The pandemic threw many things out of whack for organizations and businesses, namely having staff in the offices. As the pandemic waned, these organizations are struggling to get their employees to come back to the main offices. To address this issue, Andy Yeh, principal of interiors at FOX Architects, will be presenting the session “The Return to Office Survival Guide in Today’s Hybrid World” at NFMT 2024 in Baltimore from March 12 to 14.
Facilities Net: How do you approach strategic planning when tasked with facilitating the return of the workforce to the office?
Andy Yeh: One of the challenges that many are facing is that they are not quite sure of the process and how involved it is overall. We really want to make sure that all the right stakeholders are in place when we are looking at strategic planning because these are usually business decisions that we are counseling our clients on.
So, there is a lack of clarity among the facilities folks and their C-level people, so educating them on the role that architects try to do from a planning standpoint because we are dealing with space. When we deal with space, we often must ask a lot of business questions which are along the lines of growth and projecting into the future. However, it is also how they are trying to figure out what their policy is.
We get into a lot of HR-related questions, and it is a tough one for people to answer. So, we often ask what your hybrid work policy or return to work policy is and if those are enforced. So that is the big one. People will say they have a policy of X number of days in the week, and this is how it works. Then when we ask them if it is not enforced. They will say well not really since it is kind of hard to enforce.
These are all business and policy related questions that we try to pose early on because if they cannot answer them, then we really cannot help them from a planning standpoint. So, getting everyone on the same page early on in terms of business and policy is one of those key things that we try to promote. We say let's do this first because what happens is that people will go into a planning process but not have that answer. Then when they get out of their planning process, it is like they wasted time, but they still have the same questions overall.
FN: How do you transition from being a change implementer to becoming an effective agent of change as part of the facilities management role?
Yeh: This is what we hear from many of our clients that facilities managers or directors are asked by their boss to get people back in the office and make it happen. However, they say, “I have no idea what I'm doing.” Right. A lot of the C-level people are saying to their facilities managers and directors let's prepare for getting people back to the office. Get everyone excited to come in and facilities managers are left scratching their heads.
For the facilities folks, what we are trying to counsel them on is to ask the bigger questions and then get HR or the C-level people all involved. What happens is that they are often tasked to do something, but they do not know what they are doing anymore. There is no playbook in terms of returning to work after the pandemic. No one has written that manual for anyone.
So that is where a lot of the organizations and many industries are stuck is that they had a playbook for continuity. You know the facilities director passes the playbook down to the next facilities director or the C-level person passes down the playbook to the next C-level person? No one has the game plan or the playbook for what you do now.
It takes money to figure this out, and right now no one has that necessarily. They are unwilling to commit time and money to certain things. How to transition is to be aware that you are not being asked to do something that you cannot do. Instead, how do you facilitate the new processes?
FN: What considerations and preparations would you make to ensure high employee engagement, especially given the shift towards the hybrid work model?
Yeh: This is where the data comes in for understanding your workforce and what their motivations are. We hear lots of things like making sure the design of the new space is attractive and you are attracting people back in. However, that may only work for certain parts of the population overall.
The thing that we hear sometimes is that people do not want to deal with the commute and it wastes a lot of time. They need more flexibility. So, there are a lot of different buckets there to consider so that you have a better engagement. Though, you also need to understand what the work that you are doing is.
I know people do not like to hear this, but one of the failures of people not coming back to work is enforcement. So, that is more of a failure of leadership and clarity. We can think about all the other kinds of external things such as having collaboration spaces, team functions and whatnot. However, if you cannot get people to come in consistently because you are not enforcing it, then that does not work because it is kind of just ad hoc. Shifting towards a hybrid work model just requires all new policies to be written and making a commitment to enforcing those policies.
To learn more about getting employees back in the office, be sure to check out Yeh’s session at NFMT 2024 in Baltimore. Register for NFMT here.
Jeff Wardon, Jr. is the assistant editor for the facilities market.
