Last month, Amazon joined a growing number of businesses to demand employees return to the office full-time. CEO Andy Jassy said he wanted to keep the culture strong, to “operate like the world’s largest start-up”, and to do this he would need people to be present rather than remote. “Our culture is unique,” he said, “and has been one of the most critical parts of our success. But keeping your culture strong is not a birthright.”
Is he right, and can culture only survive and thrive in an office? It’s no secret that the switch to hybrid and remote working has empowered employees to do a number of things they never would have considered before the pandemic. Parents can take time away to pick up children from daycare, what might have been an office coffee break previously becomes laundry sorting time, or commuting time is taken up with a 5k run instead of sitting in traffic. To many leaders, this suggests their workforce is doing less work for them, and more for themselves.
Employees, meanwhile, understand that bosses want them to be productive, and are going out of their way to prove this. According to research from HR software company Workhuman, more than a third of employees fake working activity because they feel managers have unrealistic expectations of them. This ‘pretend productivity’ could take the form of a quick response to a Teams or Slack message or even wiggling a mouse to show they are online. (Wells Fargo recently sacked who were faking keyboard activity, so this approach is not always in employees’ favor).
Is demanding that employees return to the office the route to genuine productivity? I think this responsibility falls equally on both employers and employees. Businesses without robust systems in place arguably open the doors to staff stretching trust and giving in to the temptation to slack off. Without clarity on what needs to be delivered and when, deadlines can drift and productivity slows. These systems could be anything from regular meetings (Mondays or Tuesdays work well because they set the tone for the week) to one-to-one catch-ups on progress. Some businesses have introduced monitoring systems, but without the right culture, staff will simply find ways around these as well.
This is especially important for younger employees beginning their career journeys. Thanks to the pandemic, they might not have been exposed to regular in-person collaboration and the chance to learn from more experienced colleagues. Being in the office means they can build soft skills such as teamwork and dealing with difficult conversations, alongside absorbing the ‘secret sauce’ that makes an organization stand out. And that needs to be all week, not just Tuesday to Thursday. Hybrid arrangements absolutely can and do work successfully and boost employees’ work-life balance, but that doesn’t mean a license for them to take an unofficial long weekend.
Avoiding ‘fake productivity’ comes back to intentionality on both sides. Great things can happen in the office when everyone is working towards a shared goal – positivity and enthusiasm are infectious. The advantage of encouraging people back to the office more regularly is that we know how this works, how we set a culture when everyone is present, and how to transfer knowledge. We are only just learning how to do this within hybrid arrangements – I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but it’s a different sort of productivity that ensues.
Research from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford found that the most productive employees are happy ones. Its study of workers at a contact center over a six-month period found that when workers were happier, they made more calls per hour, and converted more of those calls into sales. The researchers also found that happy workers do not work more hours than their discontented colleagues – they are simply more productive during their time at work. Many employees feel contentment from being able to combine work and home tasks, but we can also build thriving and satisfied teams in the office – happiness is not exclusive to the home.
For leaders, the message is one I’ve stolen from the 1980s film Field of Dreams: “Build it and they will come.” In a market where everyone wants the best skills to propel them into the future, offering an environment where they can bring their ‘A-game’ when they’re in the office, and have enough structure and trust to understand what they need to deliver when not, is the key.