In a season when a lot of folks are setting up their out-of-office messages, why not return to the question of what purpose an office serves? A report by technology giant Cisco, "From Mandate to Magnet: The Race to Reimagine Workplaces and Workspaces for a Hybrid Future," was released earlier this year, and the report offers some insight into why employers want folks back in the office -- and why people want to be there.
Cisco conducted an online survey of 14,050 full- time employees and 3,800 employers across three different regions: the Americas (Brazil, Canada, Mexico, USA), Asia Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand) and Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom). Among the findings: a majority of employers are convinced that hybrid work is better for everyone. To quote the report:
Globally, two out of three employers agree that hybrid working has had a positive impact on their employees’ wellbeing (65%) and productivity (66%), while also unlocking cost savings (65%) for their organizations. A smaller majority of employers globally also felt that hybrid working had a beneficial impact on team communications (56%), diversity and inclusion (54%) and workplace culture (51%).
So what does an optimal hybrid workplace experience look like in 2024? Workers were clear about what they wanted:
Our study finds that more than half of employees feel their office is not ready or only somewhat ready to support in-person working and enable them to do their best work. Employees want to use their office workspaces for collaboration, ideation, and socialization, but currently organizations worldwide are generally falling short in providing this.
So the challenge employers face is in ensuring that the offices to which they're requiring workers to return are actually places where people can work. Workers did cite layout and seating arrangements as the leading pain point in offices -- unsurprising as many employers chose to downsize offices or are still trying to figure out how to set up and provision collaborative meeting spaces that can also keep remote meeting participants in the mix. Again from the report:
Half of employers (49%) and employees (51%) say that individual workstations are either ineffective, or moderately effective at best, at enhancing in-office productivity.
57% of employers and 58% of employees say large meeting rooms are either ineffective, or moderately effective, at enhancing in-office productivity.
For small meeting rooms, 49% of employers and 67% of employees feel the same. Over half of employers (57%) and employees (54%) say huddle spaces are either ineffective, or moderately effective at best in enhancing in-office productivity.
When one in every two employes are saying that the place where they're expected to work is not really helping them be productive, it's a sign that the office as-is is not doing what it's meant to -- providing people with a dedicated space to produce their best work.
What's notable is that the survey found employers (81%) say their organization has either completed an office redesign or is planning or underway with one.
That phrasing means we can't be sure what percentage of employers have already spent the time and money on revamping the office to meet the needs of a workforce that needs great audio and video plus interoperability between multiple collaborative platforms -- the bare minimum for a 2024 workplace. But what it does tell us is that although one front in the RTO/WFM battle is resolved (the hybrid workers won), a new one where the office has to prove its productivity value is still ongoing. For those lucky employers who are still in the planning stages on the office revamp, there's still time to read Cisco's survey and see what the workforce wants when it wants to work well.
