)
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No problem. The office is a great place and has a lot to offer to any team.
But you also know that a back-to-office edict is likely to cause pushback.
How will people respond? Will they comply? Or will they threaten to leave?
In a market where you are fighting for every resource you can, giving people a good reason to pack up and go shouldn’t be on top of your priority list.
You’ve implemented a hybrid work policy, but you are still a big believer in the office and are eager to get back to some sense of normalcy.
Is there a right way to do this?
A 3-step plan for announcing back to office
Whether you want people to come back to the office everyday, or even just a few days a week (or month), you need to have a plan. Just telling people to come back isn’t going to fly with most of your team.
Here are the three steps to announcing any kind of back to office plan:
- Come up with your why
- Pitch it to your team
- Demonstrate a commitment to it
1. Come up with your why
Here’s a question you probably would never have dreamed of asking 5 years ago:
Why is it so important for you to have everyone in the office?
Most whys fall into one of the following categories.
Self-serving whys
These are reasons that match the preferences of the person making the decision. They sound like this:
- I know everyone’s ready to get back to the office
- We are better when we are together
- I miss seeing you all, and I know you feel the same
They come from hand-picked anecdotal stories and lack broad consensus.
Dig a little deeper into these reasons and you’ll find some uncomfortable truths.
Maybe as a leader, you like getting super quick answers to your questions without having to wait.
Or, your ego feels good when you look out and see an office full of people working on your project.
Or, you succeeded in business based on your charisma and extroversion, and you haven’t had a chance to use that lately.
Self-serving whys aren’t always bad; they just overly inflate your needs over those of the whole company.
Not-willing-to-change whys
These are reasons that are hard in the midst of a transition to digital work. However, there are solutions. Completely digital teams have solved these problems. So the reason is that you are uncomfortable or unwilling to change.
They sound like this:
- We’re losing our culture.
- We’re not as aligned as we used to be.
- Collaboration is harder.
- Misunderstandings are more common.
- We are losing trust in each other.
- Our relationships are too transactional.
- We don’t have spontaneous interactions anymore.
- We aren’t sharing as much.
You may either be unaware that good solutions exist, or you just don’t like the solutions.
There’s no shame in wanting to rely on the office to do some of the work of leadership, collaboration, productivity, or culture. However, the more that you rely on it, the more people will need to be in the office, the less work flexibility they’ll have, and the more likely they will be to leave.
Legit-digital-limitations whys
There are real limitations to digital-first work. The primary one is that you rarely get to tap into the highest fidelity of communication — being in the same space.
Here are a few very real reasons that you want to get together:
- We need to create some energy.
- We need to have more cross team discussions.
- We have several new people onboarding and time spent working together now will help us navigate any future issues later.
- We have a lot of people early in their careers and we want to expose them to all the nuances you can’t pick up working digitally.
- Unwork and building relationships are essential to our teams, and doing that in the same place is the best way to do it.
Even completely distributed companies recognize the need for gathering together in the same space. They will typically meet up for in-person meetings at least once a year, if not more.
2. Pitch it to your team
Once you have a very solid reason for asking people to come back to the office, you’ve got to pitch it.
Home field advantage belongs to WFH. Inertia is heavily in play. People have a closet full of sweatpants and need a damn good reason to start wearing fancy shoes again.
This has got to be worth changing routines, commutes, and child care. People are not showing up to the office just because you are lonely.
On the other hand, WFH has been around long enough that everyone knows it’s not the perfect solution. We’ve been working in bedrooms and with kids running around, and the housing market is ridiculous. So there’s an opening.
But you still need to make the pitch.
Just don’t do it in an email.
Create a video, do a podcast, host an AMA, do it on Twitter Spaces. Just not email.
3. Demonstrate a commitment to it
The best way to show you are serious about hybrid work is to adjust your workplace based on your why.
Your why should impact:
- Schedules
- Policies
- Talent strategy
- Physical space
- Budgets
For example, let’s say your why is creating more cross team discussions. Then, you need to schedule teams to be in the office at the same time. You need space big enough to host those teams. You need to cater lunch so that people don’t pair off with those they already know.
Or, imagine your why is welcoming new people. Create an agenda. Halt existing project timelines. Schedule hotels for people coming from out of town. Throw a party.
Or, imagine you want to get a better read on how people are doing in their personal lives. Don’t schedule a lot of big tactical meetings on in-office days. Set up a coffee bar and clear calendars. Bring in some board games, or set up a show-and-tell event.
Whatever your why is, optimize for it. Show that this isn’t just an ego thing, but you are really committed to using physical space to its full potential.
Welcome back to the office
Google recently announced a hybrid policy. CEO Sundar Pichai said, “I think we can be more purposeful about the time they’re in, making sure group meetings or collaboration, creative collaborative brainstorming or community building, happens then.”
Whatever your plans for how to use the office, be more purposeful.
