Two HR leaders explain why in-office culture is still important – and how to do it well
Last week The Wall Street Journal described mega-giant Amazon’s five-day RTO mandate as “messy” in the execution, with many workers reportedly returning to the office only to find not enough desks, parking or meeting room to go around.
As one LinkedIn commenter put it: “The e-commerce titan – which can deliver almost anything almost anywhere,” failed to adequately equip the 350,000 corporate employees who were ordered beck into offices full-time earlier this year.
If a highly resourced company such as Amazon can’t pull off RTO smoothly, some HR leaders may be wondering: Is it worth it?
According to Anthony Hammon, director and HR business partner at Rich Products Corporation, if an organization genuinely wants employees – and the business – to benefit from RTO, broad-strokes policies like Amazon’s aren’t going to work.
“You'll see many organizations are arguing that bringing people back to the office will improve the performance of either the individuals or the organization as a whole,” he says.
“And then all the employees are going, ‘Well, how the heck is that supposed to happen? I do the exact same work on the exact same computer on the exact same Zoom meetings — nothing has changed. You just forced me to do it in a cubicle instead of my comfortable home office.’”
Making RTO meaningful with strong leadership
Manisha Burman, CHRO and EVP for CI Financial, says her organization’s “beautiful” offices spaces throughout the world encouraged in-office cohesion and productivity well before the pandemic hit.
“We are an in-office culture, and always have been,” she says.
“That's always been our philosophy, and we've also always provided flexibility as needed, and hybrid situations as needed.”
Burman stresses that making RTO meaningful for employees is key to successful policy implementation. In addition to wellness programs, professional development programs and “most important… snacks,” the company looked to its leaders to take strong roles in integrating employees back into the office after the pandemic.
“The expectation is, if you're a senior leader, think of that office as a cohesive group of people that you're managing, whether they have a direct reporting to you or not,” she says.
“Some of it is about the physical space, some of it is the things that you can offer within the space, and some of it is about ‘How do we actually behave?’ Because the leaders also have to create a really positive tone and be visible, and doing the coaching and mentoring so that it's a great experience.”
Re-evaluating workflows
Hammon, who specializes in organizational design in the HR context, emphasizes this component of RTO – that employees experience firsthand the benefit they are getting from being back in-person.
This means reevaluating workflows and who genuinely needs to be there, and demonstrating why.
“The idea that there's value in people being the same office, even if they don't work together, is a pretty thin argument,” he says.
“Companies are more successful when their return to office practice is not a blanket, uniform policy that applies to every employee in the same way but instead is a concerted effort to create in-person interactions that have value to both the individual and the organization.”
By bringing employees back to the office without consideration of what conditions they are coming into, organizations risk creating “the organizational culture of a Starbucks,” says Hammon – essentially, a space where employees work near each other but never meet.
Addressing team needs in office environments
Being more intentional with office space design is an impactful way to encourage interaction and collaborative work, as employees have different expectations from office work environments. Individual workers who work independently are not the main issue of organizing RTO, he says – it’s how to accommodate the needs of specific teams.
“The harder nut to crack is the different ways that different groups of people can work together,” Hammon says.
“Maybe one team needs giant whiteboard spaces in a completely confidential working space. Another needs separate tables where they can walk over to each other and chat. Another team needs some other kind of dynamic. I think companies need to move in a direction that allows for teams to kind of raise their hand and say, ‘We need somebody to work with us on the way we work together in this space, so we can customize the space to the way we work.’”
Contrary to many organizations that have adopted the work model, CI Financial has leaned away from hot-desking as it sends “a bit of a mixed message,” Burman says, and the company’s office spaces prioritize employee personal space in addition to collaborative areas so employees “feel like ‘This is my other home, I feel really comfortable here. I have photos of my kids. I have somewhere where I can have a bit of a routine,’” she says.
“It is something that we're purposeful about, about giving people a spot that they can sit in every day and feel comfortable in. I think that's part of human nature, that it makes people feel more welcomed in their environment.”
Looking to the data for RTO decisions
When making decisions about returning employees to the office, Burman recommends HR teams look to their internal employee data.
At CI Financial, they found that even knowledge and tech workers (who generally oppose RTO the hardest, she says), showed a decline in performance over sustained periods of remote work.
This information can help in communicating with employees about RTO policies, she says.
“We use that data to sort of tell a story, to say, ‘You may be transactionally getting your work done, but what's not happening is the mentoring, the development, the strategizing, all of those things that really make it a meaningful work experience, and supports our high growth, high performance culture,” Burman says.
“Really look at your data to help get underneath what some of the issues are and what you're solving for.”
Through careful monitoring of individual employee performance and data, Burman’s team was able to identify specific issues and problem solve for them. As she notes, employees were “starting to lose their connection to the business” due to working remotely.
“What we saw is that some of the relevance of the work, it wasn't as effective, because they were missing the dialogue with the team and the business to really understand ‘What are you solving for?’” she explains.
“And we were losing productivity, because they might design something, but it actually wasn't hitting the mark.”
Burman also observed an increase in turnover in remote workers, especially among new hires and early career employees: “Turnover of people who've been with the organization for less than six months had really increased. Turnover of very early career employees had really increased.”
In-office challenges not a new problem
As Hammon explains, while the massive move to work-from-home during the pandemic, and then back again, has drawn attention to the challenges of RTO, the issue was making itself known before COVID.
“A lot of the gripes and discomfort around RTO and just the experience of working in offices now … actually started pre-pandemic, and it's not just related to our swing away from offices and then back,” he says. “It's actually more related to the globalization of corporate-type, white collar work.”
Successful RTO strategies mean maintaining flexibility to accommodate individual employees where they need it – even Burman, who believes in the benefits of strong in-office culture, allows space for individual needs to be voiced and met: “Rather than a broad brush, we began to break it out and say, ‘What are the needs of different employees in what situations, and what makes sense in terms of coming in, versus not?’”
However, beyond those exceptions, she stands by the power of in-person interaction, as long as it’s done intentionally, and employees feel welcomed into a space for meaningful work and connection.
“If you are a leader, in order to lead and coach and develop and mentor, you've got to be in,” says Burman.
“If you're new to career, you need to learn the norms and the expectations of a company and immerse yourself in the culture, and it's better for your career to come in. If you are newly promoted, this is an important moment of truth for you … you need to come in.”
