Reading time: 15 min
In recent years, we have been working remotely on a large scale, with the accompanying creativity to keep employees engaged and maintain the connection. Now it seems we need to use our creativity to make the return to the office smooth and meaningful. Because do all employees still want to return to the office?
Next year could very well be a turning point, and it’s definitely worth it for employers to think about how to make employees feel that coming to the office is a good idea. What if you turned this challenge into an opportunity to create a “Workplace Value Proposition” that increases employee engagement and motivation?
Make returning to the office worthwhile
A unique value proposition is a powerful statement that stipulates why the target audience should take action. It must convince the audience why it brings added value.
A Workplace Value Proposition gives employees all the arguments to come back with full enthusiasm to come to the office to collaborate!
A well-defined “workplace value proposition” represents the company culture and lets employees feel the benefits of collaborating in the office. It answers the question “why do we come to the office.”
To make the return to the workplace as smooth to go smoothly, there are actually 3 key questions to answer:
1. How can we safely bring our people back?
Are there sufficient procedures in place for all possible scenarios: interactions between different groups, disinfection, ventilation, quarantines, ...
Do the office spaces still meet today’s requirements? Can everyone feel safe, can social distancing be maintained, are there enough facilities for videoconferencing with remote workers?
2. Are we going for a hybrid work model and what will it look like in practice?
Who comes to the office when? Who works remotely? How many days per week do employees come to the office? Do they come on fixed days or is their hybrid work schedule flexible? What about booking spots in the office? Are there limits on how many employees can be in the office at the same time?, ...
3. What is our Workplace Value Proposition?
How do we encourage people to come to the office? What do we offer as an employer in the workplace? What is the added value for our employees to commute to the office? How do we optimize the work experience of our employees?
It goes without saying that the argument ‘it’s necessary for business continuity’ will not make employees eager to return to the workplace. It’s important that employers offer an irresistible environmentso employees have a good reason to come to the workplace and collaborate physically again in the same space.
A good, inspiring Workplace Value Proposition can help you get the most out of the new values and structure of your organization while ensuring that remote workers feel fully valued and engaged.
This goes beyond the cuddly office dog, safe sports facilities, and spaces to relax, healthy snacks at the office, ...
It establishes a set of values, behaviors, and expectations that truly make your workplace the place to be make it!
Let the 4 C’s help you
Use the 4 C’s to create your Workplace Value Proposition. We’ve summarized them again for you with their challenges and opportunities!
1. Connection
With full-time remote work, not only did the commute disappear, but unfortunately the time when colleagues could interact informally dropped below zero. And although remote work has its advantages, people remain social beings. We need positive moments of contact with others to thrive.
Although business continuity was ensured thanks to online collaboration tools and countless digital meetings, many employees eventually felt exhausted and socially isolated after a full day of video calls.
Many companies have made great efforts in recent months to maintain connection with their employees during full-time remote work, and now they need to ask themselves how to approach that connection in a hybrid work culture.
Working in the office offers many opportunities for interpersonal interaction, which can definitely recharge your team’s social batteries. But also make sure that people working from home still feel connected!
- Encourage your employees to connect with each other and discuss work-related as well as other topics. Not every meeting has to be work-related.
- Create an environment that encourages social connection! Make your employees feel that social interaction and workplace friendships are highly valued.
- Come up with creative ways to spice up your one-on-one conversations: walking meetings, reserve time slots in your calendar for spontaneous chats, take healthy and active breaks with your team members, …
- Encourage your employees to talk to each other about their hybrid schedules. Find a day (or two) when most people are in the office and encourage employees to prioritize office work on those days.
- Encourage your employees to have lunch together and enjoying a healthy break together when they are in the officeThese informal moments are invaluable!
2. Collaboration
Today, there are very few jobs that stand completely alone, and employees, organizations, and customers all benefit from collaboration. Collaboration gives teams the chance to leverage the strengths and contributions of each individual in the team into better performance, higher productivity, and better results than the sum of individual efforts.
We didn’t stop collaborating when the world suddenly had to work from home en masse, but the way we collaborate did change.
Many teams faced the challenges of fully virtual collaboration: limited opportunities for informal, spontaneous communication, restrictions on screen sharing, and limited interaction.
Returning to the office will improve teamwork and increase efficiency, especially for highly interdependent tasks. But collaboration not only boosts productivity, it also creates and maintains the team’s trust in each other.
