The benefits of onboarding are well documented: higher employee engagement, faster time to proficiency, increased productivity, and lower turnover, to name a few.

But the world of work has changed dramatically in the last two years, and traditional onboarding isn’t enough to support the new hybrid workforce. Pre-employment onboarding is a better strategy for the modern office, especially those with hybrid or remote models. 

What is pre-employment onboarding?

Pre-employment onboarding, or pre-boarding, happens between the time a new hire accepts the job offer and their official start day. During this time, new employees tackle many traditional first-day tasks, such as completing tax forms, reviewing the employee handbook, and setting up accounts for company email and software. 

Why waste a new hire’s enthusiasm and energy on a mountain of tasks that don’t move your company forward? It’s more efficient to get those out of the way early, so your employee can hit the ground running on their first day. 

In addition to being a more effective use of time, pre-boarding can also guard against ghosting. The longer you wait between the words “you’re hired” and the start of onboarding, the higher your chance of being ghosted. Considering that 65% of employers report hiring people who never show up, getting your new employees engaged immediately is essential.

Why hybrid offices need pre-employment onboarding

Pre-boarding is great for all types of companies, but it can be especially useful for hybrid offices. Hybrid is hugely in demand from employees, and it offers many great benefits for businesses; however, it does come with unique onboarding challenges:

• It can be harder for new employees to integrate into a hybrid office. With employees’ varying in-office schedules, the new worker may never be in the office at the same time as many of their colleagues. 
• Information overload is more likely to go unnoticed. In a physical office setting, it’s easy for an onboarder to recognize the deer-in-headlights look of an overwhelmed new hire, and they can slow things down, reassure the worker, and repeat any missed information. In a virtual setting, it’s unlikely anyone will notice that the new employee is feeling stressed or confused, so there’s no opportunity to reset and ensure the experience stays positive.
• IT issues plague virtual onboarding. 90% of new hires experience IT problems during remote onboarding. When tech issues happen in the office, it’s easy for a new employee to find someone to help or switch to an analog task. In a remote environment, everything depends on technology, so the worker is left anxiously twiddling their thumbs while they wait for IT to work its magic. 

Pre-employment onboarding can address these problems by providing valuable adjustment time before a new hire’s official start date. In traditional onboarding, there’s often an unstated but ever-present expectation to get these tasks done quickly so the new hire can move on to their real work. Tech problems and information overload have less impact during pre-boarding because there’s no time pressure. 

Pre-boarding also gives new employees more time to get to know their colleagues before they’re expected to start seamlessly collaborating with them. When done right, pre-employment onboarding provides ample opportunities for new hires to begin integrating into the team well before their first official day on the job.

6 pre-employment onboarding ideas for hybrid companies 

1. Send your team a message about their new colleague. Informing people about a new hire lays important groundwork for team integration. Include a little personal background information about the new employee, detail the role they’ll be filling, and invite colleagues to reach out with personalized welcome messages. 
2. Let the new hire meet their colleagues, either in a physical or virtual setting. The goal is to have them meet the people they’ll be interacting with regularly so they can start to form connections. This can take the form of a team Zoom chat or a meetup at a local restaurant for lunch. This may seem like a small gesture, but it can impact how valued a new hire feels.
3. Create a welcome kit. Starting a new job comes with countless little questions that can lead to a lot of stress. A welcome kit answers these and helps put workers at ease. A great way to identify the best information to include in your welcome kit is to poll current employees about what they wish they’d known when they first started.  A few ideas: Let new hires know how to get into the building on their first day, what time to “clock in” when working virtually, whom to contact if they have IT problems, and etiquette for communication channels (e.g., Slack for quick questions and socialization, email or video for complex discussions).
4. Create a pre-employment onboarding schedule. During pre-boarding, new hires are likely still finishing their notices at former jobs. It’s important to clearly outline what days and times pre-boarding will happen and whether it will be virtual or in-office. Set expectations by letting them know what tasks and topics you’ll cover at each session. 
5. Get paperwork out of the way. Don’t waste your new hire’s first-day energy and enthusiasm on administrative tasks. During pre-boarding, have them complete their paperwork, set them up with a company email and business tools such as Slack or Google Drive, and go over the employee handbook.
6. Assign new employees a mentor or buddy. The virtual aspects of onboarding can leave hybrid workers feeling isolated and forgotten. Assigning a mentor to stick with new hires from pre-boarding through the first several weeks of work ensures that they always have someone to reach out to, whether they have a question or just need a connection to remind them they’re part of a team. 

Microsoft introduced the “buddy” system and has seen remarkable results; 86% of new hires who met with their buddy between four and eight times during onboarding reported feeling more productive in their roles.

In this competitive labor market, hybrid companies need to maximize the effectiveness of their onboarding processes. Moving from traditional to pre-boarding can help prevent new hires from ghosting, get them up to speed more quickly, and help reduce exorbitant turnover costs. The tips above can help you create a positive pre-employment onboarding experience that will engage workers and get them to proficiency quickly.

Workplace experience surveys give your employees a voice, allowing them to shape their work environment. When you optimize the workplace experience, you raise morale, increase engagement, and improve retention, all of which are crucial to maintaining a successful business. 

There are several best practices for workplace experience surveys that ensure you receive quality feedback. We’ve put together a checklist of eight tips to help you create a positive and effective employee experience survey.

