Get back to the office: Why leaders are so keen to return
In this episode, hosts Jeff Melnyk and Anique Coffee dig into what's keeping leaders up at night, why businesses are pushing employees to return to the office, and the ways leaders can take care of their people.
“It’s time for leaders to ask:
What ways of working do we want to leave behind?
What can we step into to create a connected culture now?”
Key Takeaways from the Episode
After over two years, why is the push back to the office happening now?
Through recent conversations with leaders, here’s the top four reasons we’re hearing that leaders are keen to get their people back to the office:
Leaders wants to get people back to work - the way they used to work - because its comfortable and they know how to work together in a certain way.
Leaders love their connected cultures, and it’s difficult to have a remote or hybrid culture.
Leaders want to ensure they are taking care of each other…and we can make sure all of our employees are healthy and well if we’re in the office together.
Leaders want to ensure people are working at their best, not off sick, and are working the hours they are contracted.
Invitation for Leaders:
Think about your culture and what it is exactly keeping you up at night. It’s ok to not have all the answers.
Take your clarity to your people and open up a conversation. Chances are, your people are concerned about your culture in the same ways.
Work together to create strategies - in this new normal - to improve your culture alongside your people.
As a team, get together and talk about what your connect culture looks like and how we want to work at our best.
Have a conversation about leaving the ways of working that didn't work for us behind in 2021.
Ask your people: What ways of working do we need to take forward in 2022 that will really serve us this year?
“Can we start to have conversations - and solve at source - around the big things that are blocking us? From there, we can create strategies that actually helps us.”
Episode Transcript
Jeff Melnyk
00:07
Let's get going. How are things over the pond? I'm in San Francisco. You're in London. Welcome to 2022. Hmm.
Anique Coffee
00:19
How are things over here? Things are okay. It's raining. Hmm. I can't really handle that, but, um, I'm working on, I'm working it through it and, uh, it's been a bit of a slow start to 2022. For me.
It's been interesting,
Jeff Melnyk
00:33
slow and sluggy or slow and easeful?
Anique Coffee
00:37
Easeful and by design, but it feels like I've missed that moment in time of like, starting like had a little new year's hang. So, you know, saw midnight come and go. But intentionally designed this. Starting the year, a couple of weeks into January so that we had time to just a slow start it's by design.
But somehow I can feel that urgency of like, let's get going into the year. It feels kind of weird to.
Jeff Melnyk
01:03
Um, very easy, awful, wonderful to be in 2022. Let's see what the year has ahead. Very restful break, grateful to be back in Canada with the family we had minus 30 every day, which I know may scare some listeners for me, that was just an excuse to, uh, sit on the sofa in front of the fire, watching as many eighties movies as possible.
My parents have all of the sort of eighties and seventies movie packages just on their cable thing. My parents still have cable. So this is where I'm at. This is like the nostalgia of like the joy of like, what is on as opposed to like going through your streaming service claim. What haven't I watched yet?
It's like, give me what you've got. Yes. I went back to the future three, um,
Anique Coffee
01:48
No algorithm serving you a bunch of stuff is going to hit the TV guide button and look at everything.
Jeff Melnyk
01:53
Or is there, do they know that? That's what I wanted. Um, so yeah. So getting back to San Francisco, uh, the sun is shining we've, we've had lots of rain.
It's the weather it's feeling great. It's feeling optimistic and hopeful over here in the, in the bay area. So looking forward to the year ahead, but yeah, like you quite easy. I've enjoyed that this year hasn't started with, oh my gosh, let's go. It started with more or less. Is it time for another matcha um, and I'm always into that.
Anique Coffee
02:24
Love it. That's great. I'm happy for you. Okay. Um, that kind of gets us right into our, our hot topics. We're bringing some hot culture topics. For this moment in time at the beginning of 2022 and what
Jeff Melnyk
02:40
There is obviously a lot going on. So it was hard to get back into the swing of things and to suggest or select our first hot topics for the year.
Um, but I think something that is clearly in the ether, um, and something that we can't ignore is, are we ever going back. To the office what's happening. We were back. We weren't back. We're in route. We're masked up. We're not masked up. We're vaccinated. We're not vaccinated the office what's going on. Um, so this is something that I feel like we need to really reflect on and the.
