To return to the office or not? That is the question
Hybrid work has been THE topic lately. Any time I give a speech or lead a workshop, it comes up. I know it’s something a lot of organizations and leaders—including myself—have felt challenged by, so I want to share with you where my head and heart are on this topic in case it’s helpful to you.
When people ask me about this, their question is usually: Now that more people are able to come back to the office, should we embrace hybrid work, stay fully remote, or require people to be in the office full-time?
I don’t actually have a straight answer to this question. My thoughts on remote vs. in-office vs. hybrid work are constantly evolving. My goal with this post is to walk you through how I would approach this challenge.
First, I want to say this: No one has ever done this before. These are unprecedented times. Sure, teams have chosen to go remote or hybrid, but never under circumstances like the ones we’re facing now. So, if you feel unsure about your choices or direction right now, just know that you’re absolutely not alone.
I also want to say that the choices we make about whether to go remote, try a hybrid model, or come back in-person full-time don’t have to be permanent. What we choose to do now might not be what we end up doing forever. Right now, some of your team might be saying, “I never want to go back to the office. I want to work from home forever.” But in two years, they might want to stop working from home altogether. It’s not a failure if we change our minds or learn that we don’t like something as much as we thought we would. I think we have to give ourselves permission to experiment with this new phase of work and to learn from it together as a team. We just have to start somewhere, figure out what we like and don’t like, and keep improving as we go.
Let’s talk about working together in person first. If you want to have your team come back to the office full-time, consider why you want them there. Is it to build culture? To build stronger relationships? To collaborate better? Or is it because it’s what you think you “should” do? If your team has been happy working remotely and their quality of work has not been affected by it, think about the impact that mandatory in-office presence may have on the trust they have with you. For example, say that I’m an employee at an organization who knows that I can do my job perfectly well remotely because I’ve been doing it that way throughout the pandemic. If, all of a sudden, my leader tells me that I have to go back to the office, I might think that they don’t trust me. I might think that I’m going back to the office solely so that they can keep an eye on me—and that’s not going to make me feel good. As leaders, we have to be mindful of why we’re asking people to come back to work. The last thing we should want is to destroy the trust we have worked hard to build with our people. If we want people back in the office, we need to be honest with them about why.
Now, let’s talk about remote work. This is the kind of work environment I have the most experience with these days, and I know firsthand how hard it is to keep a culture strong and connected when you’re not working together in the same physical place. My executive team has been completely remote since far before the pandemic. It’s been challenging, but it’s also been a gift. We have had to work really, really hard on our communication and on building intentional processes and times to connect on a human, personal level.
When our team used to work together in an office, we had plenty of “watercooler” moments: the times when you go out to lunch, when you drop by someone’s office to chat, or when you just run into someone in a hallway. Those were the moments when we learned the most about each other and came up with our best ideas. When we went remote, we learned that we had to be so much more intentional about those connection points. It couldn’t just be a box we checked one time; it had to be something we worked on regularly. Today, we have relationship-building time built into every meeting: We always begin by asking each other how we’re doing at work and outside of work. And at every quarterly review, we evaluate 1-10 how strong our trust is with each other, how strong our relationships are, how good our communication is, etc. There have been plenty of quarters where we’ve said that no matter how much work we’ve put into connecting with each other, our relationship score can never be a 10 because we just haven’t been together in person. No matter what, you can’t replace being together and the impact that has on strengthening relationships. But if we didn’t put the intention behind connecting, communicating, and really making sure that we were focusing on that, our scores would always be low, without a doubt.
It takes a lot of work to keep our culture and our relationships strong as a remote team. So if you choose a hybrid or fully remote model, think about how you will continue to connect, collaborate, and help your team feel part of something bigger than themselves when they aren’t physically together.
Last but not least: hybrid work. I’m seeing a lot of organizations choose the hybrid work environment, where people come into the office two or three days a week. If you want to explore a hybrid model, I suggest that you are really intentional about what that in-office time will be spent on. I think that if I were going into an office to do something that I could easily do at home, I might think to myself, “Why am I here? What’s the point?” But if I’m going into the office to do something that I can’t do at home, then that office time becomes valuable, and I see it differently. I suggest that the time in the office is spent collaborating, relationship-building, and having face-to-face meetings with people you work with regularly so that you’re coming to work with a purpose.
