Type and hit ENTER

  • Home
  • Articles
  • About
  • The Book
  • Media
  • Speaking
  • Subscribe Free
  • Advisory
  • Contact
GET CONNECTED

 

"Witty, clever and extremely relevant in these godforsaken Zoom times." Zoë Foster Blake

Book on sale now from Penguin Random House.

  • Home
  • Articles
  • About
  • The Book
  • Media
  • Speaking
  • Subscribe Free
  • Advisory
  • Contact
How do you get people back to the office?
Share
Articles

How do you get people back to the office?

October 25, 2021
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

 

I don’t do guests because it’s too time-consuming, but making an exception this week. It’s a 50 minute chat with my friend, massive lawyer brain Fionn Bowd, on the future of office work. She’s done a lot to change the nature of law firms. It’s longer than normal weeks but I think it’s well worth it, walk that dog to it.

There are crossover elements between the audio chat and the story below but lots different so feel free to listen and read.

If you’re mobile don’t use the embedded player, go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

 


 

You can’t just issue orders

 

If your business is relying on just telling people to come back to the office full time, you could be in trouble.

Last week we spoke of the Great Resignation. Surveys predict 60% of employees plan to leave their horrid jobs within a year.

Leaving employers with a complex balancing act between office vs remote work.

This week, we’re looking at ways you can encourage your staff back to the office in some form or another.

 

Please be advised we are returning to 5 office days a week forthwith

Why not go all-remote?

 

 

If your business goes all-virtual, your company will have no culture. No matter what your HR powerpoint deck predicts.

Culture comes from the interactions that happen between the meetings. When they don’t feel like they’re being watched.

It comes from your staff having each other’s backs, and it’s much harder to let people down when you’re face to face with them.

Logical brain says virtual contact is just as good, but your herd-animal brain says: no it isn’t.  That’s the part that guides your behaviour.

Two years of tech breakthroughs aren’t going to change primal instincts developed over millennia.

It’s easy for remote-enthusiasts to dismiss all office culture as an outdated remnant of undesirable frat-bro environments, like here.

If that’s all you’ve ever experienced, it makes perfect sense. It’s also a clear sign you’ve never worked somewhere good.

Good places deliver a kinetic buzz that your home laptop is never going to deliver.

I’m not just saying this because we have event businesses, but we’ve forgotten what it’s like to get people together. So when you do that, it’s your job to make sure it’s a positive experience.

 

This needs more than token gestures

 

Right now businesses with big office leases are working on genius plans to make offices fun places to be.

As well they should, but so many “fun-office” ideas are tokenistic. Like this quote from this story: “It’s OK to hate your workplace’s corporate wellness policies.”

“My old firm hired an in-house psychologist. His advice to everyone was to eat well and exercise more for peak work performance. The issue wasn’t the 80+ hour weeks, it was that you weren’t taking care of yourself to perform. He gave this advice to a solicitor who, between struggling with anxiety and depression exacerbated by overwork, was also literally a fitness model.

“When COVID hit, the psychologist’s advice was ‘you make yourself vulnerable to the virus by being in less-than-peak physical condition, so make sure you exercise your way through this’, while having to come into the office the whole time, instead of working from home.”

If your culture is one of last one left in the office each night wins, yoga classes, cupcakes and table tennis are band-aids over deeper problems.

With the implication that it’s you who must do better, not your employer.

Because you failed to develop the resilience skills covered in last month’s workshop.

 

 

Cupcakes are not a strategy

What should you do instead?

 

Big topic.

For a deep plunge into it, listen to my podcast chat with law firm CEO Fionn Bowd, whose firm is re-shaping how city lawyers work. She’s worked at a senior level in both big law firms and in household-name corporations.

We cover a lot of territory over about 50 minutes on why and how to get people back to the office some of the time. And how that might look and feel.

I’d really encourage you to give it a listen. Fionn is full of thoughts and ideas on how to get better results out of knowledge workers in any field, not just lawyers.

A few pointers:

Fionn believes that successful companies will be the ones who make structural, not cosmetic changes.

She suggests large businesses reduce their office space. But instead of pocketing the cost reductions, invest it in making working life better for office and remote workers.

The legacy of decades of cost-cutting has turned most offices into joyless spaces where everything is DIY. And dirty kitchens filled with passive-aggressive notes about how your mother doesn’t work here.

Offices must be a better place to work than home, rather than feeling like a grim share house.

She suggests drawing inspiration from the golden era of travel and offices, providing useful services to staff so they can feel good about being there and get on with doing quality work.

 

Less of this

 

More of this

 

Fionn draws parallels between personal relationships and the employer-employee relationship. Like dating, you can tell a lot from the details of how people manage the details.

She speaks of the power of the occasional grand gesture, and how essential that is in the new work world.

And she recalls how the office tea lady diagnosed Fionn’s mum’s pregnancy before her mum actually knew. Service super-powers that made staff feel truly valued.

How is your work creating memories?

 

I think a good management goal is to create somewhere that staff can look back fondly in a decade.

When they’ll say:

“I worked in a great place. I was supported, I learned a lot, I worked with some smart, capable people and some of them are friends to this day.”

What are you doing to create those memories?

Because I don’t think they’ll remember a single Zoom call ten years from now. They just all blur into one another.

There’s none of the sensory experience that burns happiness into your mind. The way the smell of frangipani blossoms or the sound of an ice-cream truck takes you instantly back to a golden moment long ago.

 

 

The sound of good times

 

Ask yourself: what can you do for your staff that they’ll tell their friends or post about?

Take them to the big-name restaurant. Block-book seats at a theatre show. Let them meet someone famous or at least be close enough to get a phone shot that shows they were there.

These are the things that make them feel special.

Rather than some infinitely-scaleable digital experience coming out of the same old laptop.