8 tips for designing effective employee surveys

1. A good survey experience begins with your company culture. Your company culture plays a decisive role in how comfortable your employees feel being honest with their opinions. Honest responses are essential to developing office design and effective workplace strategies. Establish an environment where constructive criticism is valued by all levels of leadership. With that in place, you’ll reduce the effects of social desirability bias, which occurs when respondents give you the answers they think you want to hear.
2. Allow employees to answer surveys anonymously. Even in the most supportive company culture, employees may still feel uncomfortable being completely honest with their feedback. Giving them the benefit of anonymity will help you collect the most accurate and helpful information.
3. Be transparent about your goals for the survey. Employees will be more likely to provide thoughtful answers if they know how the survey results will affect them. Emphasize that the workplace experience survey helps your team create a work environment that supports everyone.
4. Provide free-form areas for additional feedback on questions. Allowing employees to provide context about their answers can provide priceless insights and ideas for your team. Surveys with open response areas require more time to evaluate than straightforward multiple choice answers, but the potential for higher quality data is worth the extra time investment. 
5. Include definitions to clarify terms. Everyone must be on the same page about what specific terms mean in the survey. Let’s say you asked, “Do you feel that your manager is accessible and supportive?” An employee who reports to both an assistant and senior manager may not know how to answer. You can address this by stating at the start of the survey that all questions about “managers” refer to your most senior manager.
6. Be transparent about survey results and anticipated changes. Employees will grow tired of putting effort into survey feedback if they don’t see any changes to the status quo. You don’t have to have a concrete plan before informing employees about the direction you’re looking at. Here is an example post-survey script: “Thank you for completing our hybrid work survey. Your thoughtful feedback allowed us to see that we have some work to do in areas of equitable experiences between in-office and remote workers. We are developing new strategies to improve the hybrid experience for all workers and will keep you informed of anticipated changes.”
7. Avoid survey fatigue by keeping surveys under 10 minutes long. Surveys longer than this often have high dropout rates. Eliminate repetitive questions or ones you can answer with existing organizational data. Also, let people know how long you expect the survey to take. This makes it easier for employees to work the survey into their schedules.
8. Do surveys more than once a year. Attitudes and opinions can change quickly in the workplace, and it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of the employee experience. Consider conducting workplace experience surveys quarterly or every six months. This will keep your data fresh and allow you to identify trends more quickly than you could with an annual survey.

Example questions for your workplace experience survey

Your survey questions should be tailored to your end goal, so it’s important to nail down the core objective first. Do you want to know how the workplace is performing overall, or are you trying to determine how certain policies are working out? The specific questions you need will depend on your survey goal; however, you can find inspiration for survey questions below.

• Do you feel like you can be your true self in the workplace?
• Do you feel that employee well-being is prioritized in the office?
• Would you recommend our organization as a good place to work?
• Do you have the technology and equipment you need to work remotely?
• Are you physically comfortable in the office?
• Do you feel empowered to reconfigure a workspace to fit your needs?
• Are you satisfied with the number of conference rooms in the office?
• Is there any additional information you’d like to share about your workplace experience?
• Does the hot desking system support your workstation needs?

Use these sample questions and the tips above to help your workplace team create an effective employee survey. The more feedback and data you can collect about the office, the more tailored and successful a workplace you can create.

Adopting a hybrid work model isn’t a “follow this playbook” strategy. There are many types of hybrid work — not all types will work for you.

To build the best hybrid work model for your team, your company culture, and your organization’s long-term goals, you must first get familiar with the many options in front of you.

Office-centric hybrid

What: Office-centric hybrid lets employees work from home as long as they visit the physical office space a number of days per week.

Why: To provide some flexibility without sacrificing serendipity and the human touch. It’s the lowest rung on the hybrid ladder and can either be a welcome policy or a dealbreaker for employees, depending on how you roll it out.

Digging deeper

Studies have shown that having employees come into the office once or twice per workweek is a sweet spot that limits stress and makes returning to the office more appealing to your employees.

An office-centric hybrid strategy can work but your employees need to be able to justify the gains from working onsite several days a week. In many cases, they can’t.

Flexible hybrid

What: An office exists and employees are free to walk in at will but there’s no strict policy demanding that they do.

Why: A flexible hybrid approach is a step ahead of an office-centric model and it offers employees more control over their time.

Digging Deeper

A flexible hybrid strategy works when a company is willing to invest in the technology that makes communication and collaboration possible and as well, design policies to guide the switch.

After nearly two years of working fully remotely, Twitter reopened its offices on March 15, 2022, in a push for a flexible hybrid policy. All employees are still fully remote and they’re not required to work onsite —they just have the option of visiting whenever they feel like it.

Remote-friendly hybrid

What: A remote-friendly hybrid strategy is essentially the same as the flexible hybrid approach we discussed above, but in this case, companies prioritize asynchronous working and there are no strict working hours.

Why: Remote-friendly hybrid work is built on trust and is designed to help teams achieve better work-life balance, whether they choose to meet or work remotely 100%. A remote-friendly model can come in handy when you have a global workforce across different time zones who can’t possibly check in every day.

Digging Deeper

Employees are only required to be accountable to their teams and meet reasonable deadlines so that work can go ahead, no matter their timezone or where they’re located in the world.

