John Papamarko is an Integrated Communications Officer in the post-secondary education sector and a candidate in the McMaster University Master of Communications Management program.
Full-time return-to-office mandates are being more widely implemented after nearly four years of remote and hybrid work, which became normalized for many office workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was struck by a KPMG’s Global CEO Outlook survey that found “63 percent of CEOs predict a full return to in-office work by the end of 2026.”
Some of the reasons given for this shift in thinking was to foster in-person collaboration, to enhance company culture and offer mentorship and career development,
In September, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a letter to all staff requiring them to return to office five days a week, saying the move would “further strengthen our culture and teams”, and Blackrock’s Larry Fink believes that bringing workers back into the office would increase overall labor productivity.
However, according to a study from the University of Manitoba, “41 percent of jobs in Canada can be performed remotely”, and companies like Shopify and Spotify (I like to group these two companies together whenever possible) have adopted a remote-first approach.
Canadian e-commerce juggernaut Shopify, who had been known for a strong company and office culture, fully embraced remote work since May 2020, and have only recently reopened some office locations for team events and employee drop-ins.
Swedish streaming service Spotify implemented a ‘work from anywhere’ policy in 2021 and doubled down after the recent remarks of Amazon’s CEO. Their human resources chief Katarina Berg said, “You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grown-ups and then treat them like children,”
The normalization of remote or hybrid work has shifted the psychological contract between employers and their workforce. According to Sims, this psychological contract covers things that are not explicitly outlined in a formal employment contract, such as “expectations about working conditions, work requirements, the level of effort expended on the job, and the amount and nature of authority the employer has over the employee.”
Obviously, this is a complex and divisive issue, and it seems like every third LinkedIn post is a commentary about return to office and how companies (and their employees) are managing.
Well, now it’s my turn to beat this dead horse, so feel free to scroll on if you’re sick of it.
Earlier this year, I decided to do some ‘crappy’ research on the topic of return-to-office as part of my McMaster MCM public relations research class. I surveyed 30 participants (see what I mean by crappy?) to better understand how changes to remote work policies impacted culture.
If you want to replicate this survey with a larger sample, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!
Here’s what I found;
This indicates that senior leaders are ignoring data in favour of institutionalized beliefs that working in-office provides a better environment, which is in line with the studies gathered by Plowman and Wakefield who found “individual whims and philosophies of the organizational leaders still carried too much weight in most of the organizations studied.”
When mandating full-time return to office, senior leaders can be perceived as saying, do as I say, not as I do. If a return-to-office mandate is meant to foster a sense of collaboration and mentorship, leadership must ensure that they are more visible to the rank-and-file employees than if they were in a hybrid or remote work model.
This is a significantly higher percentage than the study from the University of Manitoba and indicates that some respondents who are working hybrid or fully-in-office could be entirely remote.
The perception from workers is that their senior leaders are more available in a hybrid environment. Survey respondents who were fully in-office felt that senior leadership was less available, scoring 0% in calendar visibility, bookability, and office circulation, while only 33% felt that their senior leaders had an open-door policy, compared to 38% of hybrid workers.
Ultimately, if senior leaders are hellbent on forcing their employees back in-office full-time, they will continue to encounter resistance because their claim of encouraging better collaboration, culture and mentorship opportunities are easily disproven.
Employers should mind the psychological contract they have with their employees.
If an organization changes work from home policies to hybrid or in-office, employees might feel they no longer share a common set of values. Once this happens, “one can expect a breakdown of communication between the parties, a failure in mutual understanding, and increasing frustration”.