How to Make the Return to Office Worthwhile

As 2024 begins, the tug of war continues between employers who want their employees back in the office and their employees who want to choose when and where they work. Despite fresh threats of more RTO mandates coming at the start of the year, this battle has no clear winner so far.

Over the last 12 months, I’ve seen RTO mandates steadily increasing, from one to two days a week to two to four days a week. But that doesn’t mean that many employees are taking these mandates seriously. I have heard of few, if any, repercussions when employees ignore these mandates. In fact, the office occupancy rate has failed to rise in most big U.S. cities.Time will tell if employers start backing down on their mandates or backing them up with consequences.

Meanwhile, if employees are going to spend the time and money commuting back into the office more often, they need to feel it is worthwhile. Employers’ vague promises of “more innovative ideas,” “better reinforcement of the company’s culture,” and “stronger relationships” all ring hollow without intentionally-planned activities and events designed to bring people together in meaningful ways.

How to Make a Hybrid Policy More Intentional

Many of my clients tell me that they and their colleagues get to the office only to jump on a series of video calls or find a cubicle where they email all day. “The whole day in the office could have been an email,” one client told me. “There’s rarely anything special planned for those who come to the office, unless my team coordinates an activity among ourselves.”

I’ll let others debate the pros and cons of remote vs. office work. In this article, I want to share ideas about how employers can help make their employees feel the commute was worth it. Most of the following ideas come directly from senior leaders participating in my recent Insights Roundtables. The bottom line: Employees feel better about coming into the office when their organizations believe that magnets work better than mandates.

Related Article: The Year in Return to Office That Didn't Happen

Meetings and Meet-Ups

We have a large town hall in our main location and viewing parties in sites that are within driving distance of other company locations. We provide a food budget for more remote employees so everyone really feels included.
People get a “meet-up” travel allowance so they can decide when and where they want to meet colleagues in person.
Our team takes “work-cations,” where we combine free time, social activities and structured work time in an offsite location, often for one or more days.
We have two all-hands social events each year where we bring everyone in the company together, covering their time and travel costs. These meetings are so much fun and we work together so much more easily when we go back to our remote offices.
We schedule training sessions for days that most people are onsite, and try to make sure that there are some training options available for everyone. We especially try to have people from different teams or functions participate on these days, since they often have little interaction with people from other groups.
When people meet in person, we make the most of the social or relationship building opportunities, rather than cramming our time with work stuff we can just as easily do remotely.
We’ve moved toward asynchronous online meetings and away from so many real-time meetings so folks can join in on their own schedule whether they’re in the office or not.
As a team, we use a sliding scale to agree how urgently we need to meet in person. We tend to meet in person when topics are contentious or complex, and meet virtually when we know it will be a short meeting.

Scheduling Office Time and Activities

We ask new hires to spend more time in the office in their early days, as long as their leaders, colleagues and/or mentors are also present. We schedule meetings with important connections for them in advance, and to meet with them 1:1 frequently in the early days.
We build in time for networking activities when people are in the office. For example, we might form breakout groups with people from across the organization and ask them to brainstorm ideas for real challenges the organization is facing. We might have one or two such sessions over a half-day. This way, people from different teams can form (or re-form) connections that may have been lost over the last few years.
We’ve established a guaranteed meeting-free day each week, and stick to it. This way, people have more latitude to get focused work done without fear of interruption. This is often one of the days when most people work remotely.
Team members have the flexibility to select the best days for members to be in the office, rather than having to be in on certain days. It can be one day, two days, or even more. And sometimes it’s none. Sometimes this varies week to week.
We have “anchor days,” where everyone in the team and our whole department is asked to be in the office, which tends to be a Tuesday or Wednesday. This way, we have more opportunities to interact, either intentionally through planned activities, or spontaneously in the hallways, cafes or meeting areas.
We have an internal community-focused team who facilitates volunteer opportunities for our thousands of employees throughout the year. This helps people to make new connections and to give back — very rewarding and energizing!
Each group or office develops their own activities and processes for onboarding new folks, mentoring, relationship-building, etc. Different groups have different needs.

Sharing Knowledge, Staying Connected

Everyone on the team completes a skills and interests form to share with the team so everyone gets to know each other, especially important for new folks or those who don't regularly work together.
Our leadership started "random coffee trials,” where pairs of team members are randomly matched to meet and greet, share project work, and to get to know each other. It’s a great way to create networks and encourage collaboration. Staff are encouraged to share their experiences at the whole team meetings as well.
We have created a “Wiki-like” internal documentation portal to make it easy to find and add topical information asynchronously, so we’re not as reliant on real-time meetings or emails to cross-pollinate knowledge.
We make video recordings of news alerts, team meetings, learning activities and other important events and conversations so no one gets left out, especially those who aren’t working that day or who live several time zones away.

Not all ideas work the same way for every organization, but many of these ideas can be adapted in some way for most organizations moving to hybrid.

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