RTW? What if a company requires it?

Q:  My commute to Cambridge is over an hour most days.  After the pandemic, they are trying to get us back in the office 5 days per week.  But there is no easy “RTW” or return to work strategy.  My company is profitable.  VERY!  Traffic now seems worse than ever.  We adjusted our lives to make this new remote thing work.  We found a space to work without kids interrupting us.  We found printers.  We offered extra hours when needed, if a co-worker was sick or had to take care of their mother with COVID.  I was able to squeeze in another 60 minutes of productivity per day because I didn’t have a horrible commute.  I don’t take a lunch but I do walk 5 minutes to my daughter’s bus stop and get her off the bus, and then my wife takes over about 15 minutes after my daughter and I walk through the door.  Now my boss wants us to all return to the workplace.  It is maddening since we were able to keep the company afloat for over two years.  The company is doing just fine!  At work, I used to take a 60-minute lunch.  I am so annoyed, I really want to give just what is expected, no more, no less.  I won’t give the extra five or so hours per week.  Are you seeing this elsewhere?

A: The return to the office challenge is a difficult one, with few easy solutions.  Each business is unique.  Some professional services firms can operate effectively with employees working from home.  Some manufacturing organizations cannot.  Some roles can be performed remotely, like a software developer, while other roles cannot, like an assembler.    

I think many companies are offering many more options than several years ago.  Most of our clients are offering some type of hybrid work arrangement, or at least flexible work hours.  As an example, some may offer a 7:00am to 3:00pm work schedule with Fridays remote.  Or a compressed 4/10, which means four days per week and 10 hours per day.  Others offer Tuesdays through Thursdays onsite, and Mondays and Fridays remote. It is important that there is reasonable consistency in who gets offered what.  As mentioned earlier, sometimes it is role dependent. It would be unwise to offer them just to leaders and not to others within the organization.  One of our clients was recently struggling with how to offer a hybrid schedule to a receptionist.  They figured it out.  She was offered Thursday and Friday to help with administrative tasks remotely and others covered her shift on Thursdays.  The employer realized that they didn’t have enough in-office visitors to require a receptionist on Fridays.  The pandemic changed our workplaces for sure.  An analogy I often use is a cracked egg. The egg has been cracked and it will be a significant challenge to return to the uncracked egg. 

In smaller organizations, it is more of a challenge, but not impossible.   Some of our smaller clients are also brainstorming creative options with their employees.  Retail and hospitality tend to be the most challenging industries with respect to remote work. 

Some employees may be adjusting their workplace habits for a number of reasons.  These reasons may include an employee starting their “side hustle,” or they are stressed out especially in this post-COVID world.  In Massachusetts, our unemployment rate is just under 4% (as of October, 2024, the last rate available).  If you try to buy an ice cream or a cup of coffee, you will likely see a help wanted sign.  The pendulum won’t be on the employee-candidate side forever.  Right now though, it continues to be challenging to attract and retain talent.     

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