Asynchronous work radically opposes the industrial revolution office culture, and as Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic (fully distributed since 2005, with no offices since 2017) puts it, “your customer is not buying how many hours a day people are at their desk. People don’t want a drill, they want a hole in the wall. The old model of work wasted people’s time.”

Remote-first

What: Deviating from a hybrid model, remote-first refers to a workplace where working remotely is the default and companies come to depend on asynchronous communication tools and systems to stay in touch.

Why: Remote-first is the future and it aims to drive productivity without making work the center of an employee’s life. Research shows that remote-first teams are better engaged and ultimately more productive, which in no small part is thanks to an employee-friendly work experience.

Digging Deeper

Notable examples of remote-first companies include Gitlab, Basecamp, Google alternative DuckDuckGo, Toptal, and Buffer. 

Gitlab has been fully remote since 2013 when co-founders Dmitriy Zaporozhets (based in Ukraine) and Sid Sijbrandij (Netherlands) started building a company around an open-source project.

Nine years later, Gitlab is a publicly-traded company valued at $6.71 billion, powered by 1,500+ employees across the globe — and still has no physical office.

Likewise, Buffer’s team of 85 is currently distributed across seven time zones spanning 12 hours and crossed $19.7 million in annual recurring revenue in 2021. 

The benefits of a hybrid workplace strategy

No matter the strategy you choose, hybrid work offers a variety of benefits.

Increase employee engagement

Hybrid work may reduce the number of hours employees spend on work every day. But it manages to increase productivity while doing that.

Why? If employees can find a balance between their personal and work lives, they can dedicate more bandwidth to their careers and get more done in less time.

Reduce turnover & boost retention rates

Millions of workers are willing to quit if a job doesn’t offer enough flexibility to suit their lifestyle.

Millions of workers are willing to quit if a job doesn’t offer enough flexibility to suit their lifestyle.

Business Insider

Hybrid work helps you compete in a labor market where employees are willing to take a cut in pay to work more flexibly.

Tackle burnout & help staff build better work-life balance

Onsite work ticks all the boxes necessary for employee burnout.

The flexibility hybrid work offers can help your employees take back control of their time, set better boundaries, and achieve more work-life balance.

Save on real estate & onsite utilities

Companies spend anywhere from 2 – 20% on real estate for workspaces.

When you factor in lunches, furniture, gigabit internet, etc. the numbers can look more substantial. 

A hybrid workforce will eventually come to rely less and less on physical offices as everyone switches to their preferred work style and as a result, you get to save on rent and utilities.

Making the switch

Be intentional about tackling proximity bias

Proximity bias is the idea that employees who work onsite will be perceived as more productive, responsive, and dedicated, and will have better chances of getting promoted and advancing in their careers.

Hybrid doesn’t work if your remote employees can’t expect fair footing with those working onsite.

Engage employees in the decision-making process

No matter how eloquent your plans to switch to a hybrid model sound, eventually, what matters is the changes it brings about in your company’s culture and your employees’ lifestyles.

You need to use employees’ feedback to keep refining your hybrid work policies to achieve your desired ends.

Measure your performance and double down on what’s working

Performance assessment starts with asking the right questions to help you understand how your hybrid work policies are affecting your employees (remote workers and their onsite colleagues alike), company culture, productivity, and general employee satisfaction.

This includes questions like:

• How quickly are action items getting completed?
• Has productivity increased or dropped since your switch to hybrid?
• Are employees reporting better work-life balance? Or do you still have managers sending messages over Slack at 10 PM Friday night?
• Are employees comfortable unplugging from time to time, or will they face passive aggression for not being “committed enough” to the team?
• Do you factor in each team member’s time zone when planning meetings or do certain team members have to jump out of bed by 4 AM to catch up on daily standups?

Invest in asynchronous communications tools, systems, and culture.

The evidence points to the fact that asynchronous communication helps build a better employee experience in the workplace. But there’s more to it than yet another SaaS license.

Signing up for Loom is the easy part, but designing a culture where it’s okay to reply to messages an hour later rather than mashing up your keyboard right away takes more work.

An asynchronous culture includes letting employees design their work schedules, choosing video conferencing and recorded messages over real-time, onsite meetings, and letting hybrid workers optimize for their well-being with flexible working hours.

Stick to the fundamentals of hybrid work

These fundamentals include:

• Trust
• Assuming good intentions
• A commitment to privacy
• Giving onsite and remote employees equal footing and opportunities for growth, and
• Providing feedback proactively

Build a culture of feedback & set clear expectations

Create onboarding documentation that clearly defines how quickly to manage check-ins, reiterate ideas, reply to messages, take time off, share feedback on projects, etc.

Hybrid work arrangements often fail because boundaries are not clearly defined and employees have to figure it out themselves. As a result, employees and managers have to figure out how to navigate team building alongside their full-time work.

For a hybrid work environment to truly work, you need to design inclusive, yet enforceable policies for how colleagues should communicate, handle deadlines, ship deliverables, and manage their workload, both inside and outside the office space.

