Across the world, companies are continuing to grapple with ongoing back and forth, yo-yo restrictions and changes in the office. As some countries come out of lockdowns, others go back in, forcing businesses and employees to quickly adapt and reintroduce legal capacity counts in the workplace. Hybrid work is one of the more popular ones.
These changes often take their toll on staff, who are required to regularly relocate their office set-ups, coordinate home-schooling for children or readjust to a constantly changing environment.
We know now that hybrid working, involving both remote working and office working, is here to stay. But not all employees are interested in returning to the office– many workplaces have witnessed increasing pushback from staff as they confirm they would prefer to not incorporate daily commutes and white-box dividers in their day-to-day roles.
Apple, for example, recently declared staff at their Cupertino office will be required to return to the office for at least three days a week.
Despite not being a full five-day return to the workplace, the company received an uproar from staff in the form of a collaborative letter from employees that highlighted increasing concern about Apple’s return-to-work policy, which forced some colleagues to quit.
Opinions about returning to work differ across the globe, with staff in both the US and UK pushing back on office returns, while counterparts in Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Singapore and Spain have noted a greater willingness to return.
So how can businesses appropriately manage ongoing restrictions while ensuring the majority of the workforce are happy, or that they won’t quit? It is crucial that we can take learnings from a newly introduced approach to working.
We need to give staff the agency to be able to make their own decisions about where the best place is to work– for them.
Also Read: Hybrid work is the way to go for Malaysia, and this is how leaders can get the most of it
Reframing of the office: converting it into a co-working space
A powerful and successful way of doing this is to reframe the way we view the office by converting it into a coworking space. Coworking spaces are highly collaborative workplaces where people come to because they want to be there.
There is a significant element of joy when staff can go to a home away from home, surrounded by an environment that inspires them and not feel confined by the traditional nine-to-five space that is too often un-stimulating and uninspiring.
We have an opportunity to provide spaces for staffers that directly influence them to feel more motivated to be there. The creative atmosphere of coworking office spaces has been proven to directly raise productivity.
When staff is confined to restrictive cubicles, they often forget they work within a large group of like-minded individuals. In an open office like a co-working space, employees can move around the workplace to find the best areas to work and bump into colleagues.
By experimenting with different spaces in the office, staff are also encouraged to recognise when they may be naturally losing focus and can choose to move to a spot that works for them.
They can find a preferred desk, choose to opt-in for a permanent desk, find space to have “huddles” on certain topics, or simply come in for a coffee with a colleague.
These spaces also remove the element of feeling the pressure to impress managers and staff can instead concentrate on doing their job without either feeling the distraction of working from home or hitting walls when they are forced to work in the same space for a full day.
It allows staff to feel that they are a part of something much bigger, within a community, working towards a greater purpose.
Let your employees decide when they want to come to the office
In what may seem contradictory to productivity, we’ve witnessed a dramatic increase in motivation and quality of work execution when staff are given the option to decide when they want to come in.
If they only have important meetings in the morning, they can choose to come in for in-person meetings with colleagues or managers and decide if they’d like to complete the rest of their work from home.
We’ve created space for more social environments, where staff can find a location to create a divide between work and life. Staff can come in for a casual coffee catch-up, to brainstorm at a café, or socialise through fun, end-of-day rapport-building activities.
From karaoke to painting, or music jamming, employees can come together in environments that stimulate them in a way that sits outside of the work environment. This helps build a workplace culture of community, rather than just work.
We have an opportunity to rethink the office, to create a better workplace experience for our staff. We know people who like their workplace are more engaged, more productive, and they stick around longer. Why wouldn’t we take this opportunity and do something with it?
Consider the core purpose of the office
Is the office just a place for managers to see if their staff are doing work? Can work only be done if staff are being watched and observed? We know that micromanagement is toxic to engagement and productivity.
Good workplaces avoid micromanagement from the get-go – but we can also design office experiences that help individuals and teams have greater agency, motivation and ownership over their own work.
Throughout the lifetime that was pre-COVID-19, the office was undeniably the place for all work. But forced isolation and remote working has taught us that staff do not need to execute long commutes just to do their work. It is no longer a necessity to sit within a box just so that we can pop our head over a cubicle to have a conversation with an employee.
It’s important for us to ask ourselves what problems the office is solving, and what opportunities it presents.
To come to the conclusion and prove that a co-working space conversion boosts productivity, we asked our team members directly what they wanted from their office experience.
Some responded that they wanted to work at home some of the time, while others wanted to spend more time at the office. The most important factor was that they wanted to make that decision on their own terms.
Also Read: The hybrid work model will outlast the pandemic. But will one model fit all?
Employees want three main things from their office:
- To be a part of something bigger, experiencing a community feeling that working for a company with a strong vision gives.
- The decision about whether to work face-to-face or via online platforms depends on what the goal of the task or project is. For some meetings, like a project kick-off or a problem-solving workshop, a face-to-face meeting can help the meeting flow better. But collaborating online is often sufficient for weekly collaborative sessions.
- The ability to to informally collaborate and run into colleagues within a face-to-face environment: some of the strongest ideas come out of serendipitous idea-sharing and collaboration.
It is our role as leaders to respond to what employees need. People want team spaces and meeting spaces. They also want somewhere they can have a remote meeting or work quietly for themselves for a while. They want open spaces where they can bump into people.
Most importantly, they want places that foster connection and community, and it is important to listen to staff to identify what they need and facilitate these spaces with intent. This is how staff can remain motivated and stay within a team that helps them work to their best potential.
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