How leaders should reframe the return-to-office conversation

A steady stream of high-profile companies, including Google, IBM, Amazon and Farmers Insurance in the United States, have required employees to return to their offices (RTO). Canada’s P&C insurance industry is no exception.  

“While their messaging about these RTO mandates has ranged in form and tone, much of it has felt tone-deaf at best and in many cases adversarial or even dictatorial,” two authors write in the Harvard Business Review blog, Leaders Need to Reframe the Return-to-Office Conversation. “Unsurprisingly, the result has been backlash from employees and an explosion of social media fervour…” 

Recent research at Microsoft, SpaceX and Apple found the way RTO mandates were introduced and implemented had a significant impact on departures, particularly among employees with longer tenure. Reframing — deliberately replacing taken-for-granted cognitive frames with more helpful ones — the conversation is key, write authors Mark Mortensen and Amy C. Edmondson in the June 10 blog.

Reframing involves the following three steps.

Step 1: Acknowledge the bind and be patient 

Recognizing that flexible work policies put in place during and after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many employees to make significant life changes that are not easy to undo is one step towards reframing the return-to-office (RTO) conversation. For example, some people moved away from high-cost cities, while others shifted care responsibilities for children or other family members.  

Altering these arrangements may take time and come with financial and other repercussions, write Mortensen, a professor of organizational behaviour at INSEAD and Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School. 

“Leaders must publicly recognize these very real ramifications, acknowledge how the organization contributed to them with past policy decisions, and commit to collaborating to find solutions.” 

To do this, be mindful of the language you use. Rather than framing the flexibility conversation as a winner-takes-all contest, as is often the case, frame it as a collaborative, community problem-solving process, the authors suggest. 

Step 2: Focus on mutual value, not just organizational benefits 

Leaders will often argue corporate culture is at risk due to remote work. “Framed this way, employees are faced with an adversarial trade-off: I want to spend time on what’s important to me, but leadership thinks company culture is more important than me spending time with my family,” the blog says. 

Another argument is face-to-face work boosts innovation. While there is strong evidence of this, it’s typically seen as an organizational benefit rather than an individual one. However, individuals also experience psychological benefits from being part of an exciting innovation or success. 

The same holds true in the other direction: Arguments advocating flexibility focus on employees’ desire for more control over their work. Designing jobs with more employee autonomy has real and meaningful benefits for the organization as well — and not just by making employees happier and thereby reducing turnover, the blog says. A greater sense of personal responsibility and ownership translates into higher performance and more efficient task allocation — which are real, meaningful benefits for the organization. 

Step 3: Approach the process as data-driven, co-created, iterative learning 

There’s no universal playbook for working arrangements, as every organization’s work design must be informed by specific factors including its competitive landscape, industry norms, employee demographics, and history.  

What’s needed is an iterative, collective approach that brings organization leaders and employees together. “Frame this as a data-driven, collaborative journey toward mutually beneficial progress,” write Mortensen and Edmondson. “Equally important, you need to accept that you won’t get it right the first time, and that’s ok.” 

Don’t assume the first policy you create will be the right one. In fact, go into the process expecting any plan to need adjusting. Recognize and communicate up front that period reassessment will be needed. 

Stop trying to push employees into the office and instead make the office an energizing environment where employees want to be, the blog says. “Take a framing lesson from the social media playbook, in which FOMO (fear of missing out) has proven to be a massive driver of behaviour and try to create FOMOO (fear of missing out on the office).” 

Feature image by iStock.com/shapecharge