There are six core benefits to incorporating workplace utilization in your workplace strategy:

1. Reduces costs — Facility managers and executives concerned about reducing square footage need to know what space is underutilized. Underutilized space can be repurposed to fit a new need or downsized to cut costs.
2. Improves portfolio management — Workplace utilization tools (like Density) offer deep insight into portfolio management and how every square foot is used. Cost-saving changes such as moving to a hot-desking model can be tested in one office, and if successful, applied across the entire portfolio for additional savings.
3. Simplifies space planning — Occupancy data can help you design more efficient office spaces and policies by tracking utilization trends and providing real-time information. You can make on-the-spot modifications to address a bottleneck, or you can use trends to guide future planning.
4. Improves the workplace experience — Understanding your space allows you to make informed decisions about workstation ratios, the best amenities to offer, and when you need to expand your space. These all improve the workplace experience, which in turn can boost employee engagement and retention.
5. Validates needs — Employees are always asking for things, but knowing how they use your space tells facilities managers what they actually need. 
6. Supports sustainability — Utilization data can help your workplace go green by identifying areas where you can cut utility usage or repurpose space instead of expanding your square footage. Eco-friendly practices like these are becoming increasingly important to workers, and they offer a strategic advantage for recruitment and retention. 

This article will cover four important metrics to measure and highlight several examples of how teams use workplace utilization data to make data-driven space decisions.

4 space utilization metrics to measure — and how to improve them

The building utilization metrics below provide insight into how employees use your space and whether it performs as needed. You can apply these metrics at every scale — from an entire portfolio to a specific workstation — to make informed decisions that optimize your space planning.

Peak occupancy

Peak occupancy is an important metric that identifies the days and times your space is busiest. You can track peak occupancy for the building or individual areas. Understanding the peaks and valleys of your space occupancy means you can make changes as needed to ensure the work environment can meet the demand for dedicated desks, quiet rooms, and other office resources.

Optimization tip

If demand exceeds supply, consider making schedule adjustments to level out occupancy throughout the week. This ensures better resource allocation and keeps the office operating smoothly.

For example, a hybrid office could designate particular days for each team to come in for collaborative work. Instead of sales, marketing, and design all converging in the office on Wednesdays, you could have sales on Tuesday, marketing on Wednesday, and design on Thursday. (Try not to assign Fridays as any team’s in-office day. Historically, Friday is the least productive workday.)

If you want to allow teams to maintain more flexibility while still balancing supply and demand, you can use scheduling software that allows them to see which days and times the office resources they need are available. 

Average utilization

The average utilization rate of your office indicates the typical amount of time employees use the space you’re measuring. The higher the average utilization, the more value you get for that space. 

To calculate average office space utilization, take the total number of employees present in the space, divide it by your office capacity, and average it across your given time frame.

Let’s say you want to find out which day of the week your office typically has the best utilization rate. Looking at every weekday in turn, calculate the utilization rate for each hour and average it across the entire workday. You’ll be able to see the average utilization for each day and pinpoint the days that see the most activity. 

Optimization tip

This metric is where the “efficiency versus experience” tension happens. You don’t want square footage and resources that are paid for to go unused, but you also have to consider the employee experience. Employees don’t want to feel crowded or have to fight for last-minute meeting room space. If you hit your average utilization benchmark, that’s a great time to do an employee feedback survey to find out how workers rate the experience.

When determining average utilization for your workplace, remember to compare the occupancy rate against the total usable space capacity. Including square footage that’s not usable office space, such as an elevator or electrical room, will give you an inaccurate picture of your utilization. 

High-traffic areas

It’s important to know where your high-traffic areas are and when they see the highest number of people. These areas will need more frequent cleaning, maintenance, or inventory (depending on the type of space) to keep them hygienic and functioning as needed.

Optimization tip

People vote with their feet for the areas they like or find useful, so high-traffic areas can also show you what spaces, resources, and amenities your employees value. These are the areas worth investing in. For example, if the kitchen sees nonstop traffic from employees in search of a snack or another cup of coffee, that’s clearly an amenity that workers value. Keeping the kitchen clean and well stocked will optimize this amenity for your teams.

Meeting room and desk utilization

For an optimal workplace experience, employees need reliable access to conference rooms, dedicated desks, and collaboration spaces. Monitoring utilization for these areas of the office will let you know if they’re underperforming (a sign that you need to make changes) or if there isn’t a satisfactory ratio of employees to workstations. 

To determine utilization rates for specific workspaces in the office, take the total number of occupied meeting rooms or desks on a given day and divide it by the total number of those particular spaces. Review this data to find out how each type of space is performing.

Optimization tip

Many companies are seeing a trend of ghost or zombie meetings. Ghost meetings are those that are scheduled but no one attends. These ghost meetings turn into zombies when they’re set as recurring reservations that were later deemed unnecessary — but no one remembered to cancel them. 

If your reservation software shows higher utilization than your occupancy data reveals, you’re dealing with these ghoulish non-meetings. This leads to valuable resources going to waste, not to mention frustrated employees who can’t book the meeting spaces they want. To remedy this, set a time limit for check-ins. If no one checks in within 10 minutes of the reservation time, the room or desk is automatically freed up for others to use.

Checking your meeting space utilization metrics can also help you identify the most popular rooms. Once you know this, you can begin extrapolating the “why” behind it with a quick game of “spot the difference.” Does it have newer technology than the other rooms? Are there more soft seating options? Is it closest to the snack bar? Use this information to improve the meeting rooms that are underperforming.

