To return to work or stay home — why that's not the right question

Before employers take a final stance on the return-to-office debate, they may want to reconsider whether they're asking the right questions — or risk hurting their company.

According to a ResumeBuilder survey from last year, 90% of companies planned to return to the office in some capacity by the end of 2024. And yet, a 2024 survey by Conference Board revealed that just under 4% of CEOs will prioritize bringing workers back to the office full-time. Hybrid work seems like the compromise leaders have landed on, but depending on the company's talent make-up, hybrid still may be the wrong answer. 

How should employers sort themselves out on this issue? By asking what work structure will foster the best in their employees, underlines Keith Giarman, president of private equity at DHR Global, a leadership consulting firm.

"Whether you're remote or not, companies should be focused on whether they have the right people in the right seats in your organization," says Giarman. "At the end of the day, if you don't activate the people who are actually doing the work [to retain them], then you will have a hard time hitting your financial objectives."

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For Giarman, the best work structure will be the one that encourages leaders to cultivate connections with their teams and beyond, allowing them to pinpoint who has the potential to grow alongside the company. And while the argument around in-person work tends to center on more opportunities for personal connection, Giarman notes that for some organizations, that won't necessarily be the case. 

For instance, workers may find that they have more bandwidth for virtual coffee meetings and impromptu chatting when they work from home. Some teams may already be spread out across the country or world, making in-person connection impossible anyway. Giarman pushes employers to reflect on whether their culture needs to be fostered in a physical space or if they assume so because that's all they know. 

"Ultimately, the employee base wants to be more untethered," he says. "But maybe there's some complexity relative to how you think about maintaining organizational health, creating the kind of culture that goes hand-in-hand with situations where you congregate people more regularly."

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Giarman recognizes that there will come circumstances where it's best that employees are present in one place, regardless of a company's day-to-day structure. But now that many office workers know what it's like to work from home full-time, employers can't necessarily persuade employees to come back simply because that's what was expected pre-pandemic. Time spent in person should feel purposeful, stresses Giarman.

"If you can be intentional about when you congregate, that's the best way to run a company, even if you're not virtual," he says. "It's not like for every meeting we have to sit in front of a whiteboard and figure out where we've been and where we're going."

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Giarman also encourages HR teams to look at their best-performing managers and see how their leadership style and structures serve their teams. While employers can survey their companies up and down, sometimes the best way to get a pulse on what employees need is to see how teams are succeeding. 

"Surveys can be helpful, but I think we've gotten over-dependent on them," says Giarman. "There's no substitute for the human resource fabric of the business: Understanding where the best performers are, making sure they're rewarded and making sure that they're emulated appropriately across the business."