For months, business owners have been researching and refining the planned return of their workers to the office. However, multiple reports suggest that many workers, faced with having to ditch the sweatpants in favor of their business casual duds, are opting not to return to the office at all. Some are finding new jobs, while others are changing careers altogether, all with an eye towards continuing their work at home streak. So how can you, as a business owner, navigate the return to the office without losing some of your top talent?
With less than a third of US office workers back in their buildings, it’s still too early to determine how our post-pandemic work landscape will ultimately look especially as we grapple with yet another wave of infections and the looming threat of increasingly more virulent strains of the original Covid-19 virus. However, in a recent survey of 1000 US workers, a whopping 39 percent of respondents indicated that they would consider quitting their jobs if their bosses weren’t willing to accommodate remote work, a figure that rose to 49 percent among Millennials and Gen Z. “If you’re a company that thinks everything’s going back to normal, you may be right but it’s pretty risky to hope that’s the case,” notes Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, who has done extensive research on why people quit their jobs.
But why are workers so attached to the idea of staying home? In a survey by FlexJobs of 2100 people, workers most frequently cited not having to commute as their top benefit of staying home, while more than one-third noted that they save at least $5,000 annually by not being in the office. Further, employees suggest that the last year has proven that they can really be effective when working outside of the office and have suggested that the only reason their bosses want them back in person is so that they can “keep tabs on their minions.” The other element fueling folks’ reluctance to return to the office stems from lingering concerns about not only a resurgence in the virus, but also how their company will handle Covid precautions.
For their part, some employers have complained that remote work has taken a wrecking ball to their once collaborative work environment and squashed any semblance of the company culture that they worked so hard to cultivate. Others, meanwhile, suggest that working solo can hinder the “hustle” some workers get from being in a competitive work environment and make it difficult to advance young workers through the ranks without on-the-job mentoring and guidance.
So, what’s next? In a study of 133 executives by PwC, fewer than one in five said that they want to return to “pre-pandemic routines,” but only 13 percent said they were willing to transition to a permanently remote workplace. Instead, businesses should really consider what their return-to-work plans should look like and whether it is possible to offer workers a more flexible hybrid or entirely remote position in order to retain talent. Similarly, you should survey your employees about what they would like to have in place to facilitate their safe return to work and develop a plan that addresses their concerns, establish a Covid-19 vaccination policy.
Perhaps most importantly, think about flexibility. What so many workers attached to during the initial quarantine was a loosening of the traditional office culture of being stuck at your desk for 8 hours per day and constantly being dragged into meaningless meetings, so where possible look to make changes that take these preferences into consideration.
What accommodations do you foresee your company making in the post-pandemic era?