Additional tips to optimize your workplace utilization

• Let technology do the heavy lifting. Technologies such as occupancy sensors and space management software are a faster and more accurate way to see how your space is performing. They’re also the only way for facilities managers to get real-time data for a large area. 
• A/B test your space. Not every change in office policies or floor plans is going to be a winner. Use A/B testing to find out which updates lead to increased utilization. 
• Get feedback from employees. Space utilization is about more than reducing expenses and optimizing every square foot of real estate. You also have to consider the workplace experience for employees. Seeking their feedback provides valuable context to your data, and it shows workers that their office experience matters. 
• Be mindful of trends. Use historical utilization data to see days when office occupancy has peaked in the past. This can help you project everything from inventory to staffing for those peak days. 
• Offer amenities employees want. If your office occupancy is low, you’re not getting the value you need from your space. If downsizing isn’t an option, focus on enticing employees into the office with popular amenities such as commuter programs and free lunches.

Key takeaways

• Employees want both location and schedule flexibility, but they value flexible schedules the most.
• Create flexible policies that balance your business needs and your employees’ needs. If you can’t offer total flexibility, look for areas where you can make policies a little more flexible for workers. Some are better than none when it comes to flex policies.
• Flexible work conditions provide a range of benefits for both employees and employers.

Flexible work options are a dealbreaker for employees

Employees wanting flexible work conditions isn’t a new thing. 

In 2016, 62% of workers said they would turn down a job that didn’t offer any flexibility. But in 2016, it was still an employer’s market. If workers left because they weren’t happy with company policies, plenty of candidates were available to replace them.

That’s not the case anymore. Now employees hold all the cards. 

Companies are scrambling to attract and retain talent, and workers can ask for what they’ve always wanted: flexible work policies. This bucks tradition, so it’s easy to understand why some organizations might see giving in to flex demands as losing valuable control. But there’s a better way to look at it. 

Here’s what can happen when employers move to flexible work options:

• Improve recruitment. 95% of employees say they want flexibility at work. Updating your policies to accommodate this is an inexpensive way to massively improve your company’s appeal to job candidates. 
• Reduce turnover. Policies that cater to workers’ needs create an unbeatable employee experience, ensuring workers want to stay with your company long-term.
• Increase productivity. When employees can skip their long, stressful commutes, they have more energy to put into their work. 43% of workers report that flexible work hours enabled them to be more productive. 
• Reduce sick days. Flexible policies give employees more opportunities to spend time with family or focus on their mental and physical well-being. This healthier work-life balance can help reduce the number of days an employee can’t work due to illness.
• Repurpose real estate or downsize. Flex policies often come with office design or real estate changes. Dedicated desks can be repurposed into collaborative or social spaces. You may even find that you can reduce your real estate footprint and net huge savings on office space.

To help your company move in the right direction, we’ll break down the differences between flexible and hybrid policies and explore three companies getting flex right.

95% of employees say they want flexibility at work.

Future Forum

Flex and hybrid work aren’t the same

There’s some confusion around the terms “flexible” and “hybrid” work. It’s important to understand the distinctions because one is more highly sought after than the other. Future Forum has the numbers — 78% of workers want location flexibility (aka hybrid), and 95% want schedule flexibility.

Hybrid work:

• Focused on location flexibility only
• Employees split their work between the office and another location, typically a home office or coworking space
• Employers dictate location flexibility rather than the employees 

Example of a hybrid policy: A company decides to allow employees to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. 

Why it falls short: While this is more flexible than not having a work-from-home option, it still doesn’t fall into the realm of the true flexibility employees want. With this policy, workers have to customize their schedules to fit the rule rather than have the leeway to choose what works best for them.

Flexible work:

• Empowers employees to customize their schedules to suit their individual needs
• Often includes flexibility for location as well
• Takes an employee-first approach wherever possible

Example of a flexible policy: A company adopts a results-only work environment (ROWE), meaning an employee’s performance is based on their results rather than how many hours they worked.

Why it works: ROWE provides the ultimate flexibility for employees. They can choose when, where, and how to do their best work. Each individual’s schedule and preferences can be met, meaning everyone is satisfied. 

4 great flex policy examples from companies doing it right

1. Treat employees as individuals

Sodexo prioritizes the work-life balance, and their flex philosophy is to go with the FLOW. FLOW, which stands for Flexibility Optimizes Work, is Sodexo’s version of ROWE. The policy allows employees to choose their work hours and locations based on individual needs. The company encourages managers to keep open lines of communication, so employees always feel comfortable asking for what they need or sharing feedback. 

For Sodexo, flexible work policies have clear company benefits. Their website states that “when employers demonstrate respect in this way, employees gain a greater sense of well-being, which enables higher levels of engagement, loyalty, and productivity.” 

2. Have comprehensive and easy-to-understand guidelines

Moving from a traditional work model to a flexible one is a big change, and it can lead to confusion and stress if it’s not done right. MIT avoids misunderstandings about its flex policies by having clear, documented guidelines for employees. The document identifies who approves flex work arrangements, expectations for productivity, and special considerations such as what employees should do if they’re working alone on site.

3. Create reasonable limits based on your business needs

Every business is different, and it’s okay if yours can’t adopt a policy as flexible as Sodexo’s FLOW. There is room for some flexibility in almost every company. San Mateo County is a great example of finding ways to cater to employees’ flexibility needs without disrupting business services.

