Return-to-Office Hesitation? How to Inspire Reluctant Employees
The Great Return sparks a lot of questions.
How can employers reshape the office to create an environment that responds to and reflects the dynamic needs of their workers?
How can employees protect each other’s health while benefiting from close collaboration?
How do people, no matter where or how they work, maintain the inspiring work-life balance so many have developed over the past two years?
With only three percent of white-collar workers wanting to return to the office full time, employers face the unique challenge of how best to balance supporting their employees while fostering a safe and productive work environment.
Here are three steps you can take to address employee concerns and inspire confidence in your return-to-work plan.
1. Prioritize Health
To feel comfortable coming back, employees need to know that they’re working in a safe environment.
These days, health is a top safety concern. To demonstrate you’re taking health seriously, have a plan for addressing the following:
Air quality
Masking, testing, and vaccination
Sickness and health beyond COVID.
Let’s take a quick look at each of those.
The New York Times published a great article last fall outlining six questions to ask about COVID and air quality at work. Here’s an overview, including what to ask your landlord and some answers you should look for to help protect your employees:
How have you improved the ventilation system? New industry guidelines suggest filters should trap 85 percent or more of risky particles.
Does the building use unproven technologies? It turns out some “emerging technologies” aren’t recommended by any experts. Make sure the tech in your building is recommended by organizations like the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and the EPA.
Can we open windows? Opening windows can reduce the amount of coronavirus in the room by half. The results are even better if you can open windows on different sides of the room for cross ventilation.
What’s the air change rate? A good goal is for the air in a room to be changed at least every fifteen minutes.
Do you use portable air filters? If you’re able to use portable filters, make sure to follow manufacturer guidelines for matching the filter to the size of your office.
Who monitors air quality? Carbon dioxide sensors can demonstrate how well a filtration system is working. Ask your landlord who monitors the air quality in your building (and what tools they use to do it).
If your landlord doesn’t have these answers readily at hand, there’s a good chance they don’t make air quality a priority. In that case, it may be time to look for new office space.
Wherever you work, though, you’ll need a policy for masking, testing, and vaccinating. Now is a good time to revisit your COVID-19 guidelines and make sure they make sense for the current phase of the pandemic. Be sure to explain how you’ll monitor compliance.
It’s also smart to include more general guidance, like encouraging employees to stay home when they’re feeling under the weather.
Finally, it’s important to remember that returning to the office can help prevent health risks, too. Zoom fatigue is real, and many employees will appreciate opportunities to help combat it.
2. Offer Space for Concentration and Collaboration
Employees need both room to collaborate and private space to concentrate. What's more, some employees thrive in open office plans. Others value personal space.
If you want your team to be excited about returning to the office, your office space has to facilitate all kinds of work for all your employees.
Here are three ways to empower your employees to work in the ways that work for them:
Provide reservable private space: Sometimes people need to get away, even when they’re in the office.
Upgrade: As your team grows or their preferences and expectations change, you may have to upgrade to a space that fits your evolving needs.
Schedule asynchronous projects: Working together doesn’t always mean working at the same time, in the same room. Trust your team to generate their collaborative, creative spark in the office. Then trust them to spread out and do deep work on their own.
And remember, empower your employees to take time throughout the day to focus and recharge. Lead by example and encourage employees to incorporate breaks into their workday.
3. Promote Work-Life Balance
If you’re not careful, working from home can mean you never stop working.
For employees who have struggled with finding work-life balance, the Great Return is truly great. Still, others continue to enjoy their work-from-home routine.
One big benefit of returning to the office is that it brings back the borders between working and living, which can help restore balance for those who lost it. But don’t settle for what you had pre-pandemic. Use this new normal to find ways to create an even better balance between work and the rest of life:
Collaborate on scheduling: Do some of your employees thrive later in the day while others do their best work in the morning? Consider core hours for everyone, with flexibility beyond those to give employees both more comfortable schedules and more space for productivity.
Highlight how in-person collaboration can relieve stress: Even among teams that value the most private spaces, there are times when working together is the better option. To make sure everyone is comfortable and understands the expectations, maintain a calendar covering which projects require collaboration. And be sure to still set aside ample time for focus.
Value time away from the office: Show employees you understand the value in recharging by using your vacation time (don’t forget to disable those notifications!) – and whenever you schedule time away, encourage your employees to as well.
Lastly, stay flexible. Remember that work-life balance is a cycle, not an achievement. Your return to the office is an opportunity to prioritize what’s best for your team and provide the space they need to live their lives and do their best work.
The Office Isn’t a One-Size-Fits-All Environment
As the office environment continues to change, so will employee concerns. Employers have an opportunity to respond to these dynamic needs and to develop spaces that foster an innovative, congenial, and comfortable culture. At the same time, returning to the office presents employees with unique opportunities for collaboration and balance.
Remember, the past two years have created a lot of anxiety. Continuing to support your employees is essential, and the routine of returning to the office can provide stability for those who need it.
If you’re looking for a safe, flexible office that meets the demands of your team, check out what Firmspace has to offer.