Employers to Staff: “We Need You Back in the Office”
Gentle Approach,
Hybrid Models
Help Lure Workers Back
With the lifting of COVID restrictions, American employers are eager for employees to leave their Zoom meetings behind and return to the workplace. But is that a realistic expectation?
Many companies are taking the bull by the horns and mandating that workers return to the office at least part-time. (See sidebar, "Companies Mandating Return to Workplace.”) Last November, Elon Musk began requiring staff at Twitter and Tesla to return to the workplace for at least 40 hours per week, or consider their “resignations accepted.”
Other firms, such as RCM giant Access Healthcare, are taking a more gentle approach. (See "Making It Work" below.) A study by workplace design firm Unispace reveals that 72% of all surveyed companies have some sort of return-to-work mandate. Most employers believe that corporate culture, collaboration, and innovation suffer when staff members are not gathered together in an office environment.
Companies Mandating
Return to Workplace
Here are some of the major U.S. companies now requiring their staffers to return to the workplace at least part-time:
Amazon – Employees must spend at least three days per week in the office.
Disney – Employees must work from offices four days a week.
JP Morgan – Half of all employees, including all executives, must work from the office five days per week. The rest must work from the office several days per week.
Starbucks – Employees within commuting distance are required to return to the office at least three days a week.
Uber – Employees in 35 of the company's locations must work from the office at least half of the time.
Source: Business Insider
Making It Work
But bringing employees back into the workplace after two years of working remotely is a challenge. Much has changed in the interim.
So when Access Healthcare wanted 9,000 employees in their various India locations to return to the office, the company carefully designed a strategy to encourage them. Instead of forcing the workers back with threats of termination, they projected the return as a collaborative effort to improve productivity.
"The entire process of bringing people back to work was very gradual," said Jacob Jesuroon, Senior Vice President of Human Resources. "We didn't position the office as a place of work, but we positioned the office as a place where people can collaborate."
Once Access Healthcare employees began returning to the worksite to collaborate, the next step was engagement. The company spread the word on social media, where employees could see their friends returning to the office, helping them develop trust in returning, too.
Many of the company's staff members had moved back to their hometowns two years ago so they could work remotely when the pandemic began. So now they had financial concerns about moving back to the city.
The company opted to ease the transition by arranging accommodations for these employees. They also developed a mobile app for administrative support and provided back-to-work counseling which included COVID safety training to alleviate health anxiety.
On the Clinical Side
For America's clinical workers, the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing financial stress, burnout, and mental health challenges. The result was nearly 334,000 medical staffers quit in 2021 alone.
Providers are now working hard to lure them back. They're offering better pay and work flexibility. Hospitals are implementing new safety measures and mental health resources to help clinicians cope with the daily stresses of their jobs. Some medical facilities are also hiring more support staff to take some work off these employees' already-full plates.
New Workers Benefit Most
Employment experts at Scoop Technologies believe returning to the worksite particularly benefits new employees, especially Generation Zers and younger Millennials. These workers must learn the ropes and be able to communicate with more established employees if they are to assimilate and truly understand the company's culture.
According to a 2023 study by the Greater Des Moines Partnership, workers in central Iowa understand the importance of workplace collaboration, training, and development. The study was based on a survey of more than 2,000 employees from 20 Des Moines-area organizations representing various industries.
Jenae Sikkink, Senior Vice President for the Partnership, noted that "young workers [in their 20s] understand the importance of being together. They're focused on culture, relationship building, and learning from others."
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Remaining Flexible
But is it reasonable to expect employees to return to the workplace full-time after experiencing two years of working remotely?
According to the Des Moines study, workers want flexibility above everything else. Employees surveyed want to work from home 60% of the time and 40% from the office. Conversely, employers want their employees in the office 60% of the time and working remotely 40% of the time.
Requiring staff to work onsite every day could backfire, causing employees to seek more flexible job opportunities. As a result, many firms are adopting a "structured hybrid" work model, which sets specific expectations on when employees will work from the office.
Those expectations can vary, such as requiring a minimum number of days onsite, requiring specific days, or requiring a minimum percentage of time employees must be in the office. Of those options, requiring employees to come into the office a minimum number of days each week is the most popular. About 66% of large companies (with 50,000 or more employees) are adopting structured hybrid work and dramatically shifting away from fully remote work situations.
A Truce?
Some workforce development experts regard hybrid work policies as a kind of "truce" between bosses and their workers. Clearly, jobholders still value the workplace, but it must evolve to meet their needs. Prudent employers will work to balance in-office demands with the work flexibility employees will not easily relinquish.
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