San Mateo County was way ahead of the hybrid and flex work curve, with memos about alternate work policies dating back to 1985. While it’s clear they’re fully on board with the flex work revolution, the organization has limits in place to ensure their business needs are met such as maintaining office hours for customers. They encourage departments to create “core” hours where employees must be in the office. Outside of these hours, workers can customize their schedules to suit their needs.

4. Think beyond basic schedule flexibility

San Mateo County is also notable for its voluntary time off (VTO) option. This program lets employees reduce their work hours between 1% and 20% and adjusts their pay accordingly. Employees can request VTO for any reason, whether it’s to care for a sick family member or take a personal enrichment class. This flex option allows employees to reduce their workloads when needed without losing their jobs.

Employees want control 

Many companies have embraced hybrid work models as a way to offer employees more flexibility. While that’s a great start, it falls short of reaching the level of flexibility workers really want. Employees want to have at least some control over their work hours so that they can create healthier work-life balances and work when they’re at their best. Organizations that cater to this can expect to see just as many benefits as their workers do.

Companies are facing a dilemma in the aftermath of the pandemic.

After trying out remote work unexpectedly, many are choosing to either revert back to normal, or try a combination of both styles.

In-office: Companies like Tesla, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are pushing for their staff to return to the office 9 – 5 as usual. Workers hate it, it drives up costs (real estate), it’s arguably worse for the environment, and it leads to higher staff turnover. In fact, an estimated 40% of American employees may quit their jobs if they are required to stop working remotely.

Remote: Others, like Twitter, Brex, and Gitlab have switched to working remotely full-time while companies like Buffer and Automattic have actually worked remotely since pre-pandemic days.

There’s no doubt that employees love working remotely, and according to this survey by Mercer, 94% of companies report that their productivity either increased (27%) or at least didn’t drop (67%) when they tried a fully remote, or remote-first setup.

While working remotely might be the future of work, it can tamper with employees’ work-life balance, and get them rushing out of bed at odd hours for Zoom meetings with peers in other time zones, as well as create emotional and psychological stress.

Hybrid: The hybrid work model is the middle way, and there are many ways to slice it. We have brands like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Twitter that have switched to this working model where employees split their time between a physical office and working remotely.

Hybrid work balances the gains of going remote and working face-to-face but may contribute to the already-problematic workplace issue of proximity bias.

What is proximity bias?

Proximity bias is the idea that office workers will be perceived as more productive, creative, committed, and loyal to a company’s vision, their team, and the leadership, and will consequently have more opportunities to advance in their career.

Proximity bias also manifests itself in more privileges offered to onsite employees, such as catered lunches, more 1:1 feedback sessions, more favorable performance reviews, raises, bonuses, etc.

Human psychology is wired to build kinship with those closest to us — it’s the halo effect, a cognitive bias where one or more of an individual’s positive qualities skews our perception of them as a whole.

In this case, workers who check into an office (or more often) create an appearance of being more committed to the company, mindful, and willing to sacrifice: proximity highlights the strengths of workers in the immediate vicinity so that they get preferential treatment over their remote counterparts.

Proximity bias also tends to get leadership to diminish the weaknesses of their office workers while doing the reverse for remote workers.

How does proximity bias manifest itself in the hybrid workplace?

There are many ways proximity bias promotes favoritism and preferential treatment towards office workers, at the expense of remote employees, such as:

Exclusive benefits and perks

This includes catered lunches, child care assistance, fitness and wellness memberships, etc., which may be made available to office workers while little thought is given to remote employees.

Performance evaluations & promotions

Remote employees may get fewer check-ins & follow-ups than their office-based counterparts.

That asymmetry creates conditions where in-office employees have more opportunities to impress leadership and advance up the career ladder faster.

A 2015 Stanford Graduate School of Business study reveals that remote workers are less likely to be promoted, even though they’re on average 15% more productive than office workers.

On the other hand, 37.8% of employees who quit their jobs do so to pursue better career prospects.

If you put those two situations together like it often happens in hybrid workplaces, the conditions are ripe for a perfect storm: leadership in hybrid companies are more reluctant to recognize remote workers, who in turn are willing to quit if they’re not compensated fairly.

Raises & bonuses

Promotions are the easiest way to get a bump in pay. The second way up is to handle high-stakes projects that have more visibility & impact more departments.

Both determiners tend to be biased against remote workers.

Office workers are closer to the action and can volunteer (or even be assigned) more readily to tackle high-impact projects (with the required resources provided, few questions asked) that will get them more raises and bonuses. Remote workers, not so much.

Compensation

Lately, we’ve also seen companies of all sizes threaten to cut remote worker salaries, reasoning that not commuting offers them advantages that should be curtailed with a cut in pay.

A few months into the pandemic, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will reduce the salaries of workers who intend to move to cheaper locations. Google & Twitter have also stated that remote workers who leave San Francisco will have their paychecks reduced — up to 25% in Google’s case.

44% of remote workers may be willing to take a 10% cut in pay (according to this poll) to work from home permanently, but a 25% cut or higher might just be pushing it.

Faster information flow and easier access to resources

There’s only so much you can discuss via Slack or video conferencing.

