Back to the office: With motivation and low resistance

Many organisation are requiring their employees to come back to the office more. And the employees are resisting, unhappy and even leaving. How coming back to the office more be achieved without resistance and the full support of the workforce? This podcast explain in less than 7 minutes a proven approach to GAIN THE LEAD.

Transcript

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Bringing employees back to the office from the remote working setting, at least for two, three or four days a week has become a big topic in many of the companies I work with. And it's leading to considerable frustrations in the workforce, especially because of the way it's being executed. In this podcast, we're going to look at a method that any leader in any organization can use in order to have a smooth running , hybrid working environment where the organization is benefiting and the people, employees, and leaders are all motivated to come back to the office. My name is James Miller. I'm a management and leadership trainer and every year have the chance to work with hundreds and hundreds of leaders and support them in becoming more successful. And throughout all of the trainings this year, there's one topic that's been coming up more and more and that is what to do with senior management's ideas that the entire workforce should be coming back to the office more often. This is creating considerable stress at the lower levels for the team, leads, the heads, and all of the employees who are simply saying things like, we don't see why, like all of a sudden it's three days a week, but why three days? They don't want to come back to the office. Many of them have moved further outta the cities and it means spending three hours a day travel time just for eight hours together in the office and in many cases where they'll then be sat in the office having teams meetings that they could basically have done at home as well. Now, on the other hand, all of the people I've talked to do agree that some time together in the office is very, very valuable. However, not one solution fits all. So throughout all of these discussions, and especially with the team leads and with the heads who are very frustrated that they continuously need to talk to their employees, explain why the employees need to come back to the office, deal with all of the resistance that comes with that without themselves believing that this is the best possible strategy. This is just costing organizations considerable amounts of time, energy, frustrations, and to quite a severe degree in some cases, key people leaving the company. What can we do about this? Well, value is the key. Team driven value is what's going to motivate people to come back to the office in a positive way. That means instead of thinking from the perspective of, oh, I want my teams to be in the office two or three days, think the other way, think what kind of things, what kind of activities would really bring value to a team if they were in the office? What works easier? In what situations can we be more creative? What kind of topics, tasks, interactions, workshops, work better when we're together in the workplace versus online? You could either think about that as a leader, however, the more promising way of getting the buy-in from the employees is to work this out with each team individually. Give the teams the freedom to work out how much time they really need together. That means, for example, step number one, having a meeting with the team, defining what kind of activities that the team need to do that just work better when we're together in person and from there, quantify how much time this team will need together in the office. And then factoring into the time planning, how much time is required to interact with other teams and what interactions with other teams bring more value when we're in the office. That's of course is then up to the leaders to discuss between each other of which days will fit best to make sure that the teams working closer together have the valuable time together that is required. Then step number two, together with the team, defining clear agreements on how we're going to use the office time, how we're gonna behave in the office, making like a set of rules or a code of conduct so the team gets the most out of that time together. Those can be things like, you know, everyone needs to be there at a certain time. It can be rules about usage of computers and teams meetings. Basically avoiding that people come to the office and then do teams meetings or that in meetings, the phones and all technology that's not really required for the meeting stays outside. So that the real true value of really being together and being able to interact face-to-face is achieved. Then once you have defined that with a team, whether it's eight hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, 30 hours, that this team would benefit from being together in the office, have a trial period, make a really structured trial period, organize those days well, and then try it out for two months, three months, and collect the experience with the team, collect with them what is really working, what's really generating value for this team, and what things are not generating the value that was assumed, and obviously work on those in a retro session . Change the things that are not generating value and after say two to six months you have a really solid concept where the team is getting the most outta the time that they have together in the office and also getting the most outta the time that they have in their remote setting when they're working from home or as the German say in the home office . What is very valuable on these days when the in the office as well is also trying not to plan the days completely full, but actually leaving time for coffee breaks, leaving time for the lunch breaks so that people can socialize in between. And of course, planning in something fun every now and again has always beneficial and nearly always appreciated. Now this executed correctly means that people, when they're coming to the office, they know why, they see it's gonna give them a value, a benefit for the team, for the company, and also them personally supporting everyone in achieving their own goals and the team goals and the company goals, and that's where we can generate motivation and get the best out of a remote and hybrid working situation. I hope you have great luck setting up a very productive hybrid working environment. If you've enjoyed this podcast from gain the leads, then please like, subscribe and share it with as many leaders that you know are having this kind of challenge and help. As many teams and as many leaders around the world have a great experience with hybrid work.