As the nature of work evolves, debate around return to office (RTO) mandates has intensified. Earlier this year, with data showing the average workplace occupancy among 41,000 businesses in the US sat at around 50%, many businesses made the decision to give up their office space to cut costs. But, in the latter part of 2023, we’ve seen a huge push from many organizations to ‘RTO’, sending knowledge workers back to the office in droves. To understand the RTO debate, we need to look at the key factors behind this trend.
A Brief History
Historically, employee commitment was measured by time spent in the workplace. This principle made sense in ‘hands-on’ industries like manufacturing, where on-site presence equalled tangible output. As the economy transitioned toward knowledge-based roles, however, some management practices remained stuck in an industrial-era mindset that considers productivity and attendance one and the same.
The advent of remote connectivity gave knowledge workers the opportunity to be productive outside traditional workspaces. Yet for many years and even up until just three or four years ago, working from home (WFH) was still treated as an exception to the rule, rather than a norm. As a result, many businesses and organisations simply didn’t have any management strategy to support remote knowledge working., The few that did weren’t focussed on helping those remote employees be their most productive.
The Turning Point
The COVID-19 pandemic propelled entire white-collar industries into unknown territory, with organisations forced to implement remote working policies and technologies at speed; remote working was no longer the exception. The results surprised many people: remote working either sustained or boosted efficiency for lots of professionals. Some employees preferred having greater autonomy and felt they were able to be more productive on an individual level.
What’s more, many knowledge workers were much happier having flexible work schedules and eliminating the cost and time spent commuting to the office. Some studies showed the time spent on commuting was instead spent on business tasks, leading to increased productivity and happier employees – which pleased both IT and HR teams responsible for facilitating and managing workers away from the office.
Getting Hybrid Right
However, without the proper frameworks in place to manage hybrid working, many organisations came up against challenges. First, the abrupt shift exposed a leadership skills gap in managing off-site teams. Conventional methods – like ‘management by walking around’ fell short in a remote environment.
There is little argument that spontaneous group creativity and cultural immersion are diminished for the remote worker. The overall impact of this loss is hotly debated. The ambitious miss opportunities to connect, network, and nurture interpersonal associations; the soft skills that help knowledge workers advance their careers often rely on in-person interactions.
With fewer interpersonal connections, it has become easier for employees to switch jobs, which has added a new dimension to the retention debate. Few would argue that flexibility is always welcome but losing talented staff because they either suffer a poor digital experience in a hybrid environment of simply never feel part of the team, piles on the RTO pressure for an organization.
It’s a Question of Trust
This debate around the merits of remote and office work has reached fever pitch in recent months. The new trend of RTO mandates is unpopular when couched in the language of productivity. Yet this justification is never far from the discussion.
As this conversation rumbles on, it becomes clear that we need to really look at what productivity means for the modern workplace and how we measure it. What does it mean to be productive in different industries, and how can we ensure every employee has the tools they need to be productive regardless of where they are working?
It’s crucial organisations adapt management processes and deploy tools to help IT and HR professionals accurately and objectively measure productivity and digital experience. In doing so, the real RTO vs WFH issues surrounding engagement, creativity and flexibility can take centre stage.
To bridge the divide between the camps, leaders should focus on trusting their teams’ productivity when working remotely. Similarly, all staff should welcome the objective verification of that trust as working with facts is always beneficial.
Modern leaders have a chance to define what productivity means for their organisation and decide how they can best encourage it within their teams. What follows will be a company culture rooted in objectively measured productivity, not location or visibility. Rather than a place, the workplace of the future is a mindset..
