The following is a guest post from Gabe Burke, managing principal at AxisPoint CRE, a corporate real estate advisory firm. Opinions are the author’s own.
A familiar pattern is underway in corporate America. Many companies now use the post-Labor Day period to tighten their onsite work expectations. Leaders ask their people to endure the cost and inconvenience of more in-office work but offer no proof that it will benefit them or the firm. They promise stronger culture, improved collaboration, more effective mentorship and other advantages. Yet, they rarely define measurable outcomes to show their policy was a success.
If leaders want in-person work to accelerate their business, they must look beyond office attendance. Their goal of denser offices creates only an input to productivity, not an outcome. Their focus on occupancy reveals compliance, not performance. Only a close examination of how work gets done will reveal where proximity creates value and where it doesn’t. That calls for a plan built on evidence, not edict.
Six years after the pandemic began and remote work soared, the economic payoff from onsite mandates remains unclear. However, the costs are now well documented. In-office requirements can deter job seekers, increase attrition among highly skilled and senior employees and sow distrust within the organization.
Despite continued setbacks, executives should not abandon their aspirations for more in-person work. Instead, they should pursue those goals with the same discipline they apply to other major business objectives. The process may not lead to a company-wide attendance mandate. It may suggest policies that vary across functions, teams and projects. The objective should not be to maximize office use. It should be to use the office where proximity improves work and to stop where it doesn’t.
Synchrony Financial took that distinction seriously. Based partly on employee feedback, the company sets no required days and does not track occupancy. CEO Brian Doubles said Synchrony evaluates employees on whether projects land on time and on budget, and whether the customer is happy, not on how much time people spend in the office. The company cut its real estate footprint by half and reconfigured what remained to better serve its people. It has also seen an increase in job applications.
The return-to-office struggle of those in the C-suite stems partly from their failure to use a playbook that has likely driven their company’s success. Before the launch of a new enterprise initiative, most business leaders identify the problem, establish desired outcomes, determine how to measure them and perform deep analysis. They often test new ideas through pilots and use the results to inform the strategy. Their goal is to learn from failures and to scale successes. However, to create their office occupancy plan, many have abandoned that process.
I have seen companies set attendance largely by commute distance, a standard that sorts people by where they live rather than by how they work. Only 11% of employees say their team decides its in-office schedule together, according to a recent Gallup survey. If leaders tapped into employee knowledge of workflows, they could shape a strategy that yields better results. A junior analyst might know, even when senior managers don’t, that decisions stall from excessive emails over issues that could be settled in minutes if the right people spoke in person.
The common thread in many proven management practices such as Lean, Agile and Design Thinking is a commitment to test assumptions rather than rely only on benchmarks or experience. Capital Group used that approach when it needed to redesign two U.S. campuses. The investment management company analyzed 12 months of data, interviewed 24 business leaders and convened 48 focus groups with more than 400 employees. It investigated how offices supported or constrained productivity. Then it used live pilots and collected feedback to assess its new ideas. The company drew on what it learned to create a workplace that supports its updated onsite work policy. Employees now enjoy an environment that is more suited to their tasks, that reduces required meetings and that has more opportunities for learning and development.
Companies that determine where and when office use improves performance will gain a more engaged and productive workforce. That outcome depends on a clearly defined problem and measured results, not on an attendance target. Executives demand that level of rigor for other big decisions. Their return-to-office strategy deserves the same.
