WFH vs. RTO: Maximizing Employee Experience and Corporate Productivity

The pandemic days of most white-collar workers working from home full-time are long past, but they have left a great divide between employer and employee attitudes about the future of work and the benefits of work-from-home versus return to the office. We have all seen publicity about companies mandating a return to office, even from Zoom, the company that was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the work-from-home movement. According to a global workforce study by Unispace, 72% of companies across the globe have mandated some form of office return, while another 20% have strongly suggested it even though they have not mandated it. But according to a recent article in Fortune, mandates may be backfiring as those companies are seeing higher turnover and taking longer to fill open jobs than companies with more flexible policies.

Disconnect Between Employers and Employees

Because of the yo-yo effect of going from full-time in office to full-time work-at-home to today’s mix of full-time in office and hybrid models, companies have had little time to think about how various aspects of the employee experience (EX) need to change: recruitment, onboarding, culture development, flexible work policies, performance reviews, and opportunities for advancement. And more importantly, they have not had time, or perhaps interest, in discussing these issues with employees, resulting in a disconnect on at least three main issues:

1. Employee and candidate desire for flexibility in work location. The 2023 Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report suggests that 76% of employees may switch jobs if companies change their work schedules to be less location flexible. And the same study finds that 42% of candidates will not apply for a job if it does not indicate that it includes a flexible work model. This has a significant impact on recruiting costs and time to recruit, leaving a company’s existing workers strapped to cover more work, which will lead to burnout and higher turnover.

2. Differing views on the opportunity for advancement based on work location. The Unispace study says that 84% of employers believe that career advancement will be limited for remote employees, while only 67% of employees believe this to be true. Clearly some transparent and honest conversations need to be had.

3. Employers don’t necessarily understand employee desire for flexible work arrangements. Employers believe that what employees are most concerned about is:

· The loss of time gained at home by not commuting

· The actual time, energy, and money related to the commute

· The inability to get household tasks done during the workday.

Meanwhile employees in the Unispace study state the three biggest reasons for wanting flexibility are:

· Losing the privacy of working from home

· Being able to work more effectively in a quiet place

· Being more productive working at home

The employee-stated reasons are largely work and productivity-related, rather than about personal needs. Again, open discussions between employers and employees need to happen to understand the issues and strive for mutually beneficial solutions.

Pros & Cons of In-Office vs. At-Home Work

Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to both working in the office as well as working at home:

The Greenhouse study shows that employees prefer to do collaborative work in the office, while performing individual or focused work as well as administrative tasks at home. Clearly maximizing productivity is to everyone’s benefit.

Considerations for the Future

While many companies are using hybrid models – and I would personally argue that this may be the best approach to maximizing the pros and minimizing or eliminating the cons of the models discussed above – I suggest companies must still develop strategies and communication plans for several factors as they consider work location policies for the future:

1. Performance and compensation evaluations – While a certain segment of employees may be willing to sacrifice salary for the ability to work from home, the reality is that having different compensation structures for in-office vs. at-home employees can lead to very unequal pay for similar work. And there’s a potential argument that work-from-home employees are actually more productive, so why should they be paid less?

2. Career pathing – If employees who are not full-time in the office see that they have limited advancement opportunities, it will lead to retention issues as they effectively see themselves as free agents, as opposed to employees or team members, and will always chase the best offer.

3. Mentoring – I believe mentoring will be one of the biggest issues we encounter with younger employees that joined the workforce during the pandemic or shortly after. How do they form effective work relationships, and more importantly, how do they find and receive effective mentorship to help develop in their careers in all-remote or even hybrid systems where interactions with potential mentors are limited? Their future success, and that of the companies where they work, depends on this type of career enablement.

4. Culture building and development – How do you create, develop, and maintain the desired culture when blending in-person and remote employees in a way that does not create a “haves and have-nots” situation?

5. Team cohesion and reducing isolation of remote workers – As with the culture discussion above, managers will need effective training on how to build high-performing, collaborative teams when the team is distributed across locations and work-from-home situations and rarely ever meets face-to-face. And managers will have to be acutely aware of and concerned about how the individual employees that are remote feel about their roles on the team and in the company. It can’t simply be “well, that’s your issue and maybe it would go away if you were in in the office.”

6. Onboarding and assimilation of new employees – It goes without saying that after spending the time, effort, and money to hire new employees, you want to give them the best chance to succeed by helping them get up to speed as quickly as possible. Onboarding may require different thinking or processes for remote employees.

There is much more to be gained by having a more diverse and talented workforce when you open the recruiting process to more geographies than simply where your offices are located. But this also means that companies must give serious thought to their culture, employee experience, and coaching and mentoring processes to manage the future workforce and the future of work.

To discuss how I can help your company or to arrange speaking engagements, please contact me at eric.smuda@outlook.com.

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