015. “Who wants to return to the office anyway?” Designing RTO plans that employees don’t hate

Too many Return to Office (RTO) plans are coming from a defensive place. But it IS possible to take a creative approach to it!

‘Tis the season… to step away from our WFH setups, brave the outdoors, and voyage to the archaic artifact that is in-person offices! More and more of us are re-adjusting to the new new normal as Return To Office (RTO) mandates get rolled out.

Every company’s situation is unique, and executive/HR teams are trying their best with the mountains of work that such a significant initiative entails. As Founder/CEO of Workflow, an education/consulting company for startup People strategy, I’m keeping a pulse on the current trend of RTOs. And the overarching theme is… well, it’s not going as smoothly as companies have hoped.  

But the stakes for RTO are incredibly high. Here’s a fact that I don’t think is top-of-mind enough for executives & HR teams: Mandating an RTO may result in the departure of some of your highest performing employees.  They are the ones who will have the easiest time jumping to an equally good opportunity elsewhere, but with more flexibility. So, what would it mean to design a RTO policy, plan, and communications with that central question in mind?

To frame this discussion, let’s take a closer analysis of the ROI of RTO for employees. First, companies must think through how employees' day-to-day work can benefit from RTO, then actively invest in creating those benefits of being in office (spoiler alert: this means more than free lunch). They also need to be aware of the cost of RTO to employees (again, spoiler alert: this is about more than commutes). Finally, it’s all about communication – how you roll out a program matters – poor communications and misperceptions can sink any program, no matter how stellar the plan.

Disclaimer: I am pro-remote work! This is not a post about whether companies should provide remote vs. in-person work, but rather, once the decision is made to RTO, how it can go better.

1. Optimize Employees Benefit: The “R” in ROI

Companies usually cite social bonds and in-person collaboration as the chief benefits of being in office. This isn’t just about the warm and fuzzies – indeed, organizational studies have definitively proven that social bonds lead to a more engaged, productive workforce. As an employee, good relationships with coworkers are one of the most important factors in making office life enjoyable and the work more meaningful. 

Unfortunately, there is little acknowledgement of this unavoidable fact: work relationships don’t just happen. Three years of pandemic chaos and remote work means that employee social networks just ain’t what they used to be.

• The social infrastructure of in-person must be built up from scratch, and it is not simply a matter of shoving employees into the lunch cafeteria and hoping for the best. And for Pete’s sake - please don’t just throw endless happy hours and hope alcohol will create new work office besties. We gotta get more creative than that.

• Another fact that must also be acknowledged: after 3 years of the pandemic, people are tired. You cannot forcesocial bonds – only create and facilitate opportunities that employees can choose to step into. People generally do not want to have to work super hard to make new friends on top of an already-awkward, draining dynamic. If you’ve ever been the new kid at school stressing about where to sit at lunch, you especially know what I’m talking about.

• This seems basic, but worth making explicit: make sure the offices can actually support the people that you want to come in! I’ve heard of too many RTO plans going awry after employees feel forced to come in, then realize there’s insufficient desk space or conference rooms.

• Now let’s go beyond tablestakes, and think critically, creatively about the ROI – how might we step into the perspective of employees and provide opportunities that are most valuable to them? Every company is different, but my preference (and thus the companies I advise 😄) is providing career development opportunities. What unique L&D programs could we imagine in this moment? 

Here’s an unrealistic idea, but still, a thought-provoking exercise: Given that flexibility is highly valued by employees, what would a program that allows high-performers* to “unlock” additional perks on top of the standard RTO policy look like? 

• For example, employees at top 25% percentile / Exceeds Expectations for past two performance cycles could apply for an exception to the RTO policy for say, up to 3 months out of the year. Or maybe just a couple of months around the EOY holidays.

• The reasoning: There are many valid reasons/justifications for RTO from the executives’ POV, but some are in direct conflict with employees’ POV. Many top-performers feel ruffled by RTO policies because to them, it feels like the company doesn’t trust them to get their work done remotely, despite evidence to the contrary (consistent high performance). Essentially, the design question we’re asking is: What would it look like to provide high-performers a sense of control by giving them some options or rewards? 

• Of course in reality, this is difficult to design and execute perfectly – one prerequisite is already an established, extremely robust, reliable performance review system that the entire company is bought into! And this isn’t very common. Still, it’s a useful thought exercise.  

Take it from a HR person: Policies are a necessary tool to establish constraints and guidelines for large groups of people, and often designed for the lowest common denominator out of necessity. But good People work means not stepping there. Policies can, and should, be designed, knowing that decisions will affect people differently. And  top performers will not respond well to being treated like serfs by their company. What would it look like to do something about it? 

2. Minimizing Employee Cost: The “I” in ROI

My conversations with in-house HR professionals and observations of various companies’ bungled RTO plans from the outside has led me to believe that those designing RTO programs are primarily focused on understanding and minimizing the costs of RTO.

Unfortunately, a lot of this thinking has been too shallow – with a fixation on commuting – while neglecting far more holistic, nuanced challenges around unwinding the effects of the pandemic and the sudden shift to remote work.

One of the most difficult things about RTO is that it collapses the countless decisions, big and small, that we all have made over the past 3 years. New constraints have been created as people adjusted to living through a pandemic, but RTO threatens to undo all of that.

