‘Motivate, rather than mandate, to bridge WFH gap’

A substantial gap has opened up between employer and staff expectations around office attendance but bosses needed to motivate rather than mandate a return to work, according to one workplace strategy company.

Founder of Futurespace Angela Ferguson said businesses needed to think carefully about how to lure staff back and it was critical to be realistic about the change in attitude post-pandemic.

“Usually the gap is one, sometimes two days,” she said. “Staffers say, yeah, I'll come in one or two days and leadership are saying we want you in three or four days. So that's a real starting point to then have a look at.

“First of all, why do you want people to come into the office? Is it because of an authoritarian-style culture? Or is it because of that recognition that some things are just better face to face?”

Each business would need to come up with an answer that suited its particular circumstances and staff demographic.

“There's a lot more nuance to the way we work now. So when we talk about the experience of work, we're talking about people and culture and the physical environment and the technology and how those three things all come together.”

“It's no longer this really static, 1980s be-in-the-office nine-to-five, five days a week, sit at that one desk, Dilbert-style cubicle, don't move. It really is about creating an experience that's interesting and inspiring.”

“Businesses really need to kind of work through a whole lot of different factors to figure out what is going to be best for them, what's going to be best for their people. And then how that takes place.”

She said eight out of 10 current workplace projects involved refurbishment as employers rethought how the space should function.

“We've done a lot of work in legal and professional services and it varies. They're putting in things like open, collaborative areas and less formal spaces to engage with clients.”

“One mid-tier legal-accounting practice we've worked with put in temporary space and it's about 50 per cent less space than they had prior. So different teams use the space on different days – probably about 120-150 people.

“They've worked out that the money they've saved on rent they can then invest in technology and they've got more collaborative areas for people. They've still got offices, but they’re shared because not everyone's in every day. And they've got this system where the workspace is used by different teams at different times.

“They've become an employer of choice through this process of creating this really dynamic environment for people.”

The employer’s attitude to technology was critical because there was frequently a difference between what leaders thought they were providing and what staff felt.

“Technology is a big bugbear for a lot of people, a lot of businesses we work with – particularly in the professional services sector – they just want really seamless plug-and-play technology to be able to move from desk to meeting room to home with no issues.

“That's appropriate for them, others are more traditional. It's really just figuring out what are the goals of the organisation and how does that physical environment support that.”

Another factor was the younger generation starting careers with Gen Z soon to dominate workplaces.

“We’ve got a bigger, younger demographic coming into the workforce every year and they're wanting very different things from the workplace than previous generations have wanted.”

“The workplace is not static anymore. It's not a set-and-forget experience, it is a constantly evolving experience.”

The labour market was also moving slowly in favour of employers with unemployment rising.

“The past couple of years saw a worker shortage, making companies need to be creative in their offerings to hire and retain talent,” she said.

“Now, with the economy in question and redundancies more prevalent, it’s professionals and employees who need to bring the competitive edge – and offering their physical presence in the office will be something they can leverage to their advantage.”

But she said working from home was here to stay.

“Definitely, in whatever capacity that looks like – it might be one day a week might be two days a week. People have realised the benefits over the last few years and it would be a real shame, I think, to not be able to leverage the benefit from the last few years.”

“Motivate, not mandate – Australians do not like to be told what to do and that's kind of the culture now. Don’t tell people what to do.”

“The more choice you give people the more they're able to be autonomous and make their own decisions. There's that natural way of things settling out.

It's giving people that ability to self-organise and self-motivate and start to appreciate the difference between activities in the office and activities at home.”