The Secret to Hybrid is Being "Sticky"

Three years into the greatest reshuffle in office work since the birth of the commercial internet, and many CEOs and their executive teams remain more than a bit at sea when it comes to the question of motivating and retaining their people.

So, I once again reached out to Ron Martere, business group VP, and Allan Smith, chief revenue officer at Steelcase, for their take on the way we work now. Steelcase routinely surveys more than 57,000 workers around the world to understand trends in workplace sentiment.

Close readers will remember that I talked to Smith and Martere last year. Following that conversation, Chief Executive Group and Steelcase decided to partner on a new initiative to help C-level executives and corporate directors get a better bead on how to hybrid. We’ll be kicking it off with an event in New York on April 27—we hope you can join us, in person or online.

So, what is Steelcase’s newest research and work with clients telling them about the state of the office in 2023? What’s changed, what’s changing? And what can do you do now to get an edge on your rivals in a hybrid world? Three takeaways from the conversation:

• More Office = More Connection. “We've asked employees directly: Do you feel connected to your company and its mission? And we see a marked difference,” says Smith. “The people that are out of the office feel less connected to leaders, they feel less connected to the mission, and they feel less connected to how they can contribute specifically to the company's growth. There is a connection between space and socialization. Work is an inherently social experience.”
• They Don’t Want Friction. “Where does a person's day start, and how do you eliminate friction as soon as they walk in?” asks Smith. “Is it easy to find a space? Can I find the colleagues I'm working with? Is it easy to use the technology? So, wherever we can, wherever space or furniture or what we provide can help, we try to ease the people's burdens as they start their day. And I think it, ultimately, makes them more satisfied with work, the space, their employer and, ultimately, their interactions.”
• They Want to Feel at Home. In collaborating with noted NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People, Steelcase found that companies should be building “stickiness” in the office however possible—the intangible that makes people want to hang out and not rush off. It isn’t just a foosball table and free lunch—it’s more like a favorite neighborhood, with options for how people gather. An environment with a mix of comfortable settings versus just rigid conference rooms, for example.

“We're starting to see now leading-edge organizations starting to realize, ‘Okay, we've got them back,’” says Martere. “That was sort of the easy part, right? We mandated them to come back. Now, we have to make that experience good, and it's got to support hybrid work." Learn more about the event | Read the full article >

—?Dan Bigman, editor, Chief Executive. [email protected]

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