COMP NEWS – A new survey indicates that a staggering 80% of executives and workplace managers regret forcing their employees back into the office.
After three years of haphazard plans for getting workers back at their desks, the return-to-office movement has entered a phase of remorse.
A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office decisions and say they would have approached their plans differently if they had a better understanding of employees’ office attendance, their usage of office amenities and other related factors, according to new research from Envoy.
“Many companies are realizing they could have been a lot more measured in their approach, rather than making big, bold, very controversial decisions based on executives’ opinions rather than employee data,” Larry Gadea, Envoy’s CEO and founder, tells CNBC Make It.
Envoy interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. company executives and workplace managers who work in-person at least one day per week.
Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now.
Though many regret bringing employees back into the office, some have made peace with their employees by including them in the planning of hybrid work styles.
The companies that are seeing the most success with returning to the office appear to be the ones that are making decisions with their employees, rather than for them.
Take Ernst & Young, for example.
The global accounting and consulting firm weathered some employee criticism for its initial return-to-office announcement in June 2021, when the firm told employees that they would be encouraged to spend 40-60% of their time in the office.
Their plan was put on pause through the end of the year as Covid-19 cases ticked up once again throughout the U.S., so EY leaders used that time to ask employees about their reluctance to come into the office.
Common threads stood out to Frank Giampietro, EY’s chief wellbeing officer for the Americas: Employees weren’t sure what to do about pet care or child care.
In response, EY announced a fund in February 2022 to reimburse up to $800 per year for commuting, pet care and dependent care costs for each of its 55,000-plus U.S. employees.
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