How to Create a Sticky Hybrid Workplace Strategy
Takeaways
Learn how to craft a successful hybrid workplace strategy that balances remote work freedom with essential office time.
Leave it to a world-famous creator of jams and jellies to find the sweet spot in the return-to-office debate. The 126-year-old Smucker’s may have been the one to find the perfect recipe for bringing employees back to the office. Their concoction blends the freedom and autonomy of remote work that so many employees have become accustomed to with the right amount of face-to-face office time that executives feel is essential to build trust, create culture, and fast-track team building and mentorship.
When the pandemic hit, everyone went home and many stayed there. Once bustling cities turned into ghost towns. And although many companies are well underway with a return to the office plan, corporate offices remain half as full as they once were.
While most workers enjoyed their jobs more working from home and quickly adapted to keep productivity and connectivity strong, most employers are trying to coax their teams back into the office. Some have given up on the coaxing and have resorted to threatening. And in many cases, the result has been swift and robust backlash from employees.
But after assessing their in-person needs with employees and listening carefully to what employees really value about their work experience, Ohio-based Smuckers seems to have found the sweet spot as they implement a return-to-office strategy with little pushback.
Smucker’s is requiring their headquarters-based employees to be at their Orrville office 25% of the year, or six days a month, during “core weeks”.
The company has scheduled 22 “core weeks” a year in advance, so employees have plenty of time to choose which days they will go in.
Employees are allowed to live anywhere in the US as long as they can make it into the office during core weeks.
Most core weeks are offered every other week, except for July and December which only have one per month to allow for vacations.
Meetings that require deep focus are reserved for core weeks.
While many employees drive into the office, some moved away from Ohio during the pandemic and the schedule allows them to fly in and stay at Airbnbs. The headquarters is now 70% to 80% full, well above the national average, and they find employees are running back-to-back meetings while at the office and often putting in additional hours with breakfasts or dinners during core weeks to maximize team interaction while everyone is present.
Smucker’s executives told the Wall Street Journal that the new policy has expanded their talent pool outside of Ohio. “We’re not limited by geography. We’re limited by the fact that we’re going to want you here. You need to have a presence,” John Nicholas, a Smucker’s vice president, said. “It’s unleashed, I think, the ability to get the best talent.”
For most leaders, breaking out of the workplace limbo that we have been in since the pandemic has been a challenge. Some like the point leaders at Meta, Tesla, and Zoom, have approached it with the sensitivity and diplomacy of an ax murderer. The chasm between what executives and employees want has continued to widen as time passes and remote and hybrid models continue to persist. If there is any question as to what employees are looking for, you need to look no further than the massive number of applicants for remote work postings on Linked in or Indeed in comparison to their in-person counterparts.
I hear many leaders say that they solved it or that it isn’t an issue for their organization simply because they communicated an RTO (Return to Office) policy. But I hear so much rumbling from the rank and file that I am curious if we are mistaking compliance with agreement. If the wider data is true about broad employee dissatisfaction then we may not know if our teams agree until they vote with their feet.
The questions our employees are asking are:
Does this leader value my life outside of work?
Do they appreciate that if I am working in a great environment, I will be more productive?
Does this leader trust me and my commitment to this organization?
And in some cases, “Does this leader see that the office environment is not healthy and productive? Do they see that they have allowed toxic teammates to persist in unhealthy behaviors and my creating boundaries around how much I work in that is best for me and my work?
This season that we are in is not a debate over remote, hybrid or in-person work models. There is something much deeper going on. Surviving a global pandemic has brought an awakening that many were not happy with the life that they were living.
The pandemic has forever changed the way we work. “The stereotype of a devoted worker willing to put in limitless hours is becoming obsolete. The onus is on companies to promote a more egalitarian workplace that reflects modern demands, such as flexibility and less face time” says Kathleen McGinn, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
“Organizations are going to have to deal with the fact that the ‘ideal worker’ is gone,” McGinn says. “Increasingly, neither men nor women want their lives to revolve entirely around work. Organizations can’t just keep expecting their employees to sacrifice everything for their jobs; they’re going to have to figure that out.”
The pandemic did not induce workers to be lazy or disgruntled. Quite the opposite. It catalyzed a renewed sense of purpose, health, and balance. People are not wanting to skip out of work, but they do want their time at work to be focused, productive, and meaningful. As leaders, we should not be fighting this, but embracing it as what has been best for our people all along. We owe them as much.
There are many ways to achieve this but two best practices are quickly emerging in this changing landscape.
The first is to reduce commuting. Related to the idea of “core weeks” above, identifying when employees are required to make the trek to the office is a great way to let people know you value them. Ideally, when they are required to commute in, it should be for a good reason. And general camaraderie is not good enough. We may enjoy having our team around us so we can pop in and interrupt their work when we have a spare moment, but they do not. You want your team to leave the office feeling like it was important for them to have been there and a 5-minute impromptu meeting with you and a “water cooler moment” with a few others will usually not justify the long drive.
The second trend is to reduce meetings. In some organizations, there is “collaboration overload.” Most people have to get approval for a $500 expense but anyone can call a meeting with 20 people for an hour and no one even notices.
Some meetings are essential to keep everyone aligned and informed. Decision-making is best done face-to-face. Some meetings are essential. But in most organizations, unproductive meetings proliferate at an alarming rate.
If you need help breaking up that meeting overload in your organization, I’d be happy to discuss helpful and effective strategies with you.
The future of work is already here. Continue to stay curious about creating a great environment for your people to thrive in. It has never been more important.
