Remote Work vs. Return to the Office: Negotiating the Best Approach

By: James Stanger

You have probably heard about the mixed opinions surrounding remote work and return-to-office orders. There are many nuances involved in the discussion. As the chief technology evangelist at CompTIA, it’s my job to be curious about trends in the IT industry. So, during back-to-back meetings with two individuals in the finance industry I inquired about their standpoints on remote work. As a result, I experienced a severe instance of remote work whiplash.

The first individual I spoke with is the CIO of a bank on the Northeast seaboard of the United States, and the second is the IT manager for a bank in the United Kingdom. While they both work in the same industry sector, their opinions vary greatly on the topic of remote work.

The CIO in the United States responded with, “We just issued a return to office order. That’s just the way it is.”

And when I asked how flexible their return to work order was, the answer: “It isn’t.” The IT manager in the UK answered, “We’re expecting folks to get into the office more. We’re negotiating what that looks like.”

Negotiating What Remote Support Means Today

I have to say that I really liked the “we’re negotiating” approach. Most organizations are focusing on a hybrid policy. It’s been my experience that hybrid policies are generally borne of experience, rather than a mere whim or ideology. What some folks might see as a “messy middle” isn’t all that messy; it’s just what happens when humans are involved. The most progressive organizations, therefore, tend to be the ones that negotiate expectations over time.

Typical Expectations

On both sides, we find that manager expectations are influenced by various factors, including:

• Tradition: This is the old idea is that you’re not at work unless you’re at work. Some might say that generational thinking is involved here, but in many cases, younger folks seem to be interested in returning to the office as well.
• Brick and mortar thinking: Related to traditional thinking is the idea that some organizations need to justify why they have offices in the first place; an executive usually spends less time justifying a physical office if it’s full of people.
• Third-party influences: Sometimes, though, the negotiation isn’t just between the employer and the employee workforce. In the case of an AWS hiring manager I spoke with, I discovered at least two more players were involved in their return-to-office memo. The third party? The state governor’s office. They wanted organizations to bring people back to the office to help support downtown businesses.

Additional Nuances to Consider

When it comes to determining the benefits of working from home vs. returning to the office, managers are considering the following factors:

• The “3 C’s:” Collaboration, cooperation and communication are vital. When managers use the term efficiency, they’re talking about these three key areas. The best managers are able to negotiate how remote or in-person staff become truly efficient.
• Compensation: In at least one case, I know of a worker who received additional compensation because she worked in a high-income area in London. When her company discovered that she was now living in Leeds, England, they required her to work out of her original London office. Why? Because they felt that it was unfair, in terms of compensation, to adjust pay for one person who no longer worked in a high-cost area.

Changes in the Labor Market

Until the last couple of years, IT professionals have, more or less, been in the driver’s seat. They’ve made demands, and we’ve seen a workforce that is at least partly revolutionized: They’ve flexed their muscle in terms of work-life balance and diversity.

Over the past year, more people in the workforce seem to be fearing unemployment. The IT industry – and especially the cybersecurity sector – is still experiencing serious under-employment. But potential employees have the perception that they can’t live off of any other income stream other than a job. A CIO from a large retail company in the UK recently told me that she has seen how potential workers are more willing to go back into the office.

Setting Goals: A Key to Negotiating Nuances and Implications

I’ve spoken with CIOs of healthcare institutions in Nashville, as well as CIOs who run the networks for American football stadiums. I’ve also spoken with IT leaders who run the IT infrastructure for military bases in Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. All of these folks have legitimate reasons for requiring workers to work in an office. If today’s workforce wants to work from home, how do you negotiate that reality with your workers?

Well, you can get creative. For example, an acquaintance of mine, Michael Israel, CIO of The Kraft Group, found a management team that was able to get everyone on the same page by taking a goal-oriented approach. The idea is that workers become invested in the goal, rather than whether or not they can work from home. Instead of mandating a return to the office, they set goals that, in one way or the other, led workers to realize that in some (but not all) cases, working at a physical location made perfect sense. The process took some time, but it worked out in the long run.

A Royal Air Force worker recently told me that she hasn’t had a problem working in the office, as long as she’s not sitting in a cubicle and doing Zoom meetings all day. She said that as long as she sees the big picture, then it doesn’t really matter where she physically is; getting creative is where it’s at for her. So, when it comes to understanding the implications of remote work vs. returning to the office, one answer is to focus less on where someone is physically and focus more on how they are progressing towards a goal.

That’s a lesson I learned from Elba Pareja-Gallagher, director of stakeholder engagement at UPS. She told me recently that as she has engaged with a more diverse workforce in Atlanta, she’s been focused on giving workers the big picture. As a result, workers who are truly engaged can understand the nuances and implications involved in the ongoing remote work vs. return-to-office debate.

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