Director of People Analytics at Perceptyx, partners with large enterprises to create employee listening and people analytics strategies
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Flattening curves, lifted restrictions and accelerated vaccinations have placed the return to office in near sight. However, with a longer-than-expected time away from the physical office during the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly two-thirds of employees have become accustomed to and want to continue working remotely, at least in part, indefinitely. This perfect storm of events has contributed to a new phenomenon for the hybrid workforce that I call “officism”: negative attitudes toward employees who continue to work remotely, even though remote employees are not necessarily less productive than their physical workplace counterparts.
Working remotely instead of going into the physical workplace is viewed unfavorably by over half of the respondents to our panel research study of more than 1,000 working Americans. Those with officism attitudes tend to believe employees are not as productive when working remotely as they are in the office, that there is more career growth and development potential to be found in the office and that co-located managers and employees have better relationships. If these views persist, it can create long-term disadvantages for the employees who want ultimate flexibility in where, when and how they work.
Members of certain demographics are more likely to harbor these officism attitudes, such as those higher up the hierarchy, especially directors and above, as compared to individual contributors. As directors and leaders tend to be the designers of return-to-office strategies and policies, their bias is an indication of lack of trust and will likely lead to less flexibility than employees want. For example, only 7% of 13.2 million current job postings are remote-friendly as of this writing. Clearly, return-to-office policies created by senior leaders are lagging employees’ desires for flexibility.
Interestingly, we’re also finding that members of Gen Z are the most eager to return to the physical workplace and may also harbor strong officism attitudes. Fresh into their careers, Gen Z employees may be particularly concerned about being distracted, unconnected and overlooked in the hybrid workplace.
Women have been identified as a highly at-risk group, professionally speaking, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it continues for the hybrid workplace. Women have been disproportionately impacted by closures and cutbacks, exiting the workplace at higher rates than men, and our research found that nearly three-quarters of women have changed their return-to-office preferences. Compared to men, women are more likely to want to work hybrid and intend to spend one day less in the office than men.
Three Tips To Curb Officism And Make Hybrid Work
At Perceptyx, we have helped our clients in designing, launching, analyzing and acting on return-to-office surveys. Collaboratively, we identify and remove barriers from culture, technology and workspace perspectives that are hindering employee engagement and productivity. Here are three tips to curb officism in your hybrid workplace.
1. Rethink performance: Point your people analytics at redefining and better measuring productivity and performance metrics that go beyond the annual supervisor ratings of performance where everyone “meets expectations.” You can start by working backward, connecting organizational success to team and individual performance. Once established, get ready to test for and bust myths around officism. Be prepared, as the top-performer profile of tomorrow may have different characteristics than the top performer from the past.
2. Career pathing: Point your people analytics at skill development, talent mobility and high potential identification. Just as you would test and ensure that protected groups of individuals have equitable opportunities, add remote workers to this list and communicate success stories of remote employees who continue to grow and develop in their careers.
3. Foster relationships: Point your people analytics at organizational network analysis and gain insights into how remote employees can build connections when not physically co-located. As hybrid transformation is well underway, also consider adding a role that is responsible for the remote employee experience and these relationships. As individual managers have created their own, unique rules and policies to cope with the abrupt shift to hybrid, teams and the broader organization risk a highly variable and disconnected experience.
Finally, companies will undoubtedly continue to create and adapt strategies to improve work, whether it be remote, hybrid or in-person. As such, it becomes increasingly important to measure these changes against the intended outcomes they are to provide. As we continue down the hybrid work path, my very best advice is to continue to actively seek and act on employee feedback, as it is the recipe for business resilience and stellar performance.
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