It’s Happening: Top Ways to Ease the Return to Office Transition

It has been almost five years since the Covid-19 pandemic threw our lives into upheaval and forced a reckoning in the world of work. Organizations had to adapt to lockdowns and quarantines across the country, and aside from frontline workers, many people learned how to use Zoom and embraced a new way of working.

In the time since many of us turned our dens into cubicles, life has returned to something resembling a new normal. Not exactly a return to how life was pre-pandemic, but organizations are searching for that feeling. Whether or not people like it (the results are entirely mixed), leaders are calling people back to the office in droves, some companies notoriously giving ultimatums, requiring all five days in person, others taking a more moderate approach with a hybrid model. Where most of the new roles posted in 2021-2022 were remote, a quick scroll on LinkedIn will show that the vast majority of job listings now require at least some time spent in an office.

While many seek to understand why (executives have said everything from the unique benefits of in-person collaboration to water-cooler aha moments) the reality is that regardless of how the workforce feels about it, it’s happening. While it’s impossible to put the genie back in the bottle and recapture the pre-pandemic diligence of required office attendance (many people didn’t even know how revolutionary remote work could be!), how leaders handle return to office mandates will make a world of difference when it comes to not only compliance but dare we say, enthusiasm, about these changes.

Wiley Workplace Intelligence wanted to know more about the return to office revolution. How are organizations implementing these changes and how are people feeling about it? Are entirely remote positions becoming a pandemic-era fever dream? And what can you, as leaders in your organizations, do to help ease this, often fraught, transition?

We surveyed 1,742 individuals in a variety of roles about whether they are being impacted by return to office mandates and how they feel about it. 41% of respondents reported working in an office, 41% were hybrid, and only 18% were fully remote.

Return to Office Mandates the New Norm?

Almost half (40%) of our respondents who previously worked remotely reported that their organization has enforced a return to office mandate. That is a pretty significant number considering that remote flexibility has been a hallmark of many work models. That flexibility has been noted as a benefit for promoting work/life balance, increased hiring equity, and attracting top talent.

While these mandates have been on the rise, there has been a noted lack of transparency around why organizations are suddenly requiring in-person attendance after years of, in many cases, successful remote collaboration and productivity. This lack of clarity is cause for anxiety for many employees who enjoy working remotely and would like concrete reasons for the change.

For those who have been working in person or enjoy working from the office, there is also a lack of clarity around the implementation of these mandates. For example, how are these policies enforced? In many cases it is a proverbial lottery of distance, requiring people who live within a certain mileage of an office to report in person while those who don’t are able to continue working remotely.

Many respondents who had return to office mandates shared similar concerns about these policies.

Majority See Positive Aspects of In-Person Work

While it may feel like a lot of people are reluctantly packing up their laptops and heading into the office, the vast majority of those surveyed did see the positive aspects of working in person.

While most of us got comfortable with the more flexible balance of remote work, there admittedly is joy to be found in having conversations in person with colleagues who we have mostly known through a computer screen. While there is a clunkiness to learning how to balance hybrid teams (Do we all go on our computers? How do we reserve conference rooms again?), there is something to be said about the ease of walking over to someone’s desk to ask a question instead of sending a message into the technological abyss and waiting for a reply.

There are undoubtedly pros and cons to both remote and in-person work models, which is why a lot of organizations have settled on the middle ground of hybrid work. As organizations experiment with these mandates and how to fairly enforce them, our respondents reported a variety of reasons for being called back to the office including increased collaboration, accountability, and the perception that the office is a place for increased productivity.

The Future of Work is Flexible

Regardless of the reason, it does seem that the surge of return to office mandates are signaling yet another change in how we work. That said, now that most corporate employees have experienced the benefits of being remote, it is not going to be an easy transition and organizations should continue to put a premium on flexibility in order to retain talent, many of whom have reveled in the increased work/life balance remote and hybrid jobs have created. Especially for people with familial responsibilities, health issues, and diverse geographical locations, remote work has been a gamechanger for both employees and the organizations who benefit from an increased pool of talent.

So, while the vast majority of those surveyed see the benefits of in-person work, a whopping 80% also support organizations offering remote work options to employees. This speaks to the fact that the workforce understands the benefits of both work models, and while “old school” thinking says working in person is the best option for collaboration and performance, the vast majority of people see balance as the way of the future.

It’s clear that while we navigate yet another major transition in the workplace, effective communication remains at the core of good organizational cultures that can engage their people and move through change with ease.

Communication and transparency from organizations and leaders about why changes are made and how they will impact people increases cohesion, wherever you are working, and is how people will bridge the gap as we create a new path forward.

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Wiley Workplace Intelligence conducts in-depth research on key workplace issues by gathering insights from individual contributors, managers, and leaders. Wiley Workplace Intelligence then analyzes these findings to provide actionable solutions that are shared in our blog.