The other day, I met a woman who told me that her company is choosing the hybrid approach but that they are not requiring people to come into work a certain number of days per week. Instead, when they come in, they are asked to do it with purpose: The idea is to take advantage of the things they can only do in an office in person together, such as going out to lunch with a coworker to build your relationship.
If you’re considering a hybrid work environment, think about how you can give people freedom of choice. For example, could you let people decide the percentage of their time that they spend at the office? Twenty percent of the pay period, for example, or X number of hours per week? Instead of mandating that people are in the office a certain number of days per week, consider giving people the freedom to decide what is best for them. What I’ve learned from our team is that when you give people freedom and you trust them to make good decisions, they do. The team figures it out. You’ve just got to give people the space to try it first. And if it doesn’t work, then you can learn from that and perhaps put more guidelines in place.
I know that not every team can be flexible with when and where they work. I met with someone a couple weeks ago who leads a team where a certain percentage of people has to be in the office no matter what; there is no option of remote work for them. But another part of her team can do their jobs outside of the office. I related to this because this is how it was at Student Maid: Many of our executive team members could live anywhere, but, of course, our students cleaning houses locally could not. With this setup, resentment can build. The people who work in-person might think, “Why can that person work from home and have these perks that I can’t have?” It’s so important to be mindful of the feelings people can have when your workplace is divided like this.
Part of being mindful of people’s feelings is having compassion for each other and recognizing the challenges that come with both options. People who work from home, for example, might have a more difficult time setting boundaries and turning work off. So while people who don’t work remotely might think, “Oh, you’re so lucky to be able to work from home!” the reality might be, “Yeah, and I’m more burned out than I’ve ever been.” On the other hand, someone working from home might look at someone going into the office and think, “You’re so lucky that you get to be with people and be collaborative. You get to go into a physical space and have solid boundaries between work and home.” And yet, the person working in the office might not feel that way. My point is that when we have people in the same workplace working in different ways, we have to bring them together to talk about their experiences. What are the pros? The cons? What’s working? What’s not? It helps people realize that every role, no matter where you do it, has challenges.
For me, what the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office debate really boils down to is freedom and autonomy, two things that are crucial to a healthy culture. A client I worked with recently told me she was thinking about increasing her team’s pay to encourage retention. I said, “Before you do that, why don’t you ask the team what they value the most: Freedom, culture, or pay?” What she learned is that her team valued freedom the most. Almost everyone on her team ranked pay last on their list of priorities.
Remote work gives people a lot of freedom and autonomy. But it’s not the only way to do it. Way before the pandemic, when we still had Student Maid, one of the things we did was give our team members (most of whom were college students) the freedom to choose their own work schedules. We couldn’t let them choose where they worked, but we could give them the choice of the days and hours they wanted to work. We did it on a semester basis, so they could change their schedules as needed when their class and exam schedules changed. Whatever they chose, we would hold them to it; we wouldn’t allow them to change their schedules every week. But at least they got to decide which days and hours they wanted to work each semester. That was our scheduling philosophy: We always wanted work to work with school and life. We never wanted our students to feel like their jobs took away from their other priorities. I think that was one of the reasons why we had a lot of success attracting and retaining people in a job that’s really physically demanding. And it taught me that, no matter what kind of job a person has, whether it requires that they are physically present or not, there’s always a way to give people the freedom of choice. No matter where we do our work, the question we should be asking as leaders is, “How do we give people more freedom?”
These are really complex challenges, and I don’t think there are any easy answers. When you’re trying to figure this stuff out for yourself or for your team, I encourage you to think about it from several different perspectives. Consider all of the people who will be affected by your decision and how it might make them feel.
And most importantly, remember that you don’t need to make these big decisions alone. Invite your team in and say, “Hey, let’s make a Phase 1 decision together.” You don’t have to decide on the be-all, end-all solution now; just start somewhere. If you’re not leading a team, I think that speaking up when you think that the way things are structured isn’t working is so important. Say something, and give feedback. I’m so grateful for the people who spoke up and gave me feedback in the past because they made our working arrangement so much better.
I’m sending leaders and teams everywhere so much love as you navigate such complex challenges together. No matter what, you have each other, and that’s what matters most!
Big hugs,
