We have lived in the pandemic era for about two years now, and it goes without saying how much our lives have changed both in our personal and professional lives. Especially for some of you at work, it might have been a few years since you have seen your colleagues in person! With accelerated medical advancements and more countries opening up slowly, we have also seen more people come back to the office. Now, it might be another difficult shift to get your employees back to the office, having experienced the comfort of working from home for so long.

 

In this article, we will be giving you a few ideas you can try out to encourage your employees to come back to the office for work. Keep reading to find out more!

1. Opt for Hybrid Work Arrangement 

This is the trend that most companies are opting for, and what many employees are showing preference for. A return to work statistics report by Accenture actually showed that 83% of the respondents said that employing a hybrid model is optimal. Employees will be happy to have the option of working from home, which will naturally entice them to go to the office as well. 

 

Since the office is not the only place to have work done anymore, desk space in the office can be reduced as employees can share desks, and unused office space can be reassigned for creative and social purposes. Actually 66% of leaders say their company is considering redesigning office space for hybrid work (source from Work Trend Index survey *).

 

Our FLYDESK app is a great tool to help you with that rotation and booking on your own office to make sure space is used in an optimised way. Companies can see the opportunity here to move to smaller office spaces and cut in office costs!

 

Furthermore, you can also consider expanding the workspace and make use of coworking spaces for employees to do their work. Coworking spaces are great to not only bring a fresh change of environment, but also useful to complement your office space with more creative spaces for you to meet with your team! FLYDESK offers a large selection of coworking spaces for your additional workspace needs.

 

2. Optimise Your Workspace by Adding in Phone booths and Meeting Pods

Compartmentalise your office space and give it a new look! This can get employees excited to come back to the office to check out new space. You can do this by adding phone booths and meeting pods – this can optimize space in your office and also give your employees a private space to carry out their calls or conduct their meetings, free of distractions.

 

You can check out our curated list of phone booths and meeting pod manufacturers in these two articles depending if you are based in Europe or in other parts of the world, or you can check out FLYDESK Pods and pick the best one that suits your company needs.

3. Stay Organised – Plan Your Employee’s Work Schedule

One of the concerns that comes with hybrid work arrangement and flexible workspace arrangement is keeping up with the schedule. It could be difficult to keep track of employees alternating between home and office, and it is vital to make sure everybody knows where everybody is working from. 

 

As such, one thing you can do is to plan how employees will be returning back to the office, be it alternate weeks, or a few times a week, and find a way to make everyone’s schedules visible to each other. That way, employees would know who will be coming back to the office, so if they need to arrange for a meeting with their colleagues, they know when to schedule their visit to the office.

 

Our FLYDESK Hybrid Work App also offers a planning feature which helps you do exactly that – keep track of everyone’s schedules, and it even offers working habit analytics which could be useful for you as a company for extra insights about your team working habits.

 

4. Don’t forget about Employee Welfare!

When everything was online, many employers put off their usual employee welfare activities on hold – for some, it was a measure of cutting costs when the pandemic first hit. For others, it could be to minimise physical contact as some of the benefits included physical events.

 

With everything slowly re-opening, it is time to bring back employee welfare back into the office! Start by ensuring that your office pantry is restocked, fill it with treats such as fresh fruits and snacks, tea and coffee. You can also entice your employees to come back to the office by offering free vouchers for dining near your office, waive transportation costs to come to the office – and so on!

 

A survey by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) has shown that 80% of the respondents preferred to stay in a job with benefits rather than take one that offered more pay and no benefits. This definitely highlights how important it is to make sure there is employee welfare and benefits provided for your employees.

 

Offering benefits to your employees will not just serve as a way to encourage them to come back to the office, but it also makes them feel valued and appreciated!

 

5. Host Physical Events 

You can encourage employees to use the office space for work-related events such as meetings and seminars. After all, sometimes having physical discussions and brainstorming sessions could be more productive than doing it virtually and 67% of the employees has expressed they want more in person work or collaboration post – pandemic ( source from Work Trend Index survey *)

 

The events could also be social and company-wide events. You can consider implementing group exercise classes for well-being, such as lunchtime Yoga or even fun activities such as book clubs or chess clubs! If you are planning to revamp your workspace to include open areas, you can consider using that for such events. 

 

It could be difficult to attract your employees back to the office after they have experienced a taste of the comfortable work from home lifestyle. Ultimately, in order to ensure teamwork and build rapport among your employees, you need to put in effort to bring back the company culture. We hope this article provided you with some ideas on how to do that.

 

At the same time, we at FLYDESK offer many solutions to support hybrid working as well as flexible work solutions.To find out more about the solution that works best for your company, contact us at FLYDESK today!

 

*The Work Trend Index survey was conducted by an independent research firm, Edelman Data x Intelligence, among 31,092 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets between January 12, 2021 to January 25, 2021.