The below excerpts are from Industrious’ newest guide, The 30% Rule: Planning Your Team’s Return to the Office.
The pandemic has promoted a generational shift in thinking about remote work and is accelerating many organizations to move towards a hybrid workforce.
As companies begin returning teams to office, there may be some friction between employer expectations and employee preference. Most (73%) of employees would like to work remotely at least two days a week, while nearly half (43%) of executives would prefer either limited schedules or to be fully back in the office as soon as is feasible.
If you are moving forward with a hybrid workforce, a good starting point is instituting three to four days of remote work and one to two in the office — that is, having teams spend about 30% of their time in the office — as a phase one. There are a number of other factors managers should also consider when determining the schedules for their teams, including the workstyles … and individual employee:
- Personality and personal circumstances
- Type of work
- Team culture and management
- Employee experience and tenure
- Mentorship needs
- Access to technology
- Commute
- Ergonomics of home setup
While this hybrid plan will give employees a higher degree of flexibility to start with and help them prioritize office-use for the right activities, it’s also important to make sure that there is sufficient in-office interaction to support mentorship, team engagement, and company culture …. [A] workstyle framework [can] help make decisions about your team’s workforce distribution and office layout over time. This framing can also help with decision-making about the trade-offs that may need to be made across different employee needs within the organization.
Your organization may have a workstyle framework in place, but if not, the below framework can help bucket employees into one of four workstyles which will inform how much time employees will spend in the office. For some roles, being in-office may need to be mandated, but where flexibility is possible, start by dividing employees into one of two categories (30% in-office, 30% remote) and then iterate over time.
(3) Cagler, D., Faccio, E., and Ryback, E. PwC. Employee group infographic. Strategy + Business