As a workplace leader, there are some important trends you need to act upon now hybrid working has become business as usual, across most countries and almost all industries.
In today’s people-centric workplace, employees have started to act like consumers – and organizations need to pay close attention to providing great employee experience and engagement if they wish to retain their talent.
In fact, ESG is now a priority for most, and workplace leaders are deploying the power of data to redesign and resize their real estate, to ensure it is fit for purpose and also meets demanding environmental criteria.
It’s not just where we work – how we work has also changed. Like consumers, employees now ditch organizations that do not meet their demands – discover more in this NFS ebook. Requirements like these are driving the change:
“95% of Gen Z employees and 84% of millennials would expect a salary increase if required to commute to the office five days a week.” – Survey by IWG Canada.
“For the first time, global office workers spend the same amount of time working alone (40%) as they do working with others in-person and virtually, on average. The rest of the time is spent learning and personal development, and socializing, connecting, and building networks.” – Gensler, 2023.
“By 2028, 25% of organizations with return-to-office mandates will shorten workdays.” – Gartner.
Creating a seamless working environment is crucial to attracting staff back to your office.
It results in talent retention, retaining talent, good staff engagement and better efficiency.
Matt Makan, Head of Partnerships for NFS Technology – supplier of Rendezvous workplace management software – says technology provides the answers for the hard-pressed workplace leader.
“It’s important to make every visit to the office worth the commute,” he says. “Workspace scheduling technology like Rendezvous has evolved dramatically to act as the heart of your workplace ecosystem, streamlining operations and ensuring your staff have a happy, healthy and productive visit every time.”
Many staff worldwide say they prefer a combination of remote and in-office working. Coming to the office offers many benefits including training, mentoring, easy collaboration and the human pleasure of friendship – yet some organizations are having to mandate office days to get people back.
That really shouldn’t be necessary, says Matt: “Persuading people of the benefits is far more appealing to today’s demanding employee-consumer.”
1. Attracting staff back to your hybrid working office
“According to analysis by Gallup, companies with highly engaged business units and teams have 14 percent higher productivity and are 23 percent more profitable than peers.” – KPMG
Matt says: “As hybrid develops, companies worldwide are also coming up with ideas that improve engagement and participation in office activities.” These include:
Make the office a social hub: Employees enjoy returning to the office for social interactions. Create opportunities for collaboration, team-building and socializing.
Provide incentives and convenience: Offering perks can overcome reluctance to commute. Examples include free breakfasts, on-site gyms or fitness classes, services like dry cleaning, on-site laundry facilities, tech support or grocery deliveries.
Focus on food: Provide high-quality, delicious food and coffee options.
Organize special events: Plan regular activities that bring teams together, such as learning sessions, guest speakers or inter-departmental competitions, to create excitement around office attendance.
Address commuting concerns: Some companies, like EY, have implemented programs to cover commuting costs, making it easier for employees to return to the office.
2.Enabling better staff collaboration, efficiency and wellness
Companies are using now technology and redesigning their offices to be more appealing “destination workspaces” where staff feel happy and healthy.
This includes reorganizing workspace to match evolving requirements and enable:
Matt says: “State-of-the-art technology provides staff with effortless access to these facilities, equipment and services such as parking and catering.
“It makes meetings – even hybrid ones – easy to organize over multiple locations, taking away the admin that can get in the way of effective collaboration (remember when you used to have to ring secretaries to book rooms?)
“Now it’s just a matter of opening up your app, locating and booking the space – the technology informs everyone involved, and you can add equipment and services such as catering at the same time.”
Rendezvous has just introduced an employee portal that gives easy access to staff to create their own ‘neighbourhoods’, and which allows managers to block-book space for whole teams working on a project together.
3. Sweating real estate assets – right-sizing your space to enhance occupancy
There’s no doubt about it – office occupancy is down. European office occupancy averages 50% (65% midweek) now according to Gensler, while US office occupancy levels were around half their pre-pandemic level by fall 2023.
“This presents an opportunity to organizations to right-size their real estate – but those decisions need to be based on fact and not just guesswork, which is where workplace management technology once again proves its value,” says Matt.
“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.” – Doug Conant, former President and CEO of Campbell’s Soup.
Never a truer word was said. Creating an environment that provides a seamless, efficient and welcoming workplace is a sure way to encourage talent retention, wellbeing and productivity; well-supported people work well.
“It’s what one of Gartner’s latest reports calls ‘best-of-all-worlds synergy’, where workplace values, engagement and wellness are synchronised to create a super-combination of factors for success,” says Matt. “In business and in work-life, it doesn’t get better than that.”
Discover more about the benefits of workplace management technology:
