Gartner has outlined three strategies that it believes could help to motivate employees to get back to the office.
At the recent Gartner ReimagineHR Conference in Sydney, HR experts said that organisations should make purpose, transparency, and inclusion the foundations of a push for a return to office.
Gartner believes that forcing employees to work in the office can negatively affect productivity, performance, and their desire to stay at the company.
Neal Woolrich, Director of Advisory in Gartner's HR practice, said at the conference: "Return-to-office mandates can feel like an about-face in employee flexibility, autonomy, and well-being when it lacks meaning and reason, which is starkly at odds with the more human-centric corporate purpose many organizations have shifted towards.”
According to Woolrich, "Organizations have attempted to entice people back into the office with free meals, office perks or flexible working hours, but these gestures haven’t been enough.
Instead, employers must take the best parts of the office experience and evolve the space from a place anchored to work, to one centered on people and how they feel when they come into an office.
1. Bringing Purpose to the Office
With Gartner’s 3Q23 Global Talent Monitor finding that location is the number one priority for Australian employees when looking for a new job, coupled with the pervasive view that employees feel more productive at home, it is key for employers to effectively align the work that is being done with the place.
Managers will need to clearly explain why it is beneficial for workers to come to the office, especially as nearly half of the employees believe that office policies prioritise the preferences of leaders over the needs of their staff.
2. Motivating with Transparency
Instead of using mandates, Gartner suggests that open and honest communication is critical to help fill the chasm between employees and employers. After all, there should be no need to be economical with the truth if working from the office will lead to greater productivity.
With Gartner’s June survey revealing that over half of employees do not work from the office because they cannot see the point, poor communication appears to be rife, assuming the return-to-office advantages do outweigh the disadvantages.
3. Incorporating Inclusivity
Workplace culture and inclusion are in decline, according to Gartner’s survey of sentiment amongst Australian employees. Alarmingly, remote workers experience ten percent higher feelings of inclusion compared to onsite workers.
