The truth about going back to the office - your choice V Enterprise mandate

[Claudia Bastiani]

Hello Everyone, I am Claudia Bastiani and I head up the Capital Program for Mastercard across EMEA.

Am interested in hearing from you regarding the intended return to the office.  There has been a lot of Press coverage around Organizations either mandating that the expectation is X days in the office per week to Organizations giving 100% freedom of choice to employees.  What are you seeing in your Org?

[Anthony]

Hi Claudia

Expect we are midjourney on a six year transformsformation, with second half increasingly dominated by defined workplace flexibility / return to work mandates skillfully crafted to reflect work/life balance, corporate culture and HR policy.

Expect sucess will lie in culture and comunications, with quality of workplace second to culture. 

Recent example of Amazon sets a good benchmark, worth taking a look -

Amazon return to office plans

Ultimate conclusion which many are reaching is that cemployees should go back to being in the office the majority of the timei.e. (at least three days per week.

Many good observations capturered in public statement on RTO inc -

1.  It’s easier to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture when we’re in the office together most of the time and surrounded by our colleagues
2. When you’re in-person, people tend to be more engaged, observant, and attuned to what’s happening in the meetings and the cultural clues being communicated
3. Collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person
4. Newer employees stand to be most disadvantaged by not having the same learning and mentorship opportunities  
5. Teams tend to be better connected to one another when they see each other in person more frequently.

 

For a more flexible 'digital first, together with purpose' style mandate, worth taking a look at Airbnb's approach -

Airbnb’s design for employees to live and work anywhere

Hope that helps!

A