Four years after "work from home" affected the working norm, staff are now being ushered back to the office. In fact, they’re being ordered to do so.
In the private world, the list of these mandates is quite extensive: retailers like Boots and JD Sports have ordered their staff back to the office; financial monoliths like Deutsche Bank and Lloyds have done the same. And so have tech giants like Dell.
Interestingly, it’s not just private companies driving this trend – public bodies have followed suit. Take the Office for National Statistics, for example: staff were recently ordered back to the office two days a week, marking an end to their remote liberties.
Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t gone down a treat: PCS union members in the statistics agency have voted overwhelmingly to strike. The mandate, most likely intended to be nothing more than a driver of team cohesion and culture, might cause an organisation-wide dispute.
The fact of the matter is that these mandates, at all levels, do not work. They’re all based on the assumption that staff want a return to the pre-pandemic working world – and that the office has retained its clout.
But this is incredibly misguided. Staff are no longer looking for colourful in-office perks – free drinks rounds, socials and the like – and, for better or for worse, they no longer care about the office. Over these last few years, the workforce has experienced a level of humanity and flexibility not seen before. They want something more profound.
Equitable pay, understanding, and kindness – that’s what staff now want. They want their needs to be recognised; they want their personal life, and their boundaries, respected. Controlling initiatives like return-to-office mandates don’t quite fit the spec.
Under looming disillusionment, discontent and disputes, leadership teams need to shift their strategy. They must recognise that working norms have changed, that the pandemic did indeed happen, and decide how they should value their people from there on. The answer is pretty clear – they have to let the whole human into the organisation, and not treat them as statistics or metrics.
"Under looming disillusionment, discontent and disputes, leadership teams need to shift their strategy. They must recognise that working norms have changed and decide how they should value their people from there on"
Return-to-office mandates must go. Monitoring schemes – whether it’s attendance monitoring or, as in the case of Manchester United, email monitoring – must go. Anything that even remotely dehumanises staff – I’d include quotas and hierarchies here – cannot run in today’s working world.
Leadership teams across both the public and private sectors must address the core cultures of their organisation. And, to do that, they can’t hide in their glass-walled offices. They have to become totally visible.
As reported in Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer, 81% of respondents believed chief executives should be personally visible to external stakeholders, and 60% of potential job applicants expect chief execs to speak out publicly about the social and political issues they care about. These days, visibility is of the utmost importance. Leadership teams cannot palm off cultural tasks to HR. As the faces of the organisation, they are responsible for its internal environment – they have to dictate change.
Whether through speaking engagements, company-wide AGMs, or by addressing social and industry issues in the media, leaders need to place themselves in front of their people and reinstate confidence and cohesion among their workforce. They have to place their boots on the ground and align themselves with all members of their staff, not bark orders from the safety of the boardroom.
Today, the concept of organisational culture is in a dire state. Companies, state bodies, and the like are convinced that they can order their staff around without consequence; they’re convinced that initiatives that previously guaranteed staff satisfaction, namely in-office perks, will work today.
So, just as the workforce has had to navigate disruption and change their ways, workplace cultures also need to adapt. Hard-nosed, impenetrable leadership teams must undergo a makeover, forget their titles, and take the reins of the organisation.
But, at the heart of everything is this short, snappy message: stop ordering your staff back to the office; stop dehumanising your people. The power of your organisation comes from its culture – and if you change it in a way that reflects the sentiments of your workforce, there’s a chance your staff will naturally gravitate back to your offices. You could create a genuine sense of belonging.
Nahla Khaddage Bou-Diab is a culture and leadership expert, chairman and general manager of Oneness Mgmt and CEO of AM Bank who has developed a step-by-step methodology to assist leaders in transforming their company culture. She also holds several senior roles in the banking sector and spearheaded the Gender Diversity Group for the World Union of Arab Bankers. She has written several books, including Untamable and A Leadership Shift, published on 28 March