Return to Work: Non-Traditional Lures Prevail
Groups and teams at Adobe, Apple, META (Facebook), Google and many other “Big Tech” companies want their employees to come back to the office. This is definitely a big shift, but it’s being handled differently across the industry. Some companies are giving their employees the freedom to decide what’s right for them. In other cases, there’s no optionality – workers have to go into the office three or more times per week.
But these aren’t old-school style corporate edicts. Many companies are incentivizing adherence to these policies with ‘sweeteners’. Some these new lures being offered to get workers back in the office include:
New and improved offices
Some funding for personalizing desks
Ergonomic evaluations of office furniture and desk setups
IT on-hand for the newly hired and returning workers
Custom-designed t-shirts and other swag
Food & drink events with specialty pizzas, ethnic foods, gourmet coffee, etc.
Friday night get-togethers and weekend special occasions (bands, beer, and barbecue!)
A Lizzo concert on a corporate campus in Silicon Valley
Reportedly: Terrarium-making classes
Then there’s a new, more employee-friendly, performance evaluation program that’s been rolled-out in one instance that management claims will lead to higher pay.
Some researchers doubt that this approach will work. In their view, there’s been a permanent change among many American employees. These individuals want to work from home most days, and only go into the office when it’s absolutely necessary. Researchers have also uncovered the fact that about one-third of employees never want to return to the office at all.
There also seem to be regional differences emerging. They are RTW in Austin, Texas without pushback. In the southeast, Covid is a distant memory. Anyone wearing a mask is seen as a freak. Since early this year, tech company engineers and non-engineers in San Francisco and Seattle are more accepting of returning to an office at least two or three times a week. Tech co’s in NYC are only now finding a portion of the office workers choosing to come in two to three times a week.
We’ll see how the new (hopefully) post-pandemic workplace shakes out. But there still are wildcards out there. There’s a fall wave predicted and who knows how many new variants are on the loose.