By working physically together, everyone’s performance and contribution become visible. This strengthens trust in each other, even when the team is not together.
A hybrid collaboration model also brings the challenge of not losing sight of employees working remotely, especially during important decision-making moments.
For employees working physically together in the office, it’s easy to find a moment to collaborate in a shared space, to spontaneously ask questions and offer feedback or help when they notice someone needs it. Remote workers can easily miss these key moments for collaboration and development, which can negatively impact their career growth.
That’s why it’s important for managers to create norms and procedures to ensure remote workers are actively and consciously involved and remain engaged in these important collaboration moments.
- Plan collaboration sessions around tasks that truly benefit from physical collaboration consciously when most employees are in the office.
- Learn to use new collaboration platforms and techniques together as a team.
- Actively involve remote workers in discussions and decisions during collaboration meetings: actively ask for input from people participating via video or phone.
- Ensure solid procedures around development and coaching so that remote workers have the same opportunities. Development and coaching run more smoothly and naturally when the coach and coachees work together physically.
3. Creativity
Without creativity and innovation, a company remains stuck in place. Both are essential for growth and improvement.
Creativity at work often arises from spontaneous discoveries combined with planned collaboration. Social distancing and remote working have made it incredibly difficult to achieve spontaneous creativity because there was no longer the possibility for informal, unexpected conversations in the hallways or during a healthy break.
These informal meeting moments are very difficult to replicate in a digital context.
During physical meetings at the office, it’s much easier to freewheel and brainstorm and turn those ideas into something concrete and new!
The return to the office will make these spontaneous and planned creative moments possible again! Allow for unplanned creative time: go for a team meeting without a fixed agenda or topics and just talk to each other or about fun subjects!
The challenge lies in fitting this into the hybrid work model.
It’s important that the creative input of remote workers is not lost in the process!
To reignite creativity and sufficiently involve remote workers, it’s a good idea to encourage people to take breaks together and invite remote workers to join in. You can do this, for example, by sending them a sending a snack box with the same healthy snacks as colleagues at the office and enjoying together.
4. Culture
Company culture reflects ‘how we do things.’ It is the set of values and norms that determine why a company exists and how it wants to present itself to the outside world.
Working together physically in the office creates connection and a sense of belonging, of being part of something. It helps employees more easily see the impact their efforts have on the company and its customers.
By bringing employees back to the office and actively nurturing the company culture, they can feel more connected to the company again.
This is the ideal moment to make the company culture more visible to everyone again and adapt it to the current collaboration model. How does hybrid working affect your company culture?
Now, let's get started!
Do you want your company to fully embrace change and make the most of the momentum? This is the perfect time to rethink and fine-tune!
Make a roadmap for the return to the office: together determine how you will collaborate, define your new objectives, discuss in detail and openly what you expect from each other, decide what the ideal time split between office and home looks like, decide whether you will try to focus on fixed moments together in the office, …?
It is the role of managers and leaders to develop an irresistible Workplace Value Proposition:
- By creating procedures and a policy based on these 4 C’s.
- By always setting the right example yourself and consistently applying the established behavior.
- By encouraging managers and team leaders to tailor the Workplace Value Proposition to the individual needs of their team.
- By involving employees in the conversation about what the return to the office could look like and doing this as authentically and openly as possible.
- By considering your employees as individuals. Take into account their personal life situation and work role. Ask them what they like and dislike about working in the office. Refresh their memory about what they enjoyed about collaborating in the office. Mention only real, unvarnished benefits of physical collaboration.
- By recognizing the efforts and sacrifices of your employees during the challenging months of full-time remote work.
- By also checking whether your shared spaces still meet today’s requirements. Can everyone feel safe, can distance be maintained, are there enough facilities for videoconferencing with remote workers, …?
Conclusion
After months of full-time remote work and the possible anxieties around Covid, some employees may have become hesitant about returning to the office. A good Workplace Value Proposition can help employees discover what works best for them and how to make the transition in a way that feels comfortable for them.
Create a work environment that your employees can’t find anywhere else.
Create an irresistible company culture with respect for your employees as individuals. Make sure you know which moments are most important to your employees and fully invest in employee well-being. Make your employees’ lives as pleasant as possible!
So bring that office dog back to the office, fill the snack machine with irresistible and above all healthy snacks, bring the fun back to the office, and fully embrace informal moments!
We are not going back to the old ‘normal’, but is that really so bad? This is our chance to create a new, even better (work) reality!