The Office is a Metaphor: Employees are not resisting to return to the office, they are hesitant to engage with uninspiring work cultures.

?In the past months, there is not a day where leaders haven’t questioned why their employees are not coming back into the office; they endlessly debate how the office should look or feel to draw them back. HR, Leadership experts and Leaders are trying to figure out which arrangement would work best to frame hybrid work. We may be missing the point entirely.

For the most part, what employees are incriminating is not so much the office itself, but the entire system of work. As much as we mostly agree that the education system is broken and doesn’t allow children to fulfil their full potential, the corporate world is in many ways obsolete, failing to engage the humans that are part of it.?

Beyond the workplace, employees are challenging us to rethink:

1. The Autonomy & Flexibility we entrust them with?

During Covid, employees en-masse have experienced more flexibility and autonomy than ever before. And they have enjoyed that, so much that they will now be expecting it from all workplaces. People want flexibility in how they organise their time and schedule their week, how they balance their work with other areas of their lives. This new-found freedom is empowering, and employees are determined to keep it that way. Organisations reverting to rigid work schedules, attendance checks or uncompromising rosters run the risk of a drop in motivation, engagement, productivity and retention.

This invites leaders to reflect on how they can satisfy and leverage that sense of autonomy:

• To what extent do I, as a leader, trust my people to organise their time and priorities independently?
• Do I know my employees well enough to understand how they prefer to organise their time and do I take that into account when coordinating our team’s work??
• Do I hold on to the belief that people should be working 9-5pm (or 8am to 8pm), and that people have tendency to be lazy when unsupervised??
• Do I possess strong delegation skills and broadly share responsibility and accountability??
• Do I feel my employees trust me and will reach out to me proactively for support when they are faced with a challenge?

2. The Overall Employee Experience?

The experience of employees at work is often a variation of this pattern: commute for an hour to work on a busy train, sit in a cubicle head-down four to six hours a day, attend a few meetings that bring together too many participants to achieve anything, experience countless interruptions in an open floor plan, eat a quick and often cheap lunch in front of their computer and commute back for another hour. On good days, have a good laugh with peers near the coffee machine.?

For most employees, the daily experience of work is not fundamentally engaging, let alone rewarding; it is not geared towards growth, it is not inspiring. It takes hard work to create a Culture that deeply engages, but the impact it has on the team's commitment, drive, enthusiasm, loyalty and overall achievements is very significant.

This is an invitation for leaders to entirely rethink the experience they offer their teams at work:

• Are we creating an environment at work where peers connect in a meaningful way and deepen their relationships over time? ?
• Are we intentional in celebrating individuals’ and teams’ wins and successes, ensuring people feel valued for their many contributions?
• How often do we provide meaningful and inspiring learning opportunities that allow people to grow in their role and beyond??
• Do employees have the opportunity to connect with Senior Leaders frequently, to seek inspiration, guidance and learning??
• Do our team managers have the skill to motivate, engage and develop their teams effectively??
• Do we deliberately create opportunities for employees to learn from one another, to collaborate in a way that maximises their individual strengths??
• Is our office culture truly conducive to sharing ideas and creative expression?

The Pandemic has unearthed deeply-rooted flaws in how we engage the humans that work in our teams. If the experience of work is not worthy of their time, they will simply check-out or exit, which is what we are experiencing around the globe. Rather than force people back into an uninspiring environment, this is a very exciting opportunity to be part of a re-design of leadership practices and work, to question how we want people to feel in their jobs, how we can build environments that bring value to our employees, stimulate their minds and bring about learning and cultures that draw people in, rather than turn them away.