Organisational Design: Build It and They Will Come

First published in theHRDIRECTOR, August Edition, 2024. Reproduced with permission.

The focus for OD is to create a hub for fostering community and social connection, facilitating collaboration, nurturing relationships and promoting social interactions. Desire to connect is ignited by a trigger, a purpose and coordinating with colleagues and friends, creates a commute-worthy experience that is habit-forming, because it is positive and worth repeating. That is why overcoming remote working inertia by stimulating purposeful attendance in the office should be a fundamental part of OD strategy going forward. Building social capital in the workplace is a powerful tool for OD to persuade hybrid workers to come together. It also mutually benefits both employees and employers. Team structures, workflows and other systems and practices can make or break the ability to develop real friendships in the workplace. This suggests work planning strategists need to assess how factors, such as performance expectations and time requirements, can help – or hinder – relationship-building at work. There is a view that the future of OD strategy should involve installing greater rigidity through fixed working patterns that require employees to be at their desks. In the United States, for example, financial institutions recently warned staff to prepare for five days a week in the office as Wall Street firms take steps to tighten up their rules under new US brokerage regulations. Mandating staff in this way may seem a solution to increase attendance, but studies show the opposite.

In August 2023, a research team at Cushman & Wakefield unveiled the results of an investigation into the impact of mandates and findings confirmed that they can increase office attendance, but also lower employee engagement by 30 percent and dampen productivity. Other studies have shown that employees are 30 percent more likely to be engaged with an organisation’s workflows, procedures and goals if they can choose when to come into the office. Significantly, this research found that choice and flexibility are especially important to younger employees, with office mandates likely to have an even bigger adverse impact on their engagement levels. It is understandable that workplace leaders would equate attendance with creating a valuable workplace and so jump to implementing mandates. However, Cushman & Wakefield’s research also found that “fixing” office attendance does not guarantee higher productivity. The key distinction here is that the attendance must be purposeful and have a social connection aspect to it. What good is forcing people into the workplace if it is not optimised for productivity? The question therefore becomes whether employees are being given the time and opportunities to form social connections in the office. Indeed, according to the Cushman & Wakefield data, only 57 percent of employees believe their workplace adequately fosters collaboration and just 56 percent felt their office currently does enough to promote social connection and camaraderie to help relationship-building. To deliver a commute-worthy workplace experience that facilitates social connection, employers first need to have a clear picture of how their employees are using the workplace. Unfortunately, many organisations still solely rely on badge swipe data, which only provides insight into peak attendance which does not help paint a full picture of what people actually do when they are in the office.

In an effort to support social connection effectively, occupancy data needs to be comprehensive, actionable and managed in real-time, because every office is different. Whether your employees love bouncing ideas around the kitchenette or benefit from sitting next to their team while working in a silent area, every team will have their preferences. These details become essential when making OD decisions, as knowing what aspects of the office to emphasise and what aspects to replace can influence strategy. Another aspect of having a deeper understanding of employee preferences is being able to plan compelling events, office meetings and social activities for them to attend and ensuring there is a system to keep them informed of these events. It is also important to make sure information on different ways to partake in office culture is readily available, so that people can plan their week around collaborative events and know their trip to the office will be worth the commute.

This approach enables workplace decision makers to take back the narrative of the workplace and empower hybrid teams to connect and collaborate more often. It will also help build camaraderie, teamwork and a sense of belonging, without compromising team-level autonomy and individual choice. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the secret sauce of a successful hybrid OD strategy is a combination of team-level agreements and employee preferences, rather than greater rigidity through fixed working patterns. In 2023, for example, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released research showing that a hybrid approach focusing on team-level autonomy and key events results in 99 percent compliance and 95 percent of employees being satisfied – much higher than any fully in-person strategy. What remains at the core of these findings is that OD strategy in the hybrid work era needs to prioritise social capital in the workplace. Leaders must focus on bringing people together more frequently and with greater purpose, through a blend of employee choice and team-level agreements. By also facilitating the extracurricular activities that enable friendships to develop in the hybrid workplace, employers can empower employees to build social capital for themselves.