If you mandate 3 days a week in the office, you are not offering hybrid work opportunities.

Mandates are the rage yet again. We went through this in the middle of 2022 when COVID-19 restrictions first began disappearing. Then again at the end of 2022. Now again in early 2023. It is a never-ending hot topic for business leaders who have no clue how their employees worked before the pandemic, how they worked during the pandemic, or how they have worked since. It directly says “I don’t trust you.” But sure, mandates are DEFINITELY going to work this time.

The most fascinating part of a mandated 3-day in office work week is that many or most employees, in most countries, were not in the office an average of 3 days a week before the pandemic. So the mandate is making employees come into the office MORE than they were before the pandemic. It is the definition of a regressive policy. By putting this style mandate in place, it says to the world that the leadership does not understand what makes their business successful.

Professional services operations do not succeed or fail because the bulk of employees shows up at an office daily. Productivity is not magically improved by being in a company-funded workplace. Culture is not mystically focused around a branded office environment. Productivity and culture are driven by people and relationships. No mandate is going to make people happier or improve relationships by itself.

Yes, the office has a role in supporting our people and growing healthy relationships. But there is no magical number of days that makes that support stronger. In fact, forcing people into the office often leads to malicious compliance. Do you really want your employees showing up exactly on time, putting their headphones in, and leaving exactly on time but never once going further than the mandate requires? That is a path that leads to frustration for all parties in this equation while potentially undermining the goals of supporting people and growing relationships.

Hybrid is about offering flexibility and a degree of choice. 3-day mandates offer neither flexibility nor choice. Leaders believe that it is flexible because it is only 3 days, it could have been 5. But it is inflexible because it is a mandatory given.