QCG conducted a survey to explore organisations’ plans in preparation for employees returning to the workplace ahead of the anticipated July 19th change in Government guidelines.

102 organisations took part in the survey (45% public sector and 55% private sector organisations) across 11 different industries.

 

Key headlines: Development of plans

 

Organisations have varied progress with plans to return to the workplace. c. 25% of organisations have defined a plan for logistics or ways of working, 38% have agreed guiding principles and 30% have plans under discussion.

 

 

An employee-centric approach in plan design has been favoured, both in terms consultation and opinions shaping plans. 60% of organisations conducted opinion surveys, 55% held individual conversations and nearly all organisations stated that their employees input influenced their plans.

 

 

Organisations expect to activate plans soon, 59% expect to activate plans either immediately (13%) or within the next 3 months (46%).

Initially, the pandemic sparked productivity concerns due to remote working. However, 31% of organisations stated that ‘productivity’ has had ‘no impact’ on return to the workplace plans.

Executive Directors and CEOs have had the greatest influence over plans in comparison to other business areas such as HR, the Board and Senior Managers. This great visibility and involvement at the senior level could suggest that the return to the workplace is high up on the business agenda.

 

Key headlines: Outcomes

There is a fair degree of employee choice regarding returning to the workplace. c.33% of organisations expect employees to be in the workplace but provide freedom to choose which days. A similar proportion expect employees to be in the workplace on designated days based on business needs.

The majority of organisations are expecting employees to be in the workplace significantly less than pre-pandemic. 34% expect employees to be in the workplace 2 days a week and a similar proportion 3 days a week (32%).

Organisations place a high level of importance on testing and learning from interventions. 75% of participants plan to capture feedback through surveys and, on average, 68% organisations plan to use 2 or more methods to capture feedback.

 

Commentary

The results of the survey highlight that organisations are devising and implementing a structured approach to a ‘hybrid’ way of working – a working pattern allowing employees to split their time between attending the workplace and working remotely.

With this comes a sense of employee accountability in how they choose to work in the future, with organisations setting guiding parameters around expectations of attendance to the workplace and employees having the freedom to choose how they spend the remaining time of the working week.

Although the survey results suggest organisations have their return to the workplace plans in place or that they are currently under discussion, it is inevitable that there will be a period of trial and error. Some organisations plans may work smoothly first time, other companies may find themselves facing challenges with their approach resulting in them having to be adapted and adjusted to suit the needs of both the employees and the business. This highlights how important it is for organisations to have the mechanisms in place to gather feedback, tap into employee opinion and engagement surveys to get a true understanding of what is working well and less well – and adapting in response to this.

To help tackle this it is important that organisations have well-thought-out guiding principles embedded in the organisation and in line with their values, in order to guide conversations and decisions pertaining to the new way of working. This in turn creates greater accountability, transparency and consistency of these decisions.

Therefore, we should look at the results of this survey as the beginning of a journey to a new way of working unique to each and every organisation. By using the learnings from the pandemic (both the good and the bad) and through the trial and error period, organisations will identify a way of operation that empowers employees to do their best work in a place and time that suits them.

We will continue to monitor progress with the development and implementation of return to work plans, identifying what elements of these plans work well and what challenges have been faced in order to provide up-to-date and relevant insights on this topic in the UK.

Contact ku/oc/gcq//nauj or ku/oc/gcq//eittah if you would like to discuss the possible impacts of your return to work plans on reward, recognition and employee experience.