Armchair cushions and laundry: why employers are trying to bring employees back from remote work

The coronavirus pandemic is over, but people accustomed to working remotely are in no hurry to return to offices. According to expert estimates, the share of Russians who work remotely is about 14 million – a quarter of the total employed population. Employers became concerned about the trend and began to look for ways to bring employees back to the “family.”

The reason is clear: management is dissatisfied with the fact that an employee outside the office is much more difficult to control, and the quality of work often decreases. Indeed, at home you want to drink tea, wipe off the dust, or work with the children. And there are negligibly few “geniuses of self-discipline” who work without being distracted by anything.

The remote work format is widespread not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in other large cities of the country. In the IT sector, for example, up to 40% of the total number of employees work remotely. And it seems that this trend is quite common among programmers. But no: recently a reverse trend has begun to be observed. According to the recruiting agency GeekSource, which specializes in recruiting IT specialists, only 16% of IT companies and 13% of companies from other segments are ready to attract specialists working from home.

Employers use a variety of tricks. They are introducing a hybrid schedule, which is becoming increasingly popular, luring people to work in the office, attracting with free coffee and the availability of recreation areas. There are also those who equip sports grounds so that employees can spend time productively actually at the workplace.

It is true that different generations of employees need different types of offices. And crossing an office “horse” and a “quivering doe” can be very difficult.

A study by the company CORE.XP, which provides consulting and investment management services in real estate, mentions that for the baby boomer generation born in 1946–1964, the ideal office is one with a personal account.

Generation X workers, born in 1965–1979, are also not against a personal office, but are already more loyal to premises for several employees. The millennial generation, born between 1980 and 1997, is not at all opposed to sitting in an office with other employees and even going out into an open space. At the same time, they are the ones who are beginning to have requests in the form of public spaces for entertainment, sports and recreation within the office.

And finally, Generation Z – those born since 1998. For them, it is no longer the workplace as such that becomes important, but the entire other set of “additions” in addition to, in fact, labor ones. And every year, the employer increasingly has to satisfy the needs of “Z employees”, who are extremely demanding in terms of working conditions.

In one of the IT departments of the FSK company, they created the opportunity for employees not only to work in a modern loft, but also to sit on cushions on the floor and drink lactose-free raf with vanilla syrup, says Daria Petrova, deputy director of the company’s project management department. And in the headquarters under construction, a mother and child room and even a bar for employees on the top floor were considered. In general, when designing the office, we went towards organizing places where, figuratively, “pants turn into elegant shorts.”

One of the successful Russian examples is the “grandmother-room” space from the Open Text company. The management wanted to bring a homely, neutral atmosphere to the office, and a room appeared in the office with a hearth like a fireplace or a Russian stove, cozy chairs and knitted napkins.

However, now no one can be surprised by recreation rooms and gyms. We need an original approach. In the international company Sanofi, for example, this role is played by a “working” cafe. The area is designed as a place for eating, in which you can fully work and meet with clients. By the way, such areas have long existed in university canteens, where students can have a snack and study in the afternoon.

In Australia, one employer really wanted to attract employees to the office who could not be lured with either carrot or stick. And he came up with the idea that on Friday, employees could take their casual clothes for free laundry, but they would only get them back if they came to work on Monday. “This is from the realm of the absurd, of course, but the need for invention is cunning. It’s important not to overdo it,” reminds Daria Petrova.

One unsuccessful example is the idea of ​​a Dutch company operating in the IT sector. Management has designed areas for collaboration wherever possible and impossible. They were very cozy – with comfortable chairs, coffee machines, aquariums with turtles and fish, but the management was far from the mentality of their subordinates. IT people for the most part are introverts who rarely want close communication not only with the team, but also with their own kind. In general, the innovation failed, its author was fired in disgrace.

But at Netflix headquarters, this approach, on the contrary, turned out to be successful. The designers created a workspace that complies with the Agile work methodology. It involves working in groups of five to ten people as part of the stepwise development of the project. If your level has risen, you go up to the next floor, to a new room where fewer people are sitting. If you bring a successful idea to life, you move even higher.

In a word, Daria Petrova summarizes, bankers create beautiful offices because they have money, and IT specialists create beautiful spaces because they have no choice.

But in the first place in any, even the most modern office, one thing still remains: high-quality work. It is for this purpose that employers install beer taps and send a “coffee lady” around the office who will prepare lavender raff for everyone. And let the employee work as he pleases – even reclining in a floor chair-cushion, hugging a laptop. The main thing is the result.