Return to the office mandates are culture poison pills Over the past 40 years we have celebrated high performing organisations. HBR case studies are written. We pore over what we can learn.
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Over the years, we discuss General Electric, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Walt Disney, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Goldman, Toyota, NVIDIA, Tesla, Space X, OpenAI. How did they achieve such extraordinary results?Academics dissect the companies' organisations structures, ponder SWOT analyses, and scratch their heads. After eventually dismissing the tempting misnomers of processes, structures, and design, they are left with the same three fundamentals: leadership, capabilities, and technology.
There is apparently only one truth to winning: people and technology. In that order. Unfortunately, the lesson is easy to forget, tempting to bypass, and extremely easy to suspend when the storm clouds of economic cycles, political pressures, and, apparently, COVID-19 pandemics materialise.
A short history of how we got here
In 2020, companies rushed to implement remote working, as a defensive, humanitarian initiative. By the summer of 2020 nearly 50% of the workforce was working remotely. Much has been written about how COVID 'accelerated' remote working.
We take more of a realist view on the explosion of hybrid/remote working practices over the past 5 years. They were introduced in large part as temporary measures, with little calculation to the ultimate business desirability. We believe many management teams probably believed that some compromise to optimum performance was likely, but that health and safety were far more important concerns.
Radically changed paradigm
However the explosion of flexible work arrangements occurred, they have created a very new paradigm. We are no longer arguing about making traditional workplace telecommuting an exception to 'normal' office attendance. Instead, we are in dialogue with a remote workforce that needs persuading a return to the office is necessary.
In a London news report a few months ago, people were asked about returning to the office. Many replied, "well, I won't accept that, it simply doesn't work for my lifestyle." Among a significant number of employees, remote working now teeters between expectation and entitlement.
Two wrongs don't make a right
The problem entrepreneurs and business leaders face is that meeting employees appropriation of remote work with authoritarian dictates may win the day BUT cost them their competitive edge. Let's return to the beginning - over the past 30-40 years we have come to broadly agree what differentiates exceptional performance from just average - discretionary effort. In less corporate speak, have you fostered an environment where employees are encouraged to act like owners? To approach business problems and opportunities not by strictly following a process or by implementing orders from their leaders. But, instead, by seeking to obtain an optimum outcome. To fully engage everyone's brains, ingenuity, innovation, creativity, and common sense.
If companies mandate a return to the office. If they collapse the relationship with employees to contractual considerations. Fall back on the easy but rather lazy game of power dynamics. Well, what are we saying to employees? Hey guys, ultimately all that stuff about discretion, judgement, and focusing on outcomes… well yeah… forget that. We didn't really mean it. Just get your arses back into the office and sit at the damn desk. When the phone rings, pick it up and answer it!
Ways of working are a foundation of performance culture.
Less we are misinterpreted, we are not arguing for just accepting the existing WFH/Hybrid dynamic. Autonomy, the secret sauce to releasing employee creativity is not the same as remote working. It's easy to confuse encouraging people to create their own solutions to problems with flexibility on where they do it. They aren't the same thing.
Organisations should not be shy in encouraging a return to work in the office… where it makes sense to do so… based on objective data…. facts. We tend to preach balance in most things. Rather than suggest it's all or nothing, black or white, great companies tend to excel at finding symbiotic solutions. How we work, whether we are physically proximate, indeed, whether we are in an open plan socially collaborative workspace or in cubicles, has a huge effect on an organizations ability to create kinship, fellowship, and a soul.
Our punchlines here are:
1 – Communal workspace can be a competitive advantage: the community, serendipitous collaboration, and creativity of working together cannot be easily replicated remotely. We underestimate the value of vicarious inspiration born from being surrounded by very talented people. Entrepreneurs should not be apologetic about seeking to, sensibly, return to this.
2 – Jobs and Individuals react very differently to remote working: It's easy to point out the types of jobs that seem silly to suggest being done remotely, but it is easy to forget some individuals find it much harder than others. The quiet voices can be drowned out too easily.
3 – Unknown long-term risks: For example, an overlooked risk of long-term remote working is whether the physical and mental conditions may be sub-optimal. We have spent decades working to make offices healthy and productive spaces. It is impossible to say the same about the long-term effects of working from home.
4 – Remote working is here to stay: The bottom-line here is pick your favourite analogy… Genie or toothpaste… we suggest being data and evidence led is essential to making any decisions to reverse existing WFH arrangements.
Mandates and dictates reduce the employer/employee relationship to an authoritarian, rules-based construct. Most people react negatively to being told they must do something. It may be the reason we are seeing lots of discussion about 'quiet quitting' and a worrying slide in overall employee engagement over the past few years.
As frustrating and irritating as it may be for entrepreneurs and business leaders who find themselves struggling to encourage employees to return to work, our advice is not to meet emotion with impositions. Focus on facts. On data. More importantly on desired outcomes. On shared purpose. We believe we have not done enough to fully understand and articulate the positive aspects of office working.
Dr Helmut Schuster and Dr David Oxley are career futurists and co-authors of A Groundhog Career: A tale of career traps and how to escape them out on 18 March 2025, published by Practical Inspiration