May I dig straight in Anique, may I jump in? What I think caught my eye this past week was the New York times reporting that Citi group is preparing to fire employees who are not vaccinated by the end of January. So they announced this in October, obviously to give employees time to prepare for that.
Um, we also had, uh, the government mandate here in the U S uh, from Joe Biden around really hoping that employers would take on some of that. Um, mandate to get people vaccinated in their communities. Uh, so employers have more than a hundred people. The proposal was that they should mandate that people get vaccinated.
Citi group was one of the first to say, yeah, we're gonna we're in with that. Anyways, the Biden administration mandate, I think is still going through the potentially the Supreme court. I don't know enough about that, but anyhow citi group has on it. 90% of employees have already complied, which this leaves probably around 6,500, who are still at risk of potentially losing their jobs at the end of January.
So this caught my eye um, first of all, just with the sort of brashness of it also interesting that Citi group was called out. Cause I think there's a lot of other employers who would be in the space, but what made me get excited for what we might talk about today is why is this happening? So what's actually going on in the world of work and in the world of culture, around getting people back into the office and getting them back into the office in certain ways.
Anique Coffee
04:49
All right, so bottom line this for us
Jeff Melnyk
04:50
Yeah, I thought we could refer around these four. So let me introduce the four and then let's sort of dig into them. So why is this happening now? I put these together through just conversations with leaders that we've been having in. All of our markets around the world. So not just in the U S this is something that I've been seeing happening in, uh, Europe and UK as well, even our clients in Australia and Asia.
It's so interesting to see. This is possibly still a global phenomenon. Um, so why is this happening?
Well, firstly, Is it all about getting people back to work the way we used to work? So is there something there around that sort of, we were good at working together in a certain way, and this has been disruptive.
The pandemic has been disruptive. So can we get people back to the way we used to work? That's number one.
Number two, what we've been hearing as well is we love our culture and we love a connected culture and it's really hard to have a remote or hybrid culture. So can we just get everyone back to the office so that we can have a connected culture again, interesting.
Especially for global companies like Citi group, um, number three. Is it all about taking care of each other? Is it all about making sure that our employees are healthy and well? And if they're back in the office, that they will be healthy and well together. So that's number three and number four, is it all about. Productivity? Is it about getting people working at their best or indeed not off sick so that they are working the hours they are contracted. So those are my hot for a NIC. Which of the four do you feel is most prevalent in the United Kingdom at present?
I think it's a mix of like getting back to work or connected culture.
Do you want to start with,
well, let's start with getting back to work. I think because I do think there's a sort of a slide into the connected culture. So getting back to work though, so I feel like this one's really about leaders and managers being more comfortable managing people and familiar surroundings.
Right. So we know what it's like to work in an office together. We've been practicing that for decades. When I could see you at your desk, I knew that you were working. I knew you were doing what you were told possibly. So there's a control element of there of it there, but let's be honest. It's been hard for some people to work remotely and hybrid.
So it's kind of easier. Isn't it just. Get back at our desk, you know, get in that meeting room, have that brainstorm, or just spend an hour talking about nothing in effectively. We were really good at that pre pandemic. So there's some comfort in that.
Anique Coffee
07:35
Isn't that certainly for some people. Yeah. For some people that is true, even in my, my husband, like loves the idea that he has to be at the office two days at work and it creates a rhythm to his life.
It gives him the social connection he wants. There is some like, ease of that somehow, even though it's like a forced mandate.
Jeff Melnyk
07:52
Yeah. And I think let's be honest about that, that, that. For some people working at home is not great. So going into the office is good for some employees as well. Some employees don't have offices.
If you work in a large restaurant or in manufacturing plant, you got to go to the office. Your office is that place anyways. So. This one's really going to impact more around the traditional office worker. Whereas a lot of our other, um, workforce is used to still going to their quote unquote office every day.
So, so there's something in this sort of habit and the joy of, of the norm. Um, there's an element of control. Isn't it?
Anique Coffee
08:33
Um, yeah, definitely. Especially when you've got leaders who perhaps haven't stepped into like the modern way of leading, who really thrive in that sort of command and control style leadership, being able to see your people being able to be there.