No problem. The office is a great place and has a lot to offer to any team.
But you also know that a back-to-office edict is likely to cause pushback.
How will people respond? Will they comply? Or will they threaten to leave?
In a market where you are fighting for every resource you can, giving people a good reason to pack up and go shouldn’t be on top of your priority list.
You’ve implemented a hybrid work policy, but you are still a big believer in the office and are eager to get back to some sense of normalcy.
Is there a right way to do this?
A 3-step plan for announcing back to office
Whether you want people to come back to the office everyday, or even just a few days a week (or month), you need to have a plan. Just telling people to come back isn’t going to fly with most of your team.
Here are the three steps to announcing any kind of back to office plan:
- Come up with your why
- Pitch it to your team
- Demonstrate a commitment to it
1. Come up with your why
Here’s a question you probably would never have dreamed of asking 5 years ago:
Why is it so important for you to have everyone in the office?
Most whys fall into one of the following categories.
Self-serving whys
These are reasons that match the preferences of the person making the decision. They sound like this:
- I know everyone’s ready to get back to the office
- We are better when we are together
- I miss seeing you all, and I know you feel the same
They come from hand-picked anecdotal stories and lack broad consensus.
Dig a little deeper into these reasons and you’ll find some uncomfortable truths.
Maybe as a leader, you like getting super quick answers to your questions without having to wait.
Or, your ego feels good when you look out and see an office full of people working on your project.
Or, you succeeded in business based on your charisma and extroversion, and you haven’t had a chance to use that lately.
Self-serving whys aren’t always bad; they just overly inflate your needs over those of the whole company.
Not-willing-to-change whys
These are reasons that are hard in the midst of a transition to digital work. However, there are solutions. Completely digital teams have solved these problems. So the reason is that you are uncomfortable or unwilling to change.
They sound like this:
- We’re losing our culture.
- We’re not as aligned as we used to be.
- Collaboration is harder.
- Misunderstandings are more common.
- We are losing trust in each other.
- Our relationships are too transactional.
- We don’t have spontaneous interactions anymore.
- We aren’t sharing as much.
You may either be unaware that good solutions exist, or you just don’t like the solutions.
There’s no shame in wanting to rely on the office to do some of the work of leadership, collaboration, productivity, or culture. However, the more that you rely on it, the more people will need to be in the office, the less work flexibility they’ll have, and the more likely they will be to leave.
Legit-digital-limitations whys
There are real limitations to digital-first work. The primary one is that you rarely get to tap into the highest fidelity of communication — being in the same space.
Here are a few very real reasons that you want to get together:
- We need to create some energy.
- We need to have more cross team discussions.
- We have several new people onboarding and time spent working together now will help us navigate any future issues later.
- We have a lot of people early in their careers and we want to expose them to all the nuances you can’t pick up working digitally.
- Unwork and building relationships are essential to our teams, and doing that in the same place is the best way to do it.
Even completely distributed companies recognize the need for gathering together in the same space. They will typically meet up for in-person meetings at least once a year, if not more.
2. Pitch it to your team
Once you have a very solid reason for asking people to come back to the office, you’ve got to pitch it.
Home field advantage belongs to WFH. Inertia is heavily in play. People have a closet full of sweatpants and need a damn good reason to start wearing fancy shoes again.
This has got to be worth changing routines, commutes, and child care. People are not showing up to the office just because you are lonely.
On the other hand, WFH has been around long enough that everyone knows it’s not the perfect solution. We’ve been working in bedrooms and with kids running around, and the housing market is ridiculous. So there’s an opening.
But you still need to make the pitch.
Just don’t do it in an email.
Create a video, do a podcast, host an AMA, do it on Twitter Spaces. Just not email.
3. Demonstrate a commitment to it
The best way to show you are serious about hybrid work is to adjust your workplace based on your why.
Your why should impact:
- Schedules
- Policies
- Talent strategy
- Physical space
- Budgets
For example, let’s say your why is creating more cross team discussions. Then, you need to schedule teams to be in the office at the same time. You need space big enough to host those teams. You need to cater lunch so that people don’t pair off with those they already know.
Or, imagine your why is welcoming new people. Create an agenda. Halt existing project timelines. Schedule hotels for people coming from out of town. Throw a party.
Or, imagine you want to get a better read on how people are doing in their personal lives. Don’t schedule a lot of big tactical meetings on in-office days. Set up a coffee bar and clear calendars. Bring in some board games, or set up a show-and-tell event.
Whatever your why is, optimize for it. Show that this isn’t just an ego thing, but you are really committed to using physical space to its full potential.
Welcome back to the office
Google recently announced a hybrid policy. CEO Sundar Pichai said, “I think we can be more purposeful about the time they’re in, making sure group meetings or collaboration, creative collaborative brainstorming or community building, happens then.”
Whatever your plans for how to use the office, be more purposeful.
