Hello, welcome back to Cracking the Career Code with Matt and Kierra, where we provide candidates the keys to success in their job search. Today, we are actually going to talk about incentivizing employees to come back into the office and some different things that we’ve seen in order to get employees to come back in and incentivize them.
So Matt, why don’t you just start us off with what you’ve seen and heard. Sure. Well, you know, over the past year, year and a half or so in our post COVID world, we’ve definitely seen an uptick in the companies that want folks to be hybrid, still not seeing a ton of fully onsite roles, especially in the tech world, but certainly more and more hybrid, and less 100 percent remote opportunities.
And I know it’s a classic meme in our world, but a ping pong tables and pizza parties don’t work. Right. Not a good way to motivate people to come in or to create a quote unquote, company culture. Right. So, I think there’s different things that, that you can do to really engage employees when they’re on site, using those days when people are on site for
truly collaborative time, creative work, making sure that when you have people in the office, everyone on the same team or the same teams that collaborate together are there at the same time. So, it’s not just to have butts in seats and to justify the rent that a company is paying on an office, right?
There’s nothing worse than commuting, getting there, and then sitting alone and ending up on Zoom calls all day when you could have just stayed at home and done that yourself. Right, if you have to go into a different room to take your Zoom calls. Yeah, you’re just I mean, you’re just not in an environment where you have your whole setup.
I have monitors that I use when I do my calls. So I like to have multiple different screens, but when you’re in an office setting like that, that’s not always the case. It really just depends on the setup, but also ping pong tables, that sort of thing. If you have time to do that and time to commute, like there’s a lot of time you could be saving working on
things that are productive and not taking up your time because the commute alone for some people is over an hour Depending on traffic. I know if you live in a bigger city, that’s something to factor in. So it’s not always worth coming in for people if they’re not doing stuff that’s collaborative with their co workers, so I think that’s really something to keep in mind and I know when I talk to people for different roles they ask if “Is the onset requirement collaborative, are all of my co workers in the office or in the area to make it worth my commute?” So I think that’s something to consider but definitely a point of tension for a lot of people. Yeah, and I think one thing that I found when people are going back into an office or when I’m talking with friends and family that maybe we’re 100 percent remote during COVID for the first time, and then now they’re trickling back into the office, like a lot of companies will have events
or cater lunch or have happy hours, kind of depending on the workplace culture. But what I find when I’m talking candidly, with those people is every once in a while, that’s great. People want to socialize with their coworkers, talk about non work related things, but I think more often than not, people would rather go home early and be with their own friends and family than hang out with their coworkers.
Right. So I think it’s important to have some of those events, but you know, it’s not going to do the most in bringing people back. More PTO or a culture that really encourages unlimited PTO and wants people to take time off and separate. Work from home life is really important as well.
And I think, when you have more PTO, you have more flexibility, you’re more incentivized to come into the office a few days a week. Right. And I do think those happy hours and other things are really important just to build that culture. But I think it depends on how often they’re happening and if they’re productive.
So I do believe that those are important. I’ve also seen free lunches or people having a chef at the office every other week or something along those lines. it’s nice to have a free lunch and discounted lunch every now and then as well. But, unless it’s like an everyday thing, I think that , it’s not gonna get people to come back in.
Just your lunch alone. It is a big cost saving, right? Yeah. And you mentioned something else about your home office setup, you feel comfy there, you’ve got multiple monitors, whatever else ergonomic chair, I think that’s really important, the office layout and the extra peripheral tech that you have available for your employees.
I’ve worked in offices that are open. I’ve worked in a WeWork, I’ve worked in cubicles. They all kind of offer different experiences. I think It was all the rage for a while to have open office layouts, but in our roles as recruiters or people in sales that might be on the phone all the time, have meetings all the time, I just felt sitting at my desk and being on the phone.
I also have a pretty loud voice, I ended up disturbing people next to me, and then I was in a phone room for most of the day. So, I think it’s really important to have different types of spaces within the office that can be utilized for different employees with different jobs, right? Right. Yeah, and then there’s another thing to factor in.
Is there a travel stipend? I know some people are commuting 40 plus minutes one way and that can get costly. So, something to consider is are you giving your employees parking compensated or is there free parking? I know those are big factors because that can add up quickly if you’re paying 20 dollars a day to park that can be a big piece. I’ve worked at companies that also have a pre tax flexible spending account benefit.
So, even if your transit or your parking isn’t covered completely, you can allocate a certain amount of money from your paychecks to go into an account pre tax, which adds up over a year. There’s some big savings on that when you don’t have to pay taxes on your metric card or
your parking that you have to pay for at the office. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And it is a big thing too, like I mentioned earlier, are all your coworkers in the same area? Are you working with your team in office or are they spread out? Because then does it make sense for you to come in the office if you’re going to be on zoom meetings with them anyways?
Yeah, those are all important questions to get answered and think about too. Yeah. And I’ve also seen some setups where maybe someone lives pretty far away, two plus hours, maybe they have to fly into the main office. And I’ve seen some companies where they’re flexible, where maybe once a month, once a quarter, that person comes in, and they work a whole week in the office to satisfy the hybrid requirements.
Yeah, I would encourage employers to get a little creative with it, especially on tough to fill searches, niche talents. Maybe you want a certain type of candidates in an area where there’s a limited candidate pool, you got to get creative to incentivize people to come in. Yeah and I definitely think there are pros to having people come in the office and collaborate.
And if you are paying for an office space, I know that’s costly. So you want people to use it. I’ve seen a lot of options where companies will say, “We want you to come in two to three times a week. You can pick your days.” And I know people really like that and the collaboration. When you are fully remote, you don’t get that interaction face to face.
So I know some people do miss that or want to have that again. So I do think there’s really good benefits as well to having people in office. I just think it depends on what that looks like for your team and what the company is doing. Yeah and even for learning opportunities, it’s really helpful to be in person and learn through osmosis, hear how other people handle situations in real time.
You can ask them questions. You lose a little bit of that in a fully remote. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us today on Cracking the Career Code. Go check out talentinsights.hirewell.com for more content and follow us on LinkedIn if you are not already. Thanks. Thanks, everyone.
