Return to the Office vs the Labour Market
Written by David Simpson, Founder and Managing Director at Melbourne HR
Opinion Piece
As a HR professional, and business owner, I have been taking particular interest in the recent discussions around remote work and the return to office movement. Listening to friends and hearing their raw and candid feedback about their own workplace policies and mandates, has been the core inspiration for today’s blog.
Keep reading to find:
Why there has been push-back to the ‘return to work’ movement
Employee reaction to this push-back
Employer reaction to this push-back
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The Situation
Remote work has become the new norm for many.
Let’s dive into the core of the issue. The friends I mentioned above all work for large companies and well-known brands (I won’t state names or industries for confidentiality reasons). In a number of these companies, mandatory ‘return to work’ orders have been delayed indefinitely.
At this point, I’m sure you will sit on one side of the fence – there will be those who are nodding in agreement, or those that are amazed this is even happening.
Let’s breakdown why this happened, and what my friends believe happened.
The Breakdown - Employee
Let’s start with the employee perspective – i.e., why my friends think there has been a delay in return to work. They believe two things:
The outcry from staff forced the issue, and;
They know middle management was pushing to stay at home, adding further pressure to their cause.
Overall – that’s two forces that are working through the corporate structure to deliver a result in favour of staff.
A small interlude here. Putting on my business owner hat, it’s important to understand that decisions like these are hugely complex. The number of factors that influence decision makers are large and they come from many places. To speculate, there could be professional desires to foster tighter, more integrated teams. There could also be forces from home that influence a desire to stay at home – just to name two opposing thought processes.
These companies would have a range of different reasons for wanting to go back to the office. So many in fact, that it would be too much to cover in this one article. But what could have stopped them from enforcing mandatory return to work?
The Breakdown – Employer
The number of factors that went into this policy retraction are probably significant. Yes, the above two reasons may have played a part in decision making, but I would guarantee that these are not the primary motivators.
Why do I believe this? Number one: companies are not democracies, and commercial interests take precedence over the personal. Companies generally don’t need the approval of their staff to take most actions, and they are well within their legal rights to enforce a return to work.
“Companies generally don’t need the approval of their staff to take most actions, and they are well within their legal rights to enforce a return to work. ”
That’s not to say these are faceless and feelingless corporations. Not at all. I have no doubt that behind the scenes a range of options were discussed, but for a company to survive and thrive, it must achieve positive financial outcomes.
Ultimately, I believe they were stopped because of risk. The labour market is massively biased to the seller (i.e. the employee). This means that it is easier for an employee to find a new job, than it is for a company to find a new employee. In recent times, this power has shifted even more significantly towards the employee. Meaning vacant positions represent risk to the business.
This puts extra pressure on organisations to keep employees happy. Unpopular decisions, such as forcing a return to work, can potentially lead to resignations, an unfavourable result when the current market makes it so difficult to find suitable replacements. For many companies, these potential vacancies represent an unacceptable risk.
It’s important here to define the difference between certainty and risk.
We haven’t experienced such big structural changes to the labour market, in such a short period of time, any time during the past 50 years. It’s changes like this that create risk aversion amongst decision makers. Why? Currently, they are operating in an unknown environment, which heavily influences their decision-making patterns. Leaders can’t make informed decisions based on past experiences, because they simply haven’t experienced this before. No one has.
This changes their risk assessments and results is delay and backflips. These companies went up against a labour market that was experiencing huge structural upheaval, whilst simultaneously experiencing power imbalance in favour of the employee. They choose to retreat and wait.
Will there be a round 2? Probably. What will be the result of that conflict? Who's to say. People's expectations are shifting, and companies will need to adapt on at least some level. Personally, I feel that employees and employers will end up meeting in the middle and use a hybrid model – 2-3 days in the office and 2-3 days working from home.
One thing that is certain, is that only time will tell.
(This article makes a claim that this is the biggest structural change in the workforce in 50 years. I understand that some will instantly think of the digital revolution. The digital revolution and the switch to the email/internet was a huge change to workplace operations, however remote work has arguably had far bigger impact on the individual workers’ work-life balance and, more importantly, this happened in a much more condensed time frame than the digital revolution.)
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David Simpson is the Founder and Managing Director at Melbourne HR.
Edited by Nicole Torrington, Marketing Manager at Melbourne HR.