And perhaps even being able to recognize ego, like I like to look around and see that my people are here for me and with me. And I like to be able part of even their own comfort is going to work and being able to riff with people. So it's not necessarily about what the people want. It's the leader needs this.
Dynamic. So there's the command and control, but also, yeah, somehow ego plays into that command and control sometimes.
Jeff Melnyk 09:09
I agree. And I, and I think that then does slide into that connection space, right? It is easier for leaders to connect with people face-to-face or be around them in general. Um, so it is easier for managers to walk up to someone on the, on the, in the office floor and say, can I help you with that?
Or do you need some support today? It's harder to do that when we have to range things in a remote environment, but. When it comes to that second bullet, all around connected cultures. What we've been hearing from leaders over here is I could really build trust and connection more easily, when I could have that face to face experience with my team, I felt that I could connect to them better.
I felt that we were able to sort of super boost. What it takes to be a, you know, a well, a well-oiled functioning team when I could rally the troops together and bring them together all the time. And there's that loss of the water cooler moment where there's no spontaneity there. People are longing for that.
Um, and we've got now whole workforces. Who've been hired through the pandemic remotely and never had that connection.
Anique Coffee
10:19
That's right. And well, we know from our work, like, it takes a skill to be able to create meaningful connection online it's possible. But there are some leaders who maybe don't have this skill or have never tried it before.
So there is that worry of loss of connection or how do I build culture remotely, but yeah, you're right. There's a whole group of folks who are hired during this time, who know culture is not built around place anymore. Culture is built between us and through other things than just being in person.
Jeff Melnyk
10:48
Right. So, so that's interesting to think of that sort of loss, but actually, what have you even been gaining through this, this a more difficult time of creating those connected cultures when you've been able to do it in other ways?
Um, okay. The third one was taking care of each other. So, you know, there's that element of pastoral care. Some employees really feel that their role is to take care of their employees. Um, I mean very much so in a, in a European context and players actually have a sort of fiduciary duty around that. Um, so if it's in your culture to take care of each other, uh, one of our clients Amy's kitchen, that's one of their values.
Uh, you know, they were one of the first to have. Vaccination centers onsite for their employees that fits very much within their culture. That is the cultural norm to want to do those kinds of things. Um, so to me, if that's in your culture, it would make sense, therefore, that you would want to make sure that you were doing everything you can to keep your, your employees safe.
You're doing that through. What's in your cultural DNA, more so than any sort of risk mitigation. Obviously you want to make sure there's less community spread within your operations, but for some people it's just in our nature to want to take care of each other. And that's how I express that. Do you see that in, in the UK at the moment?
Anique Coffee
12:13
I think we do. Yeah, we definitely do the taking care of each other, particularly obviously. Universal health care. Like I've been volunteering at our vaccine center and obviously it's healthcare based. So there's care kind of embedded in that culture, but it's interesting to see how people take care of each other.
Even as us volunteers, we've got a culture of care of like taking care of each other and none of us work in the medical field, but there is like this care that comes. And I think what's also interesting. And how, what I was going to add to your comment about Amy's kitchen. It's coming from the top down Amy's kitchen wants to take care of their people.
It's part of their culture, it's in their values, but that beautiful ripple effect that happens with the people, the people want to belong to a culture where people care for each other. And so it's not just a top down, it's an all around. That's happens at Amy's. Now everyone on Amy's wants to take care of each other, not just the owners of the business.
And you see that in other ways, too. We're all volunteers and we want to take care of each other and the people we're serving. It's a, you know, it's a kind of an all around thing that ends up happening when you have a culture of care like
Jeff Melnyk
13:15
that. Absolutely. And it's truly authentic. It's not something that's forced, like I'm going to take a punch that that's not in city groups, uh, DNA, or it's not in their value set.
I don't know that I could be wrong, but if the messaging is. Get get vaccinated or get fired. I'm not sure that's still. Leading with that same kind of empathy. Whereas I feel like in the Amy's kitchen example, it's, let's get vaccinated together. It very much came from the people by the people led by the Berliner family.
It's very authentic. So it's something that is really in their culture. Um, okay. Finally, on the fourth one productivity, so is the, let's get back to the office. Let's get our people back, uh, all about productive. We saw what happened over the holiday season. What happens when productivity is really impacted by the pandemic?
