After almost a year of working from home, getting employees back into the office will be a challenge for any business.
There’s certainly pros and cons to both remote and office-based working, but if you want to get back that office productivity and routine, you’ll have to put some effort into making this a positive transition to ensure your team are bought in and engaged
Don’t push the rush
One of the biggest complaints about working in the office is the dreaded commute.
With hindsight, insisting that your team travel in rush hour, adding hours to their day, and result in tired, cranky and resentful employees, does seem counter-productive. So let’s rethink the working day.
If you’re not offering flexible working hours in 2021, you’re going to miss out on attracting and keeping the best talent for your business.
You might need to set some core hours when you expect people to be in the business, say 11 am-2 pm, but flexible working around these hours should really be achievable for most office-based roles.
A space for different personalities
Exuberant social butterflies might be counting down the days until they can get back involved in office life. For them, encouraging team events, competitions, brainstorms, and open plan working, is what they’ve been missing while going stir crazy and having conversations with the cat.
But more introverted personalities may have thrived with the peace and quiet of being in isolation. Is there a place in your office for them too?
To get the best from your team, your space must cater for varying personalities, this might look like a hot desk zone, where colleagues can move around and converse freely, contrasted with soundproofed private pods for those that need solitude to focus.
No need to label them, people will naturally gravitate to the areas they feel most comfortable.
Make tech a priority
Zoom calls are here to stay, so it’s time to really invest in the conference call set up for your team. You might have managed to get by in 2020, but there’s only so many times your clients can laugh off another tech mishap.
Don’t make another sales call that you wish could have been in person. Our Immerse solution ensures the perfect conference call environment, so poor quality sound, embarrassing backgrounds and unprofessional sales pitches can be a thing of the past.
Say bye to the board room
Your team will be used to working in their own comfortable, informal space and your local coffee shop could really do with a boost right now, so why not encourage meetings away from the board room?
Or be bold and hold walking meetings in the park, good for everyone’s health and great for getting the creativity and ideas flowing.
It might seem radical, but how stale do those old board meetings seem now, take the opportunity to make the working day inspiring and collaborative for your team and trust they will step up in response.
This goes hand in hand with a more relaxed dress code, is it really necessary to dig out those suits and ties that have been sat in the wardrobe for the last year?
Declutter
How irritating is all that cleaning just waiting to be done at home? Whether it’s the dishwasher, laundry, taking the bins out of some other household task, we doubt even the employee of the year can ignore all those little distractions. At home, it’s tempting to do the chores, or worse, sit in a messy room and struggle to focus.
Make your office a refreshing place to be with a big declutter and deep clean so that when your staff walk through the door, they can get that work/home separation back and breathe a big sigh of relief.
Ready to transform your office and get your team back in 2021?
We create inspiring spaces that boost employee engagement, productivity and retention.
Find out how your office could look with our help
