Come in early before others arrive so it’s quiet and you can make your way through important tasks before the office becomes noisy and distracting.
Use visual cues that you are not to be disturbed. These could be closing your office door if you have one or putting a “focus flag” on your workspace visible to others.
Plan important conversations. Open offices can make it difficult to have personal or sensitive one-on-one conversations. Plan and find the best place for that conversation and ensure you have the necessary level of privacy—both in terms of sight and sound. Some spaces may provide acoustical privacy, but if they are glass, others will be able to see in, so plan accordingly.
Schedule collaborative work on your office days and focus work on your remote days if you’re on a hybrid schedule and able to work remotely a couple of days per week.
Speak up. Tell your manager what you need to be more effective. And remind the manager that the organization can achieve its mission when employees are focused, supported, productive, and engaged.
If employers and employees are flexible and respectful of each other’s needs, returning to the office can be a positive experience for all.
Originally appeared on Psychology Today, written by Dr. Meredith Wells Lepley, Return to Office: Making It Work for Everyone, 12/20/24.