More companies are calling their employees back to the office, with some resorting to perks like free meals and electric scooters to encourage employees to return.
Executives have often advocated a return to face-to-face work — but new research from Future Forum, Slack’s research consortium, shows that non-executive workers are almost twice as likely as executives to work in the office five days a week.
The Future Forum’s latest findings come from its April 2022 Pulse Poll, released Tuesday morning, which includes responses from over 10,000 knowledge workers in the US, France, Germany and more.
More than a third of workers (34%) have returned to the office full-time, the highest percentage since Future Forum began surveying it in June 2020. However, Future Forum research suggests that most full-time office workers are not in the office Offices are empowering: 55% of personal-only office workers said they would prefer a more flexible work arrangement.
“A disturbing double standard”
So what’s driving the gap between employees and their bosses coming into the office? Brian Elliott, executive director of the Future Forum, points to “a disturbing double standard” where leaders encourage personal work for their teams but prefer flexible, hybrid arrangements for themselves.
“There’s a lot of ‘do as I say, not what I do,’ that happens,” he tells CNBC Make It. “Leaders have more autonomy over their schedules than their employees, even if their organization has mandates for the announcing a return to office.”
The main reason for the gap, Future Forum found, is executives’ preference for hybrid or remote work and their power to come into the office less if they choose. Another factor could be the modest increase in business travel over the past few months, Elliott adds.
Office workers are more stressed than ever
Return-to-office mandates also have a negative impact on staff mental health. According to Future Forum, since the summer of 2020, people’s work-related stress and anxiety are at the highest level, twice the level of executives. Additionally, non-executives’ work-life balance scores are 40% worse than their managers’ and have fallen five times as much as executives since November 2021.
Some companies are doubling back-to-office mandates to bring workers back, but such measures have the opposite result: they create more tension and drive people to quit.
“One CEO told me they tried a policy three days in the office, two days away, but nobody showed up, so they crank it to four days in the office, one day away,” says Elliott. “That kind of strict top-down mandate doesn’t help with employee retention.”
The Future Forum found that knowledge workers who have “little to no ability to set their own hours” are nearly three times more likely to look for a new job this year than those with flexible work arrangements.
Women, people of color and working mothers continue to report the greatest interest in flexible hours and work locations. Approximately 58% of women in the Future Forum said they would like to work in a hybrid or remote environment at least three days a week, compared to 48% of men. Meanwhile, 82% of moms said they want location flexibility, an all-time high since summer 2020.
How companies should approach return-to-office
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the return-to-office debate, adds Elliott, but companies should involve their employees in the planning process by asking what arrangements will work best for them and allowing teams within the organization to create their own specific return-to-office agreements, rather than tying everyone to the same policy.
“Most organizations, especially Fortune 500 companies, don’t have a single office space — so the concept of everyone ‘getting back together’ by going back to the office full-time is a lie from the start,” says Elliot. “A more flexible, digital-first approach means that people who are in different cities or far from headquarters no longer sweat the distance to C-suite executives as it will negatively impact their careers.”
As an executive creating plans for returning to the office, he adds, “You have to be open to the fact that you don’t have all the answers…this is a place where nobody has the answer, we’re all just trying to figure it out.” find out together.”
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