The Real Reasons You Are Being Asked To Return To The Office
The writing is on the wall
The researchers, the commentators, the surveys, the advisories, the consultants, and the experts, are all telling us the same thing. Employees do not want to return to the office on a permanent basis – they want flexibility to work when they want, where they want, and how they want.
The writing is on the wall. Try and force, threaten or coerce, your employees back into the office, against their will, and you will suffer the consequences.
We are already seeing the backlash.
Cathy Merrill at Washingtonian – employees went on strike.
Tim Cook at Apple – internal ‘plea’ letter from employees.
April 2021 FlexJobs survey – 60% of women and 52% of men will quit if not allowed to continue working remotely.
Microsoft Work Trend Index – 46% of employees globally planning to quit for remote work
Despite the warning of The Great Resignation from Associate Professor of Management at Texas A&M University Anthony Klotz, many companies are still demanding a return to the office.
The BS
The question then is why?
The two repeated arguments from the return-to-the-office-brigade are concerns about maintaining the culture and collaboration.
This is absolute BS.
You know and I know that culture is not created or maintained by bricks and mortar. Co-location will not make up for a broken culture. Culture is about behaviours, not locations.
The entire workforce does not need to be back in the office for collaboration to take place.
Most of our workers are knowledge workers - they “think” for a living. This means they spend a good proportion of their time in deep thought and focused attention. They should work from wherever they will not be distracted. When they need to collaborate, they can attend an office if that makes it easier.
The real reasons
What are the real reasons organisations are asking for a return to the office?
I am not the first to write or speak about this and I recommend you read articles from the likes of Jack Kelly on Forbes and the brilliantly written piece from Ed Zitron for The Atlantic.
These are what I believe to be the top five reasons for the return-to-office demand.
1. Impressions matter
This is all about ego and protection of the kingdom. It revolves around the idea that the size of your kingdom is evidence of your success. The more real estate you have, the more it costs, and the bigger your headcount, the greater your position in the hierarchy of the ‘successful’ CEOs.
If you believe that size matters, then you will be supportive of the return-to-office demands of Google to return to the 2 million square feet (190,000 square meters) of the Googleplex; Apple to return to the $165 billion ‘spaceship’ at Apple Park; and Goldman Sachs to return to the 749-foot-tall (228m), 44 story building at 200 West Street.
If you believe that appearances can be deceptive and headcount and real estate is not indicative of success, you will be supportive of the removal or down-sizing of the physical office. As Ed Zitron points out:
Because most private companies don’t share revenue, we frequently tie headcount and real estate to success. Removing the physical office forces modern businesses to start justifying themselves through annoying things such as “profit and loss” and “paying customers.”
2. Measuring performance
Our organisations are rife with ‘bad bosses’ who label themselves as ‘leaders.’ Real leaders measure the performance of employees on outcome and value delivered. Bad bosses believe they are measuring performance by the hours a person spends at their desk.
When an employee is working remotely, a bad boss cannot see the hours spent at the desk. Or can they?
Research from TOP10VPN reported that the global demand for employee surveillance software increased by 87 percent in April 2020 compared with the monthly average prior to the pandemic, following an initial 7 percent bump in March.
In May 2020, demand remained high, at 71 percent above pre-pandemic levels. This demand was sustained in the succeeding months.
The numbers speak for themselves. The onset of the pandemic resulted in bosses asking themselves one question, “How am I going to be able to monitor my remote employees?” The answer was employee surveillance software.
Just as office-based employees used to make it look like they were putting in long hours by leaving a jacket on the back of their chair or keeping some food and unfinished drink on the desk before leaving the office, remote workers are also playing the game.
Remote workers are placing a paper clip in the insert key as it registers constant keyboard strokes. They are placing the mouse on top of an analogue clock or watch that has a second hand fools the software into thinking you are moving, as the ticking of the second hand resembles mouse movements. Heavy weights and vibrating toys are also being used to achieve the same outcomes.
The bad bosses know that they are going to be exposed. The bad bosses of the bad bosses know it too. If you monitor your employees, you are screaming at them, “I do not trust you.” A perfect reason to leave for an employer who does.
The bad bosses want you back in the office so they can return to the “If I can see you, I know you are working” illusion. It is their happy space.
3. Leadership exposed
Remote working will expose the lack of leadership in the organisation. When everyone is in the office, the bad bosses bathe in the power that they can lord over their employees. They can call endless inane and meaningless meetings just to hear the sound of their own voice. They can delegate the boring and unfulfilling tasks that they do not want to do. They can ask for ideas and then present them to senior management as their own and flash their feathers as they do.
Not only is it harder to micromanage a remote workforce, but you also cannot hide behind the smoke and mirrors anymore.
Most correspondence and engagement is conducted digitally and therefore there is electronically captured evidence of conversations, meetings, and exchanges. Bad bosses doing the wrong thing can be revealed. Their dominance and tyranny are a thing of the past and they are running scared.
“Come back where I can see you and command you at my will” echoes around empty corridors and vacant offices. There is desperation for a return to the way it was.
4. Deep fear
Many middle managers (and so-called leaders) are fearful of how they will justify their existence.
If a team can work remotely without the micromanagement, domination and oversight their manager had when they were in the office environment, what does the manager actually do? Are they really needed?
I can only quote Ed Zitron here as he sums it up so perfectly.
The reason working from home is so nightmarish for many managers and executives is that a great deal of modern business has been built on the substrate of in-person work. As a society, we tend to consider management a title rather than a skill, something to promote people to, as well as a way in which you can abstract yourself from the work product. When you remove the physical office space—the place where people are yelled at in private offices or singled out in meetings—it becomes a lot harder to spook people as a type of management. In fact, your position at a company becomes more difficult to justify if all you do is delegate and nag people.
5. Too hard basket
While the pandemic has offered us the greatest opportunity we have been presented with in generations, it also presents the greatest challenge. We have the chance to reflect, rethink, reimagine and reinvent the way we work. For most this is going in the ‘too hard’ basket.
Moving to a remote working or hybrid working model on a permanent basis has many implications and considerations to be taken.
There are many parties that need to be involved including HR, property, finance, facilities, security, IT, legal and OH&S. There are country and state legal and regulatory requirements in play. Every organisation is different and there is no one-size-fits-all model to be adopted. Employee working preferences must be determined and asking employee input could be a major first for many! Organisations must understand their business strategy, customer needs and desired outcomes and then build a hybrid working model that meets those needs.
This is uncharted territory and there is no map. There is no playbook or procedure to bring around this change. This is the time for the bold and the brave, the experimenters and the innovators, the collaborators and the altruistic, the egalitarian and the autonomists, the true and adaptive leaders
It is just too easy to ignore this and rather than think ‘what was’ say, ‘what if?’
Summary
This is going to be such an interesting time to watch and see what unfolds. I want to see a comprehensive acknowledgement that work is what we do, not where we go and a better future for everyone because of it.