It's interesting that you call the office space thing a "complication"; I rather feel it's a driver of RTO. Many companies - my employer included (new building started 2019, moved in 2021) - are contractually committed to long leases on large office space and, I think, are feeling the cost is a sunk cost unless the occupancy justifies it. What annoys us is that they just aren't honest about it. If they would openly say "Look, we have a new building we're tied into and we need it to be occupied to justify the cost", I think people would be more understanding. Trying to dress it up as "you're more productive in the office" a) demonstrates an ignorance or disregard of the (nature of the) work people are doing and b) is felt to be plain dishonest. No wonder employees aren't happy about being forced back into an office for a number of days a week that reduces their productivity and, in some cases, their actual health.
There is an interesting paradox between balancing space, saving money and creating connection opportunities.
There’s no point going to the office if nobody you work with is there. So you have to use anchor days where people are in at the same time. If you have sufficient space, it requires you to have nearly enough square footage for everyone at the company.
You either 1. lose any cost savings that could have been gained through reducing office size, 2. don’t have enough space for people to work, or 3. remove the anchor day requirement (which to the point above, defeats the whole reason of having people come in).
I think another force behind RTO is the difficulty organisations have had making ‘remote’ work. This is in part because they tried to recreate the office but distributed.
Without embracing asynchronous working, these efforts were always doomed to fail. So corporations do what they do best and copy each other - RTO then becomes a rehashed trend that seems like a new solution.
It's interesting that you call the office space thing a "complication"; I rather feel it's a driver of RTO. Many companies - my employer included (new building started 2019, moved in 2021) - are contractually committed to long leases on large office space and, I think, are feeling the cost is a sunk cost unless the occupancy justifies it. What annoys us is that they just aren't honest about it. If they would openly say "Look, we have a new building we're tied into and we need it to be occupied to justify the cost", I think people would be more understanding. Trying to dress it up as "you're more productive in the office" a) demonstrates an ignorance or disregard of the (nature of the) work people are doing and b) is felt to be plain dishonest. No wonder employees aren't happy about being forced back into an office for a number of days a week that reduces their productivity and, in some cases, their actual health.
And maybe make the workspace more appealing to sweeten the deal.
There is an interesting paradox between balancing space, saving money and creating connection opportunities.
There’s no point going to the office if nobody you work with is there. So you have to use anchor days where people are in at the same time. If you have sufficient space, it requires you to have nearly enough square footage for everyone at the company.
You either 1. lose any cost savings that could have been gained through reducing office size, 2. don’t have enough space for people to work, or 3. remove the anchor day requirement (which to the point above, defeats the whole reason of having people come in).
It’s hard to have it all.
Yes, and it seems most organisations haven’t thought this through. There needs to be a point to going in.
Great points.
I think another force behind RTO is the difficulty organisations have had making ‘remote’ work. This is in part because they tried to recreate the office but distributed.
Without embracing asynchronous working, these efforts were always doomed to fail. So corporations do what they do best and copy each other - RTO then becomes a rehashed trend that seems like a new solution.
My partner prefers to go into work as at home he gets too distracted. With four young adults, two dogs and two cats, it can get noisy.