For around two years now, I have been thinking that soon, people will stop talking to me about hybrid work because they won’t need to.  There’s been no sign of that yet.  One of my latest regular questions is the thorny issue of when employees just don’t come in to the office, even when it is part of the hybrid work model that they must (whether that is mandated or informal).

Many organisations, understandably, don’t want to be fully remote.  It is a different model altogether and it is not the one for them.  Those organisations see the value in people coming together, and they want that to happen.  There has however, been a tension for some time now evidenced in the emerging data (check out Nick Bloom’s work for more on this): employees often want to come in less than their managers want them to.

From my many conversations on this subject, this ‘office reluctance’ tends to come up in several ways:

• I have moved further away from the office.
• The travel is long / expensive / stressful.
• I don’t have the childcare to come into the office.
• It isn’t worth it for me.
• I spend all day on Teams (other platforms are available) so I might as well be at home.
• I am more efficient or productive at home.

It is understandable perhaps, that an employer’s response to this will be greater formality of policy, mandating and monitoring.  It is of course entirely reasonable for them to want people to attend work for a specific purpose, and the jump to process is, whilst not necessarily good for engagement, a logical one from a managerial perspective.  

In order to address this problem, I believe that organisations need a healthy balance between push and pull:

• Making the office worth going to.
• Addressing non-compliance with policy.

Both the push and pull approaches have several elements.

Making the office worth going to

People want to come to the office to be with other people. To collaborate and to learn.  They don’t want to come into the office to spend most of the day on Teams or in booths.  Whilst it will likely be impossible to completely separate work types, days in the office should be mostly about people wherever possible.  Organisations need to facilitate this. Create the conditions in which people can engage.  Encourage whole teams to get together and come in at the same time. For some this might mean office redesign.  For others, it might mean events or activities.  From organising a lunch to holding a networking event – and actively discourage online meetings during this time. Understand the specific activities, for the unique organisational context, that make coming together important for your people.  Leesman call this purposeful presence.  Microsoft talk about moments that matter.  Within this dialogue needs to be something else too – clarity on why an organisation want people to come in and why you have picked a particular number of days (if that applies).  Without this, employees might just feel like they have picked a number out of the air, increasing their reluctance. 

I have found however, that employees sometimes make a very individual decision about whether it is useful / productive for them to come in – without considering what is also necessary or valuable for their manager, team and the wider organisation. Which brings me onto the next point…..

Addressing noncompliance with policy

Whether it is a policy or informal approach, employees first of all need total clarity about what is expected in terms of office / in-person attendance.  They also need to know that it is non-negotiable and not a nice to have (assuming this is the organisations position). If pre-pandemic attendance at a team meeting would have been non-negotiable other than an emergency, then so it should be in a hybrid model.  Pre-pandemic and pre-hybrid, if someone had said they have moved too far away from the office to commute to it, most managers would have said that is an employee problem to solve.  And it still is.  This isn’t about getting all heavy handed and HR policing, but a realistic, adult conversation about expectations and consequences. 

I’m finding that some managers don’t know whether they can insist that people attend in person, or how to have the conversation when people don’t come in as required.  They need clarity and guidance on this too. 

There is no single answer to this particular hybrid work challenge. To maintain both employee engagement and compliance, a balance between pull and push combined with clarity for all concerned, can provide part of the solution.