We had flights canceled all across the U S most restaurants in San Francisco were closed over the holiday season, I think because they had no one to work. So happened in London. Yeah. So people were off sick and rightly so, if you're sick, don't come to work. Um, take care of yourself, take care of others. I think a whole underground lines for shut as well.
Right. So, I mean, then I can't get to work anyways. If my tube driver is not at work, has how would I get across the city? Um, so illness costs business. So if getting people vaccinated back to the office is a productivity one that could be just because it's going to cost us. If we can't offer. Entirely, but also it's impacting on the way we collaborate.
If I've got less people, I can't have the collaborating, working at their best. All members of our team out ill is not going to lead us to doing our best work. So there's many productivity implications around that
Anique Coffee
15:05
And in connection to their original topic. Like are we ever returning to the office? If productivity is the real concern?
Maybe we need to look at how we're collaborating, that's affecting productivity, whether we're in and the office or not.
Jeff Melnyk
15:17
Exactly. So back to our first point, it's all around getting people back to work the way we used to. Maybe that's not going to be the reality anymore. Maybe we aren't working the way we used to.
Maybe we have to have some new norms around that and new, new ways of seeing what productivity looks like for us. How do we collaborate at our best in a world where perhaps we are not going to have all of our team members present all the time. It's a wonderful question for leaders. Um, so looking at these four, I think what struck me and what I've been thinking about, and when I'm talking to leaders around the world, what's really coming to mind here is can we just be clear about which of these four are keeping us up at night?
Hmm, as a leader. Can I just say, I am mostly concerned about productivity or I am mostly concerned about how are we going to have a connected culture where we all trust each other, know each other, and our being able to respect and honor each other. Can we have those conversations rather than just mandating policying and enforcing?
Can we start to have a conversation about. What it is, that's keeping our leaders, our leadership team up at night. I'm sure that those things are probably the same as what's keeping our employees up at night as well. How can I do my best work if I'm sick? How can I do my best work when I hate working on zoom?
So can we start to have those conversations and solve at source a little bit around what are. Big things that are blocking us so we can create strategies and a strategy could be created for any four of these that actually helps us to working even better than we've ever worked before.
Anique Coffee
17:01
I love what you said there.
It's up to the leaders to be more clear about what's keeping them up and create strategies around their why, but communicating with the people is really important too, because you're right. I think a lot of people are up staying up at night for the same reasons. And wouldn't it be great if. Could you open that communication up, open that conversation up with the people and involve them in the.
Jeff Melnyk
17:22
Right. So, and even just to, there's a bit of vulnerability to say, this is what's keeping me up at night, but there's also a bit of vulnerability to go. I don't actually know how we're going to have a, for example, connected culture when we're all working remotely. Can we, as a team get together and talk about what that looks like, how do we want to work at our best, rather than me as a leader, trying to have to figure out and solve all of that.
Anique Coffee
17:43
Yeah right. And January is often about setting up goals and resolutions. What if in this conversation leaders could also take a moment to reflect back on what working from home looked like, what ways of working really served them and what didn't. Let's have a conversation about leaving all these ways of working that didn't work for us behind in 2021.
What do we need to take forward in 2022? And our ways of working in our culture, that's really going to serve us.
Jeff Melnyk
18:09
I love that. I love that new year new us. I know that social media is telling us, I have to say new year, same me, but maybe it's time for leaders to go new year, new, new us. What do we want to leave behind?
What can we step more into in the year ahead as obviously it's going to be another year of continued exciting disruption. So let's see.
Anique Coffee
18:33
Let's go year three of a pandemic. Let's go
Jeff Melnyk
18:36
loving it even more back to the future. Part three,
Anique Coffee
18:41
no one likes it. What is it? What do you call it? A tri-qual well, what
Jeff Melnyk
18:44
The tre-qual
no one wanted the tri-qual no one wanted that film. Um, but we got it anyways.
Anique Coffee
18:51
All right. That's it. For today,
Jeff Melnyk
18:53
you can find us at, within people.com. You can follow us on Instagram at, within people. And of course sign up for our newsletter as well for a monthly drop into your inbox on things that have been going around in the world of work.
And we'll see you next time.
Anique Coffee
19:10
See you soon.