Enticing employees to return to the office is not a simple task. The pandemic and two or more years of working from home has made many workers across the country re-evaluate their relationship with and approach to work. Many have realised that working from home has given them a better ability to balance work and home life.
Thanks to the lack of commute time, the ability to care for children or other family members, and the amount of time spent with loved ones increased. The ability to run errands, exercise, go for a walk or otherwise remain active during the workday also proved a boon to many. Being able to set up a home work space catering to individual needs has also given employees a glimpse at what is possible when not sitting in a cubicle farm.
While there are some drawbacks to working from home, such as isolation, a lack of physical and emotional distance between home and workspaces, white collar workers across Australia have mitigated these shortfalls and embraced the benefits of the home office. So how can employers, entice workers to return to the office?
Return to the Office
Enticing employees to return to the office isn’t simply a matter of offering a few perks and calling it a day. Sure, offering the team a free lunch once a week, or providing some free fruit of a morning is nice, but it’s hardly a reason to leave the house if you don’t have to. When you are close to your own, fully stocked kitchen and can eat what you want, when you want, a couple of free snacks at a set time doesn’t really match up.
To entice employees back to a centralised location. bringing some of the comforts of working from home to the office and maximising the benefits of being in an office is paramount.
The Office as a Social Space
One of more profound effects of both the pandemic and the move to working from home has been the rise in people feeling isolated or lonely. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare conducted a number of surveys between 2020 and 2022 and they all found that over half of respondents felt lonelier since COVID-19 and WFH orders than they did before.
While office spaces are by nature shared spaces, they aren’t necessarily social spaces. Shared offices are often associated with collaboration, yet they may not naturally foster social interactions. Sitting at a desk, headphones on, and working is still a solitary pursuit, even if there are other people in the room.
While shared offices can help networking and occasional socialising, they don’t inherently create a social atmosphere. Creating a social space in the office to encourage interaction and give employees the type of social connection they may be mission while working at home may require designing communal spaces that encourage informal interactions.
Open plan offices are designed without traditional cubicles or individual offices, where employees work in a shared environment with minimal physical barriers. The primary idea behind open plan offices is to foster collaboration, creativity, and a sense of community among employees. Some of the key advantages of open plan offices include:
Collaboration and Communication: Open plan offices encourage spontaneous interactions among colleagues, making it easier to discuss ideas and work together, offering employees the kind of social interaction and community they may lack working from home. This open and spontaneous communication can also lead to faster decision-making and knowledge sharing.
- Flexibility and Adaptability: Open plan spaces are adaptable and can be reconfigured easily to accommodate changing team sizes as employees return to the office or project needs change.
- Cost-Efficiency: Open plan layouts can be more cost-effective since they make better use of available space, requiring fewer walls and less square footage per employee. Making it an ideal way to refresh an office space within budget.
- Natural Light: Open plan offices can take better advantage of windows due to lack of partitions, allowing more natural light to flow through the workspace, which can make the space more appealing as well as improve employee well-being.
- Sense of Community: The absence of physical barriers creates a sense of belonging and community among employees, promoting a welcoming and positive work environment that can help encourage employees to return to the office.
- Easier Supervision: Managers can have a better overview of their teams, it easier to provide guidance and support, and removing some of the barriers that exist between management and staff.
- Employee Engagement: Open plan offices can increase employee engagement, as they feel more connected to their colleagues and the culture of the organisation.
Of course, open plan offices may not suit every individual or work style. Some employees may find it noisy or distracting, making it crucial to provide quieter spaces or dedicated meeting rooms for focused work or private conversations.
Interestingly, one of the growing trends that COS has noticed with return-to-work office fit outs is that management is increasingly giving up their dedicated office spaces, allowing them to be used as private meeting rooms, quiet spaces for phone calls or work that requires solitude or deep concentration, or even prayer rooms, yoga/relaxation rooms and dedicated spaces for wellbeing breaks.
Creating a space focussed not only on productivity but also community and wellbeing can provide great motivation for staff to return to the office.
Ergonomics and Customisation
One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to office furniture, something that many people have become acutely aware of due to working from home. Employees working from a home office have been able to tailor their work environments to meet their needs.
While these sort of unique setups aren’t practical in an office, there are some things that can be done to give employees the ability to better tailor their workstations to their needs, chief among them being fitting out the office with ergonomic furniture.
As the majority of office workers spend their day sitting at their desks, ensuring that the desks and chairs offer the right support is vital, both to ensure the comfort of workers, an minimise the risk of ergonomic injury.
Ergonomic Chairs
Offering employees ergonomic chairs with a range of adjustable features, such as seat tilt, height, and back allows employees to modify their seating arrangements for greatest comfort.
Better still, allowing employees to choose their own chair from a range of ergonomic office and task chairs allows then to both choose the style of chair that is right for them but also then adjust it to their desired parameters.
Sit-Stand Desks
When working from home, it’s easy to get up and walk around when needed, but this isn’t always possible in an office environment. Sit-stand desks allow employees to enjoy some of that freedom of movement without worrying about bothering other people. It’s also not particularly healthy to spend your entire day sitting.
Another benefit of sit-stand desks is that employees can, within parameters, choose the height of the desk in the sitting and standing position. This means that users can set the desks to an optimum height for comfort and wellbeing.
If a full electric sit-stand fit out isn’t possible, desktop sit-stand units offer the freedom of sit-stand desks without having to replace existing desking.
Foot Rests and Anti-Fatigue Mats
Having your feet flat on the ground with your knees at or below the level of your hips and your ankles in front of your knees is the optimal ergonomic sitting position. Some employees may need ergonomic foot rests to achieve this position.
Anti-fatigue mats are specially designed surfaces for use with standing desks. These mats promote subtle movement of the feet due to the cushioned surface and texture. This movement promotes circulation and reduces fatigue. Not only that, reports show that anti-fatigue mats can substantially reduce back pain.
Work Flexibility
Creating a flexible work environment, such as an open plan office is a great way to create an inviting environment that may make employees want to return to the office, but offering flexibility in the way that people can work is also an important factor. With employees who have become used to working from home and the flexibility that allows, offering similar flexibility in the workplace can eliminate a barrier that may be stopping them from coming back.
Hybrid working is seen by many experts as the future of work, as not only does it allow for the type of face to face accountability of office work that organisations are looking for, it also offers the kind of work-life balance, comfort and convenience that workers crave.
There are three general approaches to hybrid working – at will, split-week and weekly, each with their won benefits and drawbacks.
At Will
Using this model, employees choose whether or not to return to the office on a day to day basis, depending on workload, internal or external meetings or the projects they are working on. This style of hybrid work offers a great deal of freedom but little consistency when it comes to face to face time.
Split-Week
The work week is split between office days and work from home days. Most of the white-collar staff at COS work on a split-week system, with two days working from home and three working from the office. Split week hybrid working offers a balance between face-to-face contact and working from the comfort of home. It also allows for a good degree of flexibility allowing people to switch up their days in the office and home to cater for meetings, projects, or personal errands that can’t be done form the office.
Week to Week
This style of hybrid working sees employees working from home and the office on alternating weeks. This style of hybrid working offers great consistency for face-to-face work but lacks flexibility.
If you are looking to entice employees to return to the office, there isn’t one simple solution, but a combination of an inviting office space that gives employees the kind of social contact they may lack from working at home, and offering some of the comforts they have become used to when working from home is a very good start.
