Like the bosses at JPMorgan, Boots and Goldman Sachs, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited strengthening company culture as one of the key reasons.That’s why we’re increasing office work requirements from three days to regular work days.
But a new report from PwC suggests that the shift to working full-time in the office may have the opposite effect.
The Big Four accounting firms conducted a 13-month study and surveyed more than 20,000 business leaders, chief human resources officers and workers to inform their new strategy. Human Resources Radar ReportAnd they found that hybrid workers felt more engaged and productive than those who sat at their desks five days a week.
“While many companies are pushing for a return to the office, hybrid workers are showing the highest levels of satisfaction,” the report highlights.
Researchers found that more than three-quarters of hybrid workers felt a sense of belonging, compared to 74% of on-premise workers and 68% of remote workers.
Similarly, 74% of hybrid workers are engaged, compared to 72% for office workers and 63% for remote workers.
These differences may seem subtle, but they have a ripple effect on company culture: A whopping 90% of hybrid employees report that their company culture fosters community, collaboration, inclusion, and a sense of belonging.
“The idea that you have to be onsite all day, every day to establish and maintain a strong culture is a myth,” the report concluded. “Don’t be afraid to offer flexible options for fear of undermining your culture.”
Why would adding two more days to the office ruin your company culture?
It may seem counterintuitive to build company culture by encouraging employees to spend more time apart from one another, but in reality, when leaders implement a five-day workweek in the office, they often overlook engaging activities like team outings and after-work drinks.
“The office becomes a crutch. Engagement, recognition, and connection all happen by default,” says Daan Van Rossum, author of the Future Work newsletter and founder of FlexOS. luck.
“As companies move to a hybrid schedule, they begin to implement more intentional efforts to replace these engagements. In the process, hybrid experiences actually lead to improved engagement with more touchpoints.”
Besides, no one likes to sit and commute to work. Doing the same things you can do at home in a noisy office isn’t something for an introvert, experts say. luck Doing this just a few days a week will help your employees make the most of their time in the office and maximize their efficiency. collaboration.
And personality conflicts need to be dealt with on a daily basis, not just in a short period of time.
“When you’re forced to work in an office, you’re exposed to people who share very different values than you,” says Amrit Sandhar, CEO of &Evolve, a hiring and engagement firm. “Over time, it can feel tiring.”
PwC says, “Don’t look back, look forward.”
Despite Amazon urging workers to return to “the way things were before COVID-19,” research from PwC suggests workers simply won’t go back to their old ways of working.
“We find that many return-to-office mandates have failed,” the report said, adding that “the business-as-usual paradigm that some business leaders wanted to return to is no longer in place.”
“Employees didn’t miss the long, stressful commutes, and they were used to the flexibility that remote work offered—scheduling, childcare, caregiving,” he continued. “They didn’t want to come into the office without a compelling reason.”
In fact, the biggest reason company culture deteriorates when employees are forced to collaborate every day is because it is forced.
Metrics that monitor RTO and attendance (including tracking badge swipes) send the message that worker attendance is more important to the company than performance or meaningful collaboration.
“It seems that what matters is the number of employees, not what they do once they are inside the company,” the report said.
The challenge for employees, says Evolve CEO Sandar, is that returning to the office can feel like surveillance.
“Giving employees the autonomy to make their own decisions does more to strengthen, rather than diminish, a culture that values employees,” Sandhar concludes. “No one wants to be controlled in a rigid environment, so forcing people back to work can feel like control.”
“This theme is likely to show up in everyday work experiences as well. Instead of giving employees a sense of autonomy and freedom, a sense of control, like micromanagement, can diminish the vision the organization has for its culture and lead to disengagement.”
