One Mistake Leaders Make in Returning to the Office
Have you ever experienced, as a parent or a child, that situation when your kid comes home from college for summer break and you try to set a few rules, maybe a curfew, and it just doesn’t work? Your kid has experienced true autonomy, true freedom! They don’t understand the need for your rules or much-too-early curfew. They’ve learned to trust themselves and have come to the realization that they know how to govern their time, schedule, and life.
Well, this is exactly what your employees have experienced. Over the past two years, they’ve come to know just how autonomous they can be, how work doesn’t stop just because they’re doing it remotely, and how having control over their days can feel so freeing.
But despite the fact that working remotely does work well for so many people, business leaders are now requiring employees to come back to the office - and employees are not having it. Recently, Goldman Sachs realized just how damaging this could be when they ordered their employees back to the office 5 days a week, and only half showed up.
That’s because your employees don’t want you to force a solution.
It’s true that being a fully remote company has its challenges. And employees are feeling the pain points of isolation and work/life separation. But the last thing that employees want is to be forced to go back to “normal” — you know, the 45-minute commute, the cold and sterile offices, not getting home until after dinner.
The fact is that employees want freedom of choice, and they want it to the extent that most would rather live with all the pain points of WFH rather than be forced into a binary decision.
They’ve learned that the flexibility that comes with working remotely is actually serving them well. That’s why 60% of workers say they would like to continue working remotely some or most of the time. And therefore, forcing them back like children under the watchful eye of parents will not help your retention (not to mention your recruitment!). And in fact, we believe this percentage would be a lot higher if there was a common understanding about remote work.
Flexible and agile companies will succeed.
We all know that things have changed and the business world is in flux. Especially the future of work and what employees need to be productive and happy. The good news is that we (as in all of us) are creating what the future looks like.
From our standpoint, the future of work is flexible. Employees want a solution to their pain points but don’t want to go back to the binary ways of the traditional office. Plus, being flexible means that your business can handle “unprecedented times” or unexpected changes. But going back to a large corporate office with a 5-year lease isn’t going to provide your business with any sort of flexibility.
That’s why Radious exists, we’re a new solution to new challenges. Our on-demand spaces provide a close-to-home solution where coworkers can meet, executives can hold client meetings, and teams can collaborate. Our spaces also provide an option for folks who just want to leave their houses a couple times a week and need a quiet space to stay focused. It’s the best of both worlds.
Written by Cassidy Johnston