People have moved further away from offices, set up their lives in a way that didn’t require them to be in the office (e.g. commute times, caretaker responsibilities, or even simple routines like going to the gym). RTO suddenly reimposes the old constraints in a world that no longer exists, our pre-pandemic lives. With the “break” of these decisions, people would benefit from far more change management leadership and resources than what most companies are offering.

• Another thought exercise: What would it look like to take this into consideration and offer more planning and transition resources for individuals and groups? Productivity is going to be squashed anyway, as employees are being asked to navigate this transition largely on their own – why can’t the company lead the way more? For example, I haven’t heard of any companies offering assistance with matching people up for potential carpools, have you? Even if not many employees take it, a simple program initiated by HR would be much more effective than individual attempts.

But the “personal life” angle is just one part of it.

Companies are overly anchored on the most noisy, concrete complaints about RTO – the hassle of a commute – and not enough on the less visible, holistic challenge of re-establishing effective in-person collaboration. 

• Disclaimer: I’m not saying the concerns about commutes aren’t valid! Psychological studies have shown over and over again that longer commute times are associated with issues in both physical and mental health. Companies should absolutely be mindful of the burden of commuting – but the opportunity is to go beyond that. 

• I think this happens because when HR teams survey employees, “What are your biggest concerns about RTO?” Commuting is the most often cited factor, and very vocally so. But good People work is more than taking employee feedback and face value.

• Just like social infrastructure that needs to be re-built from the ground up, so does work itself. Many teams for example, will be forced to go into the office, just to find themselves sitting in a Zoom room most of the day anyway. Physical proximity does not magically materialize in-person productivity practices - not by individuals anyway, without strong change management leadership from the top and HR.

• What would real investment and new programming in this area look like? New training series? New internal consultants to rebuild best practices within individual teams? Maybe buying a f*ckton of whiteboards? OK, that one’s in jest – but actually, we would even need new shifts and encouragement to get people to start using whiteboards again as much as they did pre-pandemic!

3. Communication is Key: Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Another quick disclaimer: I know how hard and complex internal communications can be, especially in large corporate environments. AND, I will purposely put on my most idealistic hats in this section, as I think there’s so much opportunity here beyond the standard of sticking to “endlessly approved by legal and devoid of any human sentiment” communication plans. 

• Overall, from the RTO communications I’ve seen (because being me means my friends often send me screenshots of company-wide emails and slack messages, usually with a tone of “omg jen look at this sh*t” 😉) the announcement is written from a defensive place. The executives know it will be unpopular – usually a sign 1) not having done enough thinking on the “R” of ROI, 2) overly fixated on the “I”, or 3) both.

• I would love to see more explicit acknowledgements around the difficulty of the pandemic, and empathetic leadership around it. Too many leaders reject this kind of emotional honesty – it feels too vulnerable for them – but the reality is, not having it be acknowledged means that employees end up having to hold the tension of that silence, which makes the intention of the message difficult to receive. 

• Generally-speaking, no matter how well executed, a RTO mandate is going to feel disempowering to employees. It’s important to not gloss over this fact – employees will be able to tell if you do – but be mindful of it. Employees are much more likely to receive RTO plans positively if you acknowledge this.

• I would also like to see more honest spelling out of the reasoning. For example, could say something like, “As a company founded [X many] years ago, our DNA is in-person work, and many of our work and cultural practices are rooted in that. We can’t, nor will we try to change that fact. That said, we, as a company, have learned a lot with remote work in the past 3 years, and we would like to preserve and build on the lessons of that, including protecting and amplifying employee flexibility.” Then actually do it!!!!! 

Conclusion

As is a common theme in my writing… this current wave of ineffective RTO plans comes down to a leadership shortage. And it’s hard. I was recently asked “Who is doing RTO right?” and I didn’t have an answer. This is not an area of strength for most CEOs/executives, and People teams are usually too junior and/or burnt out. 

Frankly, it’s a bummer that our industry’s playbooks are so barebones. But what’s even more unfortunate is our collective attitudes of shrugging it off, “Oh well, what are we supposed to do? 🤷” 

I think we could do better. Let’s dare to do better. Making that choice is step one.   

The main takeaway: In planning RTO, don’t just take away remote work and flexibility, provide an alternative that appeals to employees. That means not just thinking about the costs of RTO from a defensive stance, but approaching it with a creative mindset.

It’s TOTALLY OK if the new in-person work experience is a work in progress. Most employees are reasonable people and don’t expect perfection. (Squeaky wheels exist everywhere and I get it, they’re a drain. But HR/Management 101 is to not be anchored there). What most employees are looking for is true leadership. 

You’d be surprised by what’s possible if you can provide your team a refreshing, highly engaging and productive in-person collaboration culture. People will have to adjust their lives, sure, and not 100% of people can be retained, that’s ok – but they will be a lot less resistant than you think – BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT TOP PERFORMERS WANT.

And that's what top performers and leaders/HR have in common. It’s your job to close the gap and re-build that alignment. 

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Jennifer Kim is the CEO/Founder of Workflow, an education and consulting company that trains the next generation of startup leaders on all things Recruiting, People Ops, and DEI. Through its flagship program, the HireEd Accelerator, Jen and her team have taught hundreds of startup leaders to make hiring a competitive advantage. Previously, Jen was Head of People at Lever and advised dozens of top startups. She is known for her hot takes on tech industry and culture as @jenistyping.

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Other notes

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