In-office employees often encounter less friction with engaging their peers and superiors, getting their perspective on projects and assignments, requisitioning company resources, and cutting through bureaucratic red tape.

Overwork & burnout

It’s no longer news that remote work promotes burnout.

Remote workers don’t want to be seen to be letting the team down so they put in extra hours, especially since they have to try and measure up to their office-based coworkers who leadership believes are working harder anyway.

69% of remote workers surveyed during the pandemic said they were burnt out.

To get a better idea of how remote work affected that figure, we looked back to figures from 2019 and saw that it was significantly lower, or 23% — according to Forbes.

So, in just a year, burnout and stress jumped 200%, thanks to the need for remote workers to go the extra mile to prove their worth.

Office-based employees are perceived as more hardworking and productive; to catch up and get a level playing field, remote workers are working more hours on bigger and harder projects and it’s burning them out.

How to tackle proximity bias in a hybrid workplace

Proximity bias may develop subconsciously or without any prior thought. It just happens. But you need to work out a strategy for tackling it and giving your remote workers a level playing field with those based onsite.

Make your hybrid strategy remote-first

Research shows that coming into the office just one or two days per week is the sweet spot. So then, make it the default so that employees, managers, and even C Suite staff can’t use their office presence as an unfair advantage.

In extreme cases, you might consider capping the number of days employees can check into the office.

Have leadership set an example

For instance, while announcing Quora’s switch to a remote-first model, CEO Adam D’Angelo stated he wouldn’t spend more than a day in the office every month, and that leadership teams wouldn’t be located onsite.

As a result, Quora would only maintain its Mountain View office as a coworking space for employees who choose to work onsite.

Company leaders making such a bold statement can remove the pressure to check in and give remote workers subtle cues that they can work out-of-office without hurting their career prospects.

Engage your workforce in the decision-making process

This includes 1:1 conversations, surveys, and workshops where you can engage your hybrid teams to figure out any subtle ways they’ve experienced unconscious bias, such as in their workloads, compensation, etc., as well as brainstorming to figure out ways around it.

Proximity bias is a people ops problem — you can only solve it by working hand in hand with those affected.

Keep an eye out for inequity – maybe, even proactively measure it

There are several ways proximity bias can crop up. Measuring for it will help you see patterns that those affected (i.e. remote workers) may not be willing to open up about.

For instance, you can:

• Measure your team’s workload
• Look at how often your remote workers are getting promoted compared to their peers
• Regularly survey your workforce to gauge satisfaction between remote workers and their office-based peers, etc.

Equip hybrid workers and teams to succeed out of the office

Your hybrid workforce will still feel the need to check into the office if they don’t have equal access to the same tools, apps, and opportunities as their peers, or if your company culture still gravitates towards the office.

Favoritism can take many forms and even subtle moves such as making team-building activities to be primarily face-to-face can make employees feel underprivileged.

Companies stand to gain by facing up to the issue of proximity bias

Among others, an equitable hybrid work environment will help you hire the best talent from across the world.

In addition, your employees will be more engaged, motivated, and energized in a dynamic workplace where they can work from wherever they want without having to defend their lifestyle choices from passive aggression, hurting their career choices, or getting sidelined for promotions.

Technology has revolutionized space management in recent years. The manual techniques used in the past to understand occupancy rates and O&M costs, manage day-to-day operations, and design floor plans are vastly outperformed by today’s software, especially when managing large offices or portfolios. However, this doesn’t mean that technology is making facilities managers and workplace teams obsolete. Far from it. 

The role of technology in facilities management

Facilities management has become increasingly important for the post-pandemic workplace. Companies face rising costs, increased competition for talent, and new employee demands, so it’s vital to have FMs armed with the tools they need to optimize the office effectively. 

Computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) encompasses the different types of software that support space management. These systems automate and improve the accuracy of data collection, allowing space managers to spend more time problem solving, monitoring important metrics, A/B testing, and creating future projections to help companies advance operational infrastructure while reducing costs.

Key technologies for space management in the workplace

The hardware and software listed below all play important roles in supporting FMs. Though they are all different, they can be grouped into at least one of three categories: visual data, real-time information, and task automation. 

• Visual data allows space planning teams to understand data at a glance, so no time is wasted trying to mentally consolidate information into a meaningful conclusion. 
• Real-time information means space managers can spot and fix problems as soon as they occur. Real-time data also feeds software such as desk reservation systems by showing what’s available right now. 
• Task automation reduces human errors and saves time. The less time FMs spend on tedious tasks, the more time they have for higher-level management.

1. Occupancy sensors

Occupancy sensors tell you when people are using different spaces such as a conference room or phone booth, what time they were there, and how long they stayed. This information is in real-time and can work with other technology such as digital wayfinding signs or reservation software.

With the information you collect from occupancy sensors, you can identify underutilized areas and reclaim that space for a better purpose. Rather than automatically expanding square footage to accommodate new hires, you can review sensor data to see if the current space is ever at capacity. If it isn’t, the company doesn’t have to spend money on more office space.

Sensors also allow you to A/B test how changes to the workplace perform. This is the true test of whether new policies or layouts are effective. Did the tech upgrade in the conference room make people use it more? If so, you can deploy this change across your portfolio to increase the utilization of conference rooms in every location.

