Back To The Office: Delivering Value That Employees Want

Every day, I talk with business leaders. As a founder and CEO dedicated to helping companies scale, it’s my job. And in my years of experience, there’s never been one overarching hurdle that unites them all regardless of what industry they’re in or what title they hold — until this year.

For the first time in many of our lifetimes, the way of work has been upended, and we can’t go back to “normal.” I encourage leaders to reimagine the function and future of the office. 

The office isn’t what it used to be.

Time spent in the office enabled many of my peers to reach the positions they’re in today. For many members of the C-suite, spending time in the office — and arriving early and staying late — is synonymous with furthering your career. We accepted the implicit social cost of going to the office (e.g., commute time, arranging personal commitments around the office, etc.) without question.

The pandemic changed the equation. Many employees realized they could fulfill the economic contract with their employer without absorbing the implied social costs. Younger workers are staying in positions for less time than their predecessors, and we can’t force employees to come back to the office. Workers are already leaving their jobs in record numbers partly due to this. 

Younger people I speak with view the office as a place where they can fulfill two needs: learn and adopt specific skills and/or experience social gatherings.

Our lens should shift. Let's deliver unequivocal value every day we are in the office.   

The new office will prioritize opportunities for training and social gatherings.

Some employees have struggled with distraction over the course of the pandemic. In a survey conducted by Lucid, more than six in 10 remote workers said they’ve participated in “bad behavior” while on virtual brainstorm meetings. Twenty-five percent said they spend at least half of those meetings distracted. 

In this kind of environment, it can be more difficult to make training and learning effective. Though resources like LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare and Udemy exist to teach hard skills, those valuable soft skills — like listening, nonverbal communication, storytelling, emotional IQ and self-awareness, to name a few — aren’t always as easy to pick up in a chat room, via a screen or on a call. These are critical skills for the next generation of leaders. Employers must create more engaging, less cookie-cutter training sessions (and it may not be worth thinking about this time as “training,” as I explain in the next section). 

It’s important to note that these skills do not require employees to be in the office for five days a week — C-suite executives I’ve talked with concur that most of the bonding can happen one to two days a week.       

The new office won’t feel like an office — it will feel like an ‘off-site’ location.

This brings me to my last point. When an issue becomes urgent, many leaders take advantage of an off-site meeting, which allows the team to focus on a critical topic and resolve it effectively. The reasons for this are clear: faster communication, fewer distractions, higher levels of collegiality.  

Right now, your office is likely at least one of the following: empty, isolated or underutilized. With fewer distractions and ample room to spread out, the office becomes the perfect place for leaders to host teams for "off-site" meetings that have specific, tangible objectives. Without these objectives, people may have a higher resistance to these meetings in the future. 

The benefits from these "off-site" meetings are many. For the employer, this can create an easy, rapid way to troubleshoot challenges. For employees, these meetings create prime opportunities for skills development and bring employees together in a social setting. 

For example, imagine your business is having issues converting freemium users into paying customers. Instead of leaving the problem for certain members of your team to solve over the sometimes tangled means of remote work, bring them together for an off-site at the office. Give members of your team different responsibilities than they’ve had in the past. Encourage alternative ways of brainstorming. Take a long lunch to get people connected on a personal level. Prioritize discovery and teamwork over results (because those will come naturally). 

It may take time to get it right. But soon, people may want to come into the office — and that’s more than some employers could ask for.