My first post of the year was about the fallacy behind “needing people in the office.” Unexpectedly to me, the idea that employees must be in the office a set number of days every week has grown momentum. I have been forced to step back and look at this idea from a fresh angle just because of the degree of popularity it seems to be collecting. Forbes, CNN, and even NPR are providing a rationale for why this idea may not be terrible.
It is a terrible idea.
I am approaching this discussion from a North American professional services lens, but from all of my research, the same is still broadly true for Europe, Australia, most of Asia, and even the rest of the world. But the first point is the biggest: Employees, on average, were not in the office three days every week before the pandemic. However, most companies have no data proving that so managers pretend that fact is not real. Policies that take employees backward (even if we ignore the lessons from the pandemic) are either doomed for failure or going to drive talent to leave.
It is a terrible idea.
The second point is to ask what is so special about “every week?” Why not every other week? Why not monthly? The answer that I have encountered tends to be “well that’s how we’ve always done it.” In that instance, I reference my first point. In the rare instance that someone has a different answer, I ask them why the 2+ years of pandemic working is being entirely discarded. People were clearly not together every week then. They were not together even once a quarter or even once a year. Why are we jumping from “hardly ever” to “every single week without question or argument”? It feels extreme because it is extreme.
It is a terrible idea.
My third point is to ask whether they have actually taken their employee’s preferences and points of view into account. If they say they have, it is easy to call their bluff. If they have not, it is always worth asking why not. The answer is always because they know what response they would get from the majority of their employees. It will be a negative one. No question. Maybe their management staff says it is a good idea, but not the general employees. Going back to my first point, policies that take employees backward are either doomed for failure or to drive talent out the door.
It is a terrible idea.
The crazy thing about this entire conversation is that there are a million middle-ground options that accomplish the same goals without coming off out of touch. The easiest answer is to simply not make it every other week. An approach that says:
Interactions, being together, and working as a team are important to our collective success. We know that all of us have different roles and approaches to our individual success and productivity. What we ask is that you work with your teams to find the right approach as a group. For some that may be to work together weekly. For others that may be a few days together each month on a preplanned basis. What we ask is that the answer is not “never.”
Send that through your comms team to wordsmith. But the goal should be to take a thoughtful approach that takes employee preferences into consideration.
This should not be hard. This should be an easy win.