Content Is Not Always King

 

How many times have you heard some wannabe thought leader say ‘content is king’?

As if that’s a golden rule for every situation.

Guess what, we’re fucking drowning in content of all kinds and people are getting sick of it.

So it has a diminishing effect. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of communicating that message via a weekly content piece.

I spoke to a friend who is a senior APAC manager in a global tech firm. He’s staying undercover so he doesn’t have to get his thoughts signed off by the Comms Approval Department, let’s call him Francesco.

Francesco’s team runs some massive events, and the objectives of those have been completely turned upside down. They used to focus on delivering amazing presentations and the newest information.

“Now people want connections, not content,” he said.

A lot of their efforts from now on will revolve around maximising the random hangout benefits of people who might benefit each other. Like a corporate matchmaking service on a grand scale.

 

Better Connections In The Office

 

Francesco’s firm has a large and amazing office space, all ready for their staff to return, but will they?

They’ve continued the connections theme there. One simple, effective design tip: staircases. Francesco and his team get so much benefit out of bumping into people from other departments while moving around the office.

“The conversations just don’t happen if you take the lift,” he said.

 

Advanced collaboration technology

 

The company uses ‘teaming agreements’, where teams agree on what day they’ll come to the office. They still work mostly remotely. But on the days in the office, they’re working on group stuff, and they’re excited to be doing it.

“You look forward to going in, and you make a day of it.”

On the flip side of that, Francesco is excited about the lasting benefits of the virtual revolution. One of his passions is greater accessibility for their impaired workers and audience members. Now all their events and presentations are available in some form to those unable to get involved in the conventional way.

They’re refining what does and doesn’t work virtually.

All- or multi-day activities like training and conferences don’t work for remote viewers. Nobody has that attention span. It’s not as involving if you’re not there, and there are endless distractions pinging in the background.

“We looked at the average view times, and it drops away heavily over time,” Francesco said. “We broke our main conference up into short segments on different days. And a speech that used to get forty minutes now gets twenty. People can only focus on a laptop for so long.”

Some activities will always work best with people in the room.

As their staff return to the office, many are doing personal posts about how excited they are to be back. It’s those unforced endorsements that will get others back, far more effectively than memos or policies.

Now is the time to take advantage of all this change and hire the good people. Despite the horrors we’ve been through, I’m super-amped for 2022.

And that’s not just last week’s first pub beers talking. Damn they were good.

 


 

THE MASKED SIGNER

 

Ian Whitworth signing Undisruptable copies at Kinokuniya Sydney

 

ydney bookshops are open again! Had a fun day signing copies of Undisruptable in a bunch of stores. If you’re in the CBD Kinokuniya Book Store has a sweet new business book section, well worth checking out. There’s also signed copies in Dymocks Macquarie Centre, Broadway and Chatswood. I’ll be getting to interstate stores when borders open again. Support book stores folks!

 

 

Just chillin with my cardboard author mates.

 


 

Non-stream podcast:

https://ianwhitworth.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Ian-Fionn-chat-2-251021-4.49-pm.mp3
October 25, 2021

Related News

Other posts that you should not miss.
Prices up
Articles

We’re putting our prices up. You should consider it too.

March 14, 2022
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

Inflation is on the march. Here's why you need to act now on your pricing to stop your margins going backwards.

Read More
March 14, 2022
Posted by Ian Whitworth
Kid on diving board
Articles

‘Just Common Sense’: Your Obstacle To Actually Doing Anything

August 2, 2021
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

It seems so obvious, yet so many people are oblivious to the Grand Canyon gap between the knowing and doing sides of their business life.

Read More
August 2, 2021
Posted by Ian Whitworth
You Get The Clients You Deserve by Ian Whitworth
Articles

You Get The Clients You Deserve

February 25, 2019
-
Posted by Ian Whitworth

New clients just make your business bigger. Good clients make your business better. And they make your life better long-term.

Read More
February 25, 2019
Posted by Ian Whitworth
← PREVIOUS POST
Be more Bert: inspiration to lead a better life
NEXT POST →
The Great Resignation: hazard for some, opportunity for you
FREE E-BOOK

SUBSCRIBE
MOST POPULAR
  • Last-minute grocery businesses are a massive bag of dicks
    June 27, 2022

    It’s a business model that seems to have cherry-picked all the worst, hardest, most expensive elements of running a business.

  • Scotty Marketing
    3 post-Scotty lessons: good marketing is not like that
    May 30, 2022

    Don't be a product that people only buy once. How to make marketing a force for honesty and profitability in your business instead.

  • Undisruptable South Korea deal
    Undisruptable’s first international publishing deal
    January 31, 2022

    Undisruptable will see its first international release later this year and it's not in a country you'd expect.

  • “An Australian business classic.” Reviews of Undisruptable
    July 12, 2021

    The reviews are in and they are very good.

ABOUT IAN WHITWORTH

Ian Whitworth is a reformed advertising creative director turned entrepreneur with a successful national group of businesses that he doesn’t work in day to day. Read more

POPULAR TAGS
management
branding
Sales
Marketing
jargon
Persuasion
Covid 19
Nickelback
Pitching
Coronavirus
strategy
MBA
startup
Copywriting
Motivation
Business
CEO
Design
Graphic Design
Business Travel
Elon Musk
Frequent Flyer
David Attenborough
Advice
Lacey Filipich
Saxton Speakers
Scene Change
Penguin Random House
Gary Vaynerchuk
Sales Pitch
Tendering
Planning
Conversation Skills
Customers
Customer Service
AI
Shingy
LinkedIn
Simon Sinek
Success
Presentations
Mr Pigden
Motivators
Entrepreneur
Ian Wright
Archives
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Whitworth Communications 2020
How do you get people back to the office? - Undisruptable