From free lunches to subsidized commuter fares, bosses have tried everything to convince employees they’d be happier working in the office than at home — and when that hasn’t worked, they’ve tried to take a firm stance.
Now outraged employers want to know what motivates their employees.
Neil Murray, CEO of work dynamics at real estate services group Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), said companies are probing every angle of their employees’ brains to find the right ways to bring them back to the office.
Most employers want to bring employees back in person, at least in a hybrid model, but are struggling with resistance from employees who have become accustomed to flexibility.
Murray’s department consults major corporations on their real estate footprint, covering everything from the sustainability of a space to how employees will interact with it, the latter becoming increasingly important for businesses before spending big bucks on grade A office space.
Changing Room
He describes this new approach to designing these spaces as a “moment of reinventing space” that places emphasis on human behaviour.
“You talk to sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and they all have slightly different opinions,” Murray says. luck.
Murray says this thinking has changed significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, with companies needing to think about how their office space benefits their employees.
“You have to completely shift that paradigm and say, ‘Why do you need a space in the first place if you can do business virtually? What is the purpose?’ And you need input from a range of people to think about the psychology of what makes people comfortable.”
The future of real estate, A new report published Thursday by JLL looks at corporate office space requirements after the AI revolution: Companies will likely place even more emphasis on the social impact of space, prioritizing “wellness, hospitality and entertainment,” the authors say.
But adding lots of attractive workspaces like gyms and movie theaters isn’t the answer to getting more people into the office.
JLL’s Murray says the group has tested a range of amenities that might lure workers back to the office, including free lunches and coffee machines, but there’s no silver bullet.
“The most attractive thing that brings people back is other people,” he says.
Creating an office that brings them together is becoming a generational battle, Murray said.
Psychological differences between Gen Z workers and their older colleagues are emerging as one of the factors driving the reevaluation of office space, and Murray said the needs of younger workers have changed compared to previous generations, having attended university remotely before embarking on hybrid working arrangements.
“There must be some collective psychological differences between that generation in terms of expectations,” Murray said.
Office Space
Beyond generational and incentive-based considerations, Murray says companies taking a heavy-handed approach to attracting staff into the office have had little success.
“Attendance rates in schools that are setting norms and making three-day-a-week attendance mandatory and in schools that are not promoting it are roughly the same, settling at just under three days a week.”
Murray added that companies are typically adopting a three-day hybrid model, with junior and senior employees spending more time in the office than mid-career workers.
talk luck In February, Murray’s colleague, Work Dynamics EMEA CEO Sue Asprey-Price, said companies were asking staff to come into the office four days a week in anticipation of them returning for only three days.
Asprey Price said this was due to job cuts caused by changing office space requirements due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If everyone follows the policies currently announced, many businesses will not have enough space,” she said.
“If all the work teams were to come on that day, the chances of there being enough space are almost zero.”
Murray believes we’ll see a return of dedicated workspaces in offices to counter the rise of hot desking, even if employees end up sitting at alternating desks.
“Think about this notion that everyone is moving in a direction that is completely unallocated. So where is the ‘I’ space there, and where is your own individuality?”
