Lately I’ve been getting whiplash from all these companies reversing their stance on remote work.
Most recently:
- Amazon told employees that they have be in the office 5-days a week in 2025
- Dell told their sales team to return to the office 5-days a week with a 2-day notice
- JPMorgan has managing directors in 5 days a week and other employees in person at least 3 days a week
Companies have been citing things like collaboration, culture, and productivity as reasons why they are mandating employees come back to the office.
But, if you’ve probably seen all the studies that show otherwise…
So, why are they ACTUALLY doing it??
Well, well, well, here’s where it gets interesting…
Here are a few things that could be motivating the return to the office push:
- Real estate: In the next 2 years over 1 TRILLION of commercial real estate loans will come due. No wonder, Jamie Dimon has been such a proponent of RTO – banks have significant exposure to this and this could evolve into a full blown financial crisis. A few things are contributing to this including in-office work.
- Headcount: A lot of companies overhired in 2022 and forcing a return to office could create an environment where employees choose to leave rather than having to execute a full blown layoff which includes things like paying severance and unemployment.
- Control: Most CEOs are control types, more on this in an upcoming episode on the pod. But hybrid/remote work means giving up a certain amount of control that a lot of folks aren’t comfortable with.
Listen, I’m not saying hybrid or remote work is the RIGHT thing for EVERY environment… just maybe most?
Because I really believe flexibility gives ALL your employees a chance to be successful.
💡A bright spot: Spotify said let our employees be adults and choose. You love to see it!
Let’s look at 2 things to make hybrid/remote work successful!
#1: Be clear about expectations
You’d be surprised how few people and organizations know how to set expectations around hybrid / remote work properly…
Actually – you’re in HR nothing probably surprises you anymore!
If you want your org to be successful you have to set expectations around:
📅Workplace schedule: this should contain core working hours and days that are hybrid or remote.
🎤Communication & collaboration standards: Have you outlined how your employees should respond to comms? I know this sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many managers complain about employees taking too long to respond to a message or putting the wrong things in email. When it comes to setting expectations for comms and collabs think about timing & tools.
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Have guidelines around proper response time, what goes into emails, and what to communicate via Slack vs in-person. Like if something is mission critical it should be responded to within a certain time frame via email vs something more informal can be handled via Slack and responded to in 48-72 hours.
Reduce the time your employees spend agonizing over what and when to say something.
📼Meeting etiquette: Not everything has to be a meeting!!! Let me say that again: NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE A MEETING. Sorry, I’m being dramatic but I’m so tired of seeing entire organizations waste hours in meetings instead of doubling down their communication & collaboration standards.
Define your meeting standards and consider:
- If some folks are in person should they join together or separately? Separately makes it a bit more nice for those remote!
- Video on or video off? Normalize lying down for a meeting and turning the video off, I know I have! But seriously, being ON video can be exhausting, normalize turning video off and not asking people WHY their video is off.
- Meetings require agendas. What are we doing here? No agenda, no meeting. An agenda can help people know what’s coming!!
- Meetings can be non-work related and a FAB way to build connection. More on that next.
✍️Your to-dos: Rarely do I assign homework but you have some…
- Write down your organization’s standard practices around those three expectations
- Get all required buy-in to share it widely
- Share it with every employee! Current & new
- Watch what happens
#2: Reimagine connection
The average American is lonely. And that means your average employee is probs lonely.
✨It’s time to reimagine how folks connect. ✨
You need deliberate ways to build relationships, culture and engagement in your org.
In other words, LET’S HAVE SOME FREAKIN’ FUN AT WORK.
Here are some ideas to get the ideas flowing:
🤝Use meetings for something other than work. Yupppp I said it! Make meetings fun… That can be anything from informal coffee chats to trivia or other game play. At Workweek we do Cold Brews with our CEO. He meets with small groups of people that we alternate every quarter. It gives folks a chance to know him and other employees in a chill setting. This isn’t a revolutionary idea but it’s fun.
Check out Gatheround for building new ways to connect over video!
🏆Identify your culture champs. Hopefully your org has a few people who are just great coworkers and fun to be around. Ask them for ideas on how to foster more fun, what would get them excited? Lean on them to help gather groups. I’ll be honest – when events come from HR constantly it can feel like forced fun. You don’t want that – so use your champs to help with ideation and execution.
Even better: make sure every new hire meets your culture champs within their first week. Multiply your culture champs!
✨Facilitate spontaneous moments: Watercooler chat def looks different in the hybrid / remote world, not that I liked it before, TBH. I DO love Slack/Team channels for creating spontaneous non-work related moments that allow your employees to choose to participate. Unlike watercooler chats from the past where you were basically held hostage in a convo with Karen about who has been microwaving fish in the kitchen…
If you don’t want to rely on employees to get the convo starters there are a ton of great tools out there like Culturebot or Donut that drop convo starters into channels for your employees.
📣Ask employees what they want or what’s missing. WHAT A WILD IDEA! Employees have opinions on basically everything, so you know they def have thoughts on connection at work. You can ask via a survey, pulse survey or even informal chats. So much can be uncovered from listening to employees.
✈️Don’t forget about in-person moments. Connection is a bit easier in-person. If your team has a budget for something in-person pleaseeee consider it. Just because your team is hybrid/remote doesn’t mean that they don’t want to hang IRL. A lot can be accomplished with team retreats and company-wide events.
Don’t forget about growth!
^^ This episode of Sabrina was honestly my Super Bowl.
If you can set expectations properly & find new ways to build connections I think you could be really really really successful at hybrid and remote work!
But there’s another challenge that has come up a bit in the last few years that I didn’t cover today.
GROWTH.
Growth in the hybrid/remote world may look a little different than it has in the past.
Next week I’m digging into how to rethink your growth and development offerings to ensure they work for your employees.