Rimco Spanjer, director of the Bossche publishing house Malmberg, gave a presentation to his three hundred employees last autumn. Title: Back to the office† Too early? Shortly afterwards, a new lockdown went into effect.
But Spanjer already knew then what he is repeating now: his people longed to meet again. So, when the cabinet really dropped the work-from-home advice last March, he didn’t have to motivate them to come back to the office. Also because at the same time leaves an achievement of the past two years alive: the flexibility to also work from home. And that combination is pleasing, says Spanjer. “Because it is also clear: nobody wants to go to the office for five days anymore.” In the case of Malmberg, people are advised to come to the office for a minimum of two days, and a maximum of three. That is the ideal balance for our employees, according to our research.”
The same image arises during conversations that NRC conducted with employers, and it again confirms the experiences of employers’ organization VNO-NCW: companies and institutions want to stick to a hybrid form of working, also post-corona. This is in line with the view of employers and employees, who recently a comprehensive advice under the flag of the Social and Economic Council brought out in order to steer hybrid works in the right direction.
In practice, this means that employers have drawn up or implemented far-reaching plans to redesign their offices. For example, with work cells for individual concentrated work and rooms with facilities for video conferences. The online meeting, it is thought, is here to stay, in addition to physical meetings. Meanwhile, the return of employees to the office is noticeable everywhere, and some employers perceive it as “smooth-free”. Others, on the other hand, say that the transition presents them with new dilemmas.
Get used to
At some offices, it’s a matter of trial and error now that it has become busier as more people show up. Director Rob Doomen of engineering firm Pieters Bouwtechniek (150 employees) notes “some unrest and frustration”. Because most now work from two places – at home or at one of the offices in Amsterdam, Delft, Haarlem, Utrecht and Zwolle – he spends much more time on personnel management. The question now is: where is everyone hanging out? Doomen: “One has his homework day on Monday, the other on Tuesday. But you do want them to meet. It takes some getting used to for everyone and looking for the optimal way of working together.”
Some employees are also concerned about contamination; Despite the decreasing number of cases of illness, corona is not over. As a result, employers see that not everyone is willing to come to the office. Or people just don’t feel like showing up because they’ve gotten used to getting up early, dressing for the office, commuting, hanging out with all those coworkers.
Bob Homan, head of Investment at ING Bank Nederland, also notices this. It takes some getting used to at the Amsterdam head office. “Everything you don’t do for a while, eventually becomes unknown. It’s my job to make my people see the benefits of that ‘unknown that was once familiar’ after two years of working from home.”
At the same time, that is the big issue for the current manager: how compelling are you in this regard? The aim of ING, which has 18,000 employees in the Netherlands, is 50 and fifty percent office occupancy. They are not there yet.
So how does Homan try to get his employees into the office? “For example, say that the worst thing they can do to me is that I have to force them. As a result, they tend to be ahead of it.” But he mainly points out how important it is to meet in the office. Because that really has a function, he says. “If you’re working opposite each other, a joke you make during a spontaneous conversation can just lead to a good idea.”
The question he believes employees should ask themselves every day: which is the most efficient today for what I have to do, work from home or in the office? “The work should be leading in this, not the comfort of all the other personal ingredients around it.”
social anxiety
According to the experience of both Homan and director Michelle Olmstead of the Center for Innovation at Leiden University (25 employees), the transition to the office of employees who previously worked from home for two years has a psychological impact. Some suffer from “social anxiety” or are afraid of contracting something, Olmstead says, and that requires a subtle approach. “As an employer, I want to be considerate and take everyone into account, but I also want to see my people. because one size fits all does not apply to office life. We are now more aware of that than ever.”
That is why her employees organized an ‘escape room’ for each other, a kind of treasure hunt with assignments, to find their way back to the office in all respects. One of those assignments: discuss with each other what you need to do your job well in a hybrid work situation. Another: where in the new location of the Center for Innovation can you find pencils, pens and accessories for your laptop?
The return also offers new opportunities, says Ila Kasem, managing partner Van de Bunt Adviseurs in Amsterdam (25 employees). Corona broke fixed patterns of office life, and that now offers new perspectives in times of labor shortages, he says. Kasem: “You can see that increasing attention is being paid to diversity and inclusion, the diversity of people and the use of them in the workplace.”
Kasem says that the return to the office for him as an employer went “without trouble”, because Van de Bunt Adviseurs had been working flexibly for many years, at different places and times. Online meetings have been added as a new convenience.
Rogier Reedijk, director of Beijer Logistics in Oldenzaal (about 50 employees) reports that 90 percent of his employees are back at the office, even though only at least 50 percent need to be present. Beijer explains this high figure because the logistics service provider has always selected its people on the basis of ‘self-managing entrepreneurship and intrinsic motivation’. He did not have to “pull people” to get them to do their job. Working from home turned out to be a jointly discovered bonus; it adds something to working in the office.
Creative apple
Because the relationship between employers and employees has shifted so much, they now have to make mutual expectations and obligations explicit again. So says Annet de Lange, professor of sustainable employability and labor participation at the Open University. In order to maintain sustainable employment relationships, it is especially important now to emphasize this ‘psychological contract’. At the same time, employers must move with their staff, says De Lange, otherwise they will lose people – especially given the historically low unemployment rate. And moving along goes further than facilitating a good workplace. That is also about binding employees to you, mentally and psychologically.
De Lange and colleagues previously analyzed the effects of a break in such a psychological contract. She can therefore imagine that people who have worked from home for two years react differently when they return to the office. For example, older employees tend to be more loyal to employers than younger workers, but that doesn’t automatically mean they are satisfied. Employers must take this into account. “This era makes a creative appeal to them to keep connecting various groups.”
What is in any case a crucial element, say various employers, is the spontaneous, unplanned contact. That is valuable, and it was often lacking when people only worked online.
Director Olmstead of the Center for Innovation states that hybrid working only really succeeds if online and offline environments merge: “Allow home workers to sit down at the lunch table at the office via their iPad screen. Create a buddy system where someone in the office is responsible for someone who works from home. Office and home: keep finding each other.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 7, 2022