A court recently ruled that Booking.com may require its employees to spend 40% of their working time in the office. The works council disagreed, so the company took the matter to court. The judge considered it a reasonable decision, since seeing one another in the office can foster connection, development and collaboration. Booking.com had first tried to encourage people to come in, but that didn’t work: only 27% came into the office at least 40% of the time.
Legally, that settles it. When it comes to motivation, however, the work is only just beginning. Of the employees who completed the works council’s survey, 87% were in fact happy with the old rules. They are concerned about travel time, travel costs and reduced focus.
In my view, there is a lot to be said for seeing each other regularly. Research shows that trust and connection are essential for teams that do a lot of remote working. The more a team works remotely, the more important they become. Meeting in person lays the foundation for them. It helps, for example, to genuinely come together when a team is first formed – and not just for a quick round of introductions. Once people have got to know each other properly, they work together far more smoothly afterwards, even at a distance. Feedback and difficult conversations also land better face to face. In one experiment, feedback given in person was more effective than feedback delivered via a computer. This was even more true when the person giving the feedback had little formal authority.
But it makes a world of difference whether people come in because they have to, or because they see the value in it. I know this from personal experience. I once worked for an organisation where you were allowed to work from home two days a week and had to be in the office the rest of the time. Nothing more was said about how those office days should be spent. I often sat there wondering why I was actually there, as there weren’t many colleagues around, or everyone was simply busy with their own work. To be honest, I found that rather demotivating.
That feeling is easily explained by Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory. According to this theory, motivation is not simply a matter of having a lot or a little. What matters most is where your motivation comes from. Do you come in because you have to, and because otherwise something unpleasant will happen? Then your motivation is entirely driven from the outside. Do you come in because it’s expected, or because you would feel guilty staying at home? Then you have partly internalised the rule, but it still feels like pressure. Only when you truly understand why it matters does it become your own. You then choose it for yourself, even if it isn’t always enjoyable. And do you simply enjoy going in? Then you’re in the best possible place: your motivation comes from within, and it costs you little energy.
Those latter forms – the motivation you feel yourself – make people more energetic, more engaged and usually better at their jobs, too. The first forms mainly lead to days of simply sitting it out. People do turn up, but they are not really present. What’s more, coercion often provokes resistance. If you feel your freedom is under threat, you are very likely to push back. An obligation can therefore achieve the very opposite of what it was meant to.
Fortunately, there is a lot an organisation can do to make sure an office requirement is well received after all. A few tips:
- Start by defining what the office is for. Think of a team’s start-up phase, onboarding new colleagues, work in which people are highly dependent on one another, making decisions together and giving feedback. Focused work can be done perfectly well at home.
- Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. A new team, or a team with high turnover, is likely to benefit more from coming together than a stable team of specialists who have worked together for years. One rule for everyone simply doesn’t suit everyone.
- Explain the why as clearly as possible. Do so in an informative way, not as a means of control. ‘Because management says so’ helps no one make the rule their own. Explaining what it achieves does.
- Acknowledge the objections. Travel time, travel costs and less peace and quiet for focused work are real. You don’t have to solve them all, but it helps a great deal when they are taken seriously.
- Offer choice within a framework. Let teams decide for themselves which days they come in and what they do together. That they come in is fixed; how they do it is up to them.
- Agree on the same days for each team. Nothing is more demotivating than sitting in the office on video calls because the rest of your team is at home. That is exactly what happened to me.
- Invest in enjoyment. Having lunch together, sharing stories, doing something fun now and then. This is no side issue: enjoying each other’s company is an important part of what makes a team strong.
- Avoid monitoring and sanctions. Tracking pass swipes or factoring attendance into performance reviews pushes motivation straight back towards ‘because I have to’.
- Evaluate together. After a few months, ask whether the office days are delivering what they were meant to. Be willing to adjust the policy accordingly.
So an obligation can certainly work. But the time spent together does have to be worth the journey – and people need to experience it that way themselves. Is your organisation facing a similar challenge? At Bloeiwerkplaats, I’d be happy to think it through with you.