2. Reservations

As more organizations move to hybrid models and hot desking, it’s becoming essential to have a system to manage when and where people go when they come into the office. Reservation technology helps move your office into the modern era of work by creating a system for this. And when employees can book a desk or a conference room without assistance, that’s one less thing workplace teams have to worry about. 

Reservation software can inform policy changes by collecting data about missed bookings, inappropriately sized rooms, and unused desks. For example, if employees are booking desks for solo work and then never showing up, you can implement a time limit for check-ins. If the employee doesn’t check in within 10 minutes of the reservation, it’s immediately made available to others.

3. Virtual floor plans

Using software to create digital floor plans allows you to visualize changes before implementing them. You can spot potential problems such as bottlenecks or wasted space before you’ve moved a single chair, and you can test numerous designs to see which one will work best. It’s more cost-efficient (and less frustrating for both FMs and employees) to work out floor plan kinks in the planning stage rather than the implementation stage. 

4. Asset management 

Managing assets is a significant part of facilities management. It’s essential to have up-to-date information about your resources, from total square footage to the number of chairs in a specific office location. In addition to a general inventory, FMs also have to monitor the maintenance cycles of assets such as HVAC systems and the building itself. Staying on top of preventative maintenance and repairs ensures you don’t have a cascading series of breakdowns that affect building operations.

A key goal of space management is to reduce expenses, and asset management software can help ensure you never make unnecessary purchases. When asset details are paired with utilization data from sensors, you get even more valuable insights. If one location needs 50 new desks and you see another site has extremely low desk utilization, you can simply reallocate those resources to the location in need. This is one small example of the type of problem-solving that the right software can help you achieve.

Choose the right CAFM tools

• Look for software that’s easy to use. The less training it requires, the faster you can start benefiting from its features.
• Select technology that comes with support from the provider. When it comes time to update software or troubleshoot hardware issues, you want the reassurance that someone will be available to answer your questions.
• Choose software that’s compatible with your existing technologies. The more technology you can integrate, the more comprehensive and easier to manage your data becomes. 
• Keep your budget in mind, but don’t forget the value technology brings to space management. Budgetary constraints are unfortunate, and it can be expensive to invest in new technologies. However, be sure to factor in the ROI that comes with making data-backed decisions rather than educated guesses and the additional time that automation provides.

Asking employees to return to the office is a delicate situation.

Employees who want to continue working remotely have options now, meaning you have to be careful in how you approach asking them to come to the office.

That includes being intentional with the specific language you use.

Language matters 

“Return to work” implies that people haven’t been working for the past two years, which is not the case. 

People have been working. 

Talking about returning to the office as “returning to work” can be read as dismissive or unappreciative of this fact.

Instead, opt for “return to office.” It’s more accurate and more neutral, which means you’re less likely to raise eyebrows — or tempers.  

Why it matters

Not only have your employees been working, but they’ve been:

• Working in the middle of a historic pandemic
• While balancing family responsibilities
• Making do in ad-hoc ‘offices’
• All while fighting the emotional rollercoaster of social distancing, sickness, and more

You don’t want your employees to read you as cavalier or unappreciative, particularly in light of the Great Resignation and the rise of the antiwork movement. 

Feeling disrespected at work is one of the top three reasons for resignations in 2021 in a recent Pew survey. 

Feeling disrespected at work is one of the top three reasons for resignations in 2021.

Pew Research Center

The power of semantics

Not everyone understands the controversy of using “return to work” vs “return to office.” Below, we outline a few other phrases to clarify the issue. 

Problem vs. challenge/opportunity

This example is fairly common in the business world. The word “problem” (often viewed as negative, a roadblock) is often replaced by more positive words like “challenge” and “opportunity.”

Boss vs. leader 

In recent decades, the word “boss” has become unfashionable. Many people believe it emphasizes one’s power over an employee. Words like “leader” (overtly positive) or specific titles like “CEO” (neutral) imply greater organizational equality and are likely better for morale.

Empower vs. amplify 

At first glance, the word “empower” seems innocuous enough — positive, even. However, in some contexts, it can be read as suggesting that the person doing the “empowering” is more important than the person or group being assisted. 

On the other hand, talking about “amplifying” someone’s voice suggests that the person or group has agency and is quite capable of “empowering” themselves — the ally is simply giving them a loudspeaker so their voice can reach more people. 

How to talk about the return to office with empathy

Communicating with empathy really comes down to one core concept: Treat your employees the way you would want to be treated if you were in their position.

Here are some tips: 

• Be thoughtful and deliberate about your language.  
• Acknowledge the challenges of the past two years. 
• Thank employees for their hard work in the face of these difficulties.
• Acknowledge that some employees have become accustomed to working remotely and might prefer it.
• Be transparent about your reasons for wanting to return to the office environment.
• Avoid implying that a return to the office is about increasing productivity or policing employee time management.
• Acknowledge that the danger of Covid has not entirely passed and mention precautions the company will be taking to continue to protect immunocompromised individuals.
• Invite employees to reach out if they foresee difficulties transitioning back to the office environment so you can explore solutions together.
• Focus on the actual benefits of the office environment: the ease of collaboration, exposure to different perspectives, the career benefits, the opportunity for social interaction, etc.

For ideas on how to align your workplace with employees’ priorities, read 5 ways to make returning to the office appealing.