#RTO: Why bosses want staff to return to the office

An empty office is a lonely place. The air feels cooler and every sound is magnified. There’s no one to share a joke with or to ask for a pen. The magic of synchronicity is missing. Once the pandemic took hold in 2020, there were a lot of empty spaces around the country as working from home took off. Now, more and more companies are asking staff to return to the office. Some are making it company policy. In the US, 1.5 million office-based employees saw new attendance policies take effect by mid-2023, according to a report from Jones Lang Lasalle, the real estate firm, and another 1 million face mandates that take effect through the end of the year.

Amazon requires corporate staff to be in the office three days a week. Last January, Disney said it wanted staff back four days a week. Tesla owner Elon Musk insists on at least 40 hours a week. Musk has said he thinks working from home is “morally wrong” and less productive, which is an interesting take from a man who regularly beds down on the floor for the night at work, whether it’s Tesla or X. He may have a point: a paper on The Evolution of Working from Home put out by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) in July 2023 indicates that “fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work.” Though previous research from Prodoscore, which sells employee visibility software, has shown the opposite.

Demands to return to the office have met with resistance in many instances. In 2022, Apple employees launched a petition. In 2023, hundreds of Amazon workers staged a walk-out in protest at its back-to-office policy and climate record. In October, almost 700 tech workers at the New York Times held a work stoppage citing the “unlawful return-to-work policy.” According to a survey of 1,000 remote workers by Clarify Capital, a financial consultancy based in New York City, almost 70% would rather look for a new job than return to their office. The “biggest annoyance” cited was the commute to work.

Ethan McCarthy, chief executive of Integral, an employee experience agency in New York City, faced passive resistance to returning. “For those within a reasonable commute (less than one hour), I suggested they come in once each week – but I never enforced it, so it didn’t really happen,” he says. “Look, people totally changed their lives through the course of the pandemic. Why would I assume everyone is dying to get back into a commute, back into paying for lunches or packing lunches, back into dressing in hard pants instead of shorts or sweats?”

When Joshua Fields, chief executive of the Next Step, a non-profit that helps young adults with physical and intellectual disabilities find employment, wanted to get his staff back together in 2021, they were fearful. “It was November 2021. My staff were terrified. No one wanted to be in person. So we struggled a lot,” he says. His solution was to rent a large church that could hold 250 people, but just to bring in two staff to run a programme for 10 clients at a time. Now they are back in their own Pennsylvania offices. “Returning to the office was hard because I love working from home,” he says.

The value of synchronicity

Fields says productivity is better with most staff back together, attributing much of this to synchronicity. “Communication and productivity have overwhelmingly increased since being back in person and I attributed that to the water-cooler scenario,” he says. “There are so many opportunities for people to connect, build bonds and build relationships. When my staff members see what each other is doing, they build stronger connections.”

Staff are happier too, helping to keep staff turnover down. “I have only lost two employees in the last two years, because of the community that we’ve built . . . the communication that exists within the organization. I don’t think I would have been able to do that if all my employees were working from home — I know I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was working from home because half of it is about demonstrating. It’s showing how I respond to different things so that my employees can model that and then move forward with it.”

Misunderstandings have been cleared up. Next Step’s administrator and communications officer fell out when both were working from home. One felt she wasn’t being taken seriously; the other that she was being strongarmed. “We brought them both back into the office and they are good friends now. Together those two departments are on fire. They have way higher productivity rates simply because they know and trust each other,” says Fields.

One study of more than 150 chief executives in the US from May 2023 conducted by Chief Executive magazine shows that organizations struggled to foster communication, collaboration and team bonding when staff were not together. That was the experience of Amanda Webster, chief operating officer of Fund&Grow, a national lending program that helps entrepreneurs and business owners. “When we were working from home during the one-month required, it had a negative impact on employee morale and their ability to separate work and home,” she says. “Our employees enjoy the camaraderie of being in the office, with the support of management, and having the technology needed to be successful.” Some staff working from home experienced power or internet outages leaving them unable to work and out of the loop. This is not a problem at the offices of Fund&Grow, which has its own back-up system. So Webster says there were few objections to returning to the office as it was done on a phased basis over three weeks.

Bi-weekly in-person department meetings are important to innovation as the magic of synchronicity means it’s easier to come up with ideas together, says Webster. “Our funding department is very team-oriented. When they see an obstacle or hurdle to overcome in a file, it’s easier for them to be able to speak with one another in a group discussion. There is immediate access to support when it is needed.”

Julie Keating, vice-president of digital marketing at A is for Advertising, agrees. “Although Zoom and Google Meets can ‘bring us all together,’ there is still something ‘human’ missing,” she says. “Working via a computer camera … inserts a barrier to being able to truly be in the moment and engaged with other people. At a time when AI seems to be ruling our world, the human experience of conversing with someone face-to-face can’t be overlooked. Pulling inspiration from the group is one of the most important aspects of working together.”

Keating’s company has staff at six offices around the country. “Sometimes it is necessary to work remotely, but we are building a new office where I am in Aiken South Carolina because we have found better collaboration, inspiration and creativity when we are able to talk face-to-face,” she says. Some days she has hundreds of emails to answer. “A lot gets lost in translation when you can’t …get to the point without hitting reply, or even worse, reply all,” she says.

Asking employees to return to the offices of Venture Smarter, a business and legal consultancy in New York, has worked well, according to chief executive Jon Morgan. “We observed an uptick in creativity and productivity as employees were able to collaborate more effectively,” he says. “This physical presence allows for the exchange of ideas, fosters innovation, and strengthens team bonds, leading to a more vibrant and productive work environment.”

The future of office work

While they value being in the same room, the executives canvassed for this article didn’t plan to insist their staff return to the office (#rto) five days a week. This ties in with research from the Conference Board, a non-profit think tank, showing that just 5% of CEOs in the US cite returning to a physical workplace as a priority in 2023. Instead, they are looking to hybrid working, which “appears to have no impact on productivity,” according to the latest research from SIEPR, though it is popular because it “improves employee recruitment and retention.” As of December 2022, almost three-quarters of American companies offered hybrid working, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

Morgan says flexibility is the way to make this work. “It’s crucial to strike a balance and not mandate a rigid office schedule; instead, offering flexibility to employees is key.” Getting back to the office is an essential aspect of Venture Smarter’s business strategy, says Morgan, so maintaining open dialogue is vital. “Regular check-ins, town hall meetings, and open channels for feedback enable us to address concerns and adapt our policies accordingly.”

That’s been McCarthy’s attitude too: “I do not think there is a blanket rule apart from this: so long as you create clarity about work methods and sufficient sense of psychological safety such that people can openly challenge and improve that work method, it doesn’t really matter where your team physically works — it can be very, very productive and yield a great culture.

“I come in most days with my dog, Ruth, and sometimes it’s just us…other days, it is a full house. I like both and I think my team does too. It’s not like everyone wants to spend a bunch of time with me!”

Photo: Welcome to the Jungle

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