Staff will quit if they feel forced into the office
People required to work full-time in the office are twice as likely to resign as those able to mix their workplaces, according a new global study showing workplace choices are now governed more by work-life balance and collaboration considerations than productivity and COVID concerns.
While 9 per cent of workers with complete freedom about where they worked were actively thinking about quitting their job, as many as 19 per cent of those required in the office full-time said the same thing, according to design firm Hassell’s global survey of 2500 office workers.
The findings flag a risk for employers about being too prescriptive.
Hassell workplace researcher Daniel Davis told The Australian Financial Review: “In general, companies that require people to be back in the office full-time are more likely, based on this survey, to be seeing high levels of resignations than companies that give their employees some autonomy and flexibility.”
Demands to be present full-time in the office could reflect an occupation that requires it, or cultural expectations. And the dynamic cuts both ways. As many as 13 per cent of respondents required to work full-time from home also said they were actively thinking about quitting.
Extreme positions are the minority. Most workplaces already allow staff flexibility over their place of work. Only 6 per cent of people surveyed in Australia, Britain, the US, China and Singapore were required to work from home full-time and just 21 per cent had to work full-time in the office.
But the correlation between views on quitting and workplace style was unexpectedly strong, Mr Davis said.
“It’s unusual to see such a strong relationship,” he said. “Often when you do this kind of survey, you could be up one or two percentage [point]s, but [to be up] something like twice, it’s a pretty strong relationship.”
The findings from Hassell’s 2022 Workplace Futures Survey into workplace attitudes and behaviours lay bare the choices for employers, as changes triggered by the pandemic have led to a questioning of previously accepted practices, particularly presenteeism.
The highest-profile extremes can be seen in Tesla boss Elon Musk’s insistence that staff spend at least 40 hours a week in the office and Atlassian’s approach, which allows employees to work anywhere (although co-CEO Scott Farquhar says they still need to come in four times a year to maintain social bonds).
But the highest levels of engagement, trust in their employer and sense of belonging in an organisation came among workers who spent 60 to 80 per cent of their time in the office, while the levels for those full-time at home and full-time in the office were equally low.
“The real sweet spot here is people that are in the office 60 per cent or 80 per cent of the time,” Mr Davis said.
Arguments for and against working from home will not be settled by claims about which is more productive. Asked why they chose to work in one of the two locations, respondents cited productivity in equal measure, cancelling out the topic as a driver, the survey results show.
“Productivity is no difference, because it’s even,” Mr Davis said.
“Depending on who’s yelling loudest, we think of one of those as being a more productive workplace. But the truth is that you need both of them.”
The biggest reason for working from home, according to 40 per cent of respondents, was better work-life balance, followed simply by preference and then by fears of catching COVID-19.
The main reason people said they worked from the office was that they were required to, followed by access to materials or equipment found only in the office and then by it being easier to meet people.
But when asked what features they would want in their office, once it was safe to return, the wishlist was topped by free lunch and food, followed by fresh air from outside, access to gardens and green spaces, good coffee, distraction-free space, a private gym and space to take a nap or rest.
This showed that the office had to become more like the home working experience people had become used to, Mr Davis said.
“Working at home has developed those expectations, and then they’re taking those expectations back when they come to the office,” he said.
For all the bells and whistles a landlord or employer could put in, however, the biggest determinant of a worker’s willingness to be in the office was the length of commute they faced.
Commute length was cited as a much greater consideration, nine times that of having distraction-free space, for example, in choosing where people would work. This meant landlords couldn’t put their hope in one single measure such as fresh air access, Mr Davis said.
“It’s not like one single amenity, putting in a rooftop, is going to be enough to get people to come back to the office,” he said. “To overcome that influence of the commute, it really is a stacking up of a number of these different factors.”
The commute hurdle did not automatically make the case for smaller suburban office hubs, however.
“One of the reasons that people come back to the office was to meet other people,” Mr Davis said.
“If that’s the thing that’s attracting people back, then setting people up into a bunch of smaller suburban offices reduces the chance of that happening.”
