Returning to the office seems backwards. After office occupancy rose above 50.4% in late January, it fell to 45.6% in early February before recovering slightly to 48.6%. But even so many business leaders are trying to bring employees back to the office to prevent “quiet stops.”
The term “quiet stop” appeared in early 2022, and refers to doing the minimum tasks in your job description well enough to avoid getting fired. The concept quickly went viral on TikTok.
But it only began to gain traction as an issue of concern among business leaders when government data on productivity released in August 2022 showed a sharp and unexpected decline in the first and second quarters of 2022. The following month, Gallup released a survey showing that as many as half of all Americans can be quiet quitters, further exacerbating the concerns of business leaders about this issue.
Is remote work to blame for the layoffs?
Many traditionalist leaders are quick to attribute this drop in productivity to the rise in remote work. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink attributed the drop in productivity to remote work. He asked the employees to come to the office to solve the problem.
But traditionalist claims do not add up. If the shutdown stops and productivity drops because of remote work, then we should see a drop in productivity from the beginning of the pandemic, when office workers move to remote work. Then, as offices reopen, especially after the Omicron wave at the end of 2021, we should see an increase in productivity as workers return to the office from the beginning of 2022.
In fact, we see the opposite trend. US productivity rose in the second quarter of 2020 when offices were closed, and remained at higher levels through 2021. Then, when companies began to order back to the office in early 2022, productivity fell sharply in Q1 and Q2 of that year. Productivity recovered slightly in Q3 and Q4 as productivity losses associated with the return-to-office mandate were absorbed by companies—but never returned to the period when employees were able to work away from home.
What explains the drop in productivity associated with quitting?
Forcing employees to come to the office under the threat of discipline leads to disengagement, fear, and mistrust, according to director of research and strategy for board management at Gallup Ben Wigert. Gallup found that “optimum engagement drives occur when employees spend 60% to 80% of their time—or three to four days out of a five-day workweek—working off-site.”
The Integrated Benefits Institute found in an October 2022 survey that employees who work remotely or in hybrid environments are reported to be more satisfied (20.7%) and more engaged (50.8%).
No wonder, forcing employees to come to the office leads to silence. Separated labor is unproductive. Especially if they are looking for a new job. Career website Monster reported that two-thirds of survey respondents would quit rather than return to work full time. Unsurprisingly, many are forced to return to the office to start polishing resumes and meeting with recruiters.
Completing the quiet stop at the command to return to the office
The best approach to the future of work is a flexible team-led approach, with team leaders making the calls about work arrangements that suit the team’s needs. Team leaders know best what their team needs, including how to maximize productivity, engagement, and collaboration.
Adopting best practices for returning to the office can reduce loneliness concerns. A conversation about compensation should always accompany a return-to-office initiative. For example, research by Owl Labs suggests that it costs an average of $863 per month for the average office worker to commute to work versus $432 per month to work from home.
It’s best to pay for office-related expenses, rather than general salary increases. Pay your staff’s commuting expenses. Pay for a nice catered lunch. Pay for dry cleaning.
These payments help overcome initial dissatisfaction and reduce the attrition typically associated with mandated office returns. However, this does not solve the loneliness that affects people who come to work and do the same thing at home, except with a two-hour commute.
An October 2022 survey by Slack found that many knowledge workers need to return to the office for up to four hours for a video call. UK head of Slack Stuart Templeton said that employers risk turning the office into a “productivity killer,” because “making a two-hour commute to sit on a video phone is a terrible use of the office.”
This is the kind that leads directly to quiet quitting. We know that people are more productive on individual tasks that require focus at home. A survey by Slack confirms this impression: 55% of respondents prefer to do “deep work” at home, and only 16% mention the office as a better place for deep work.
Instead, the office should be a place for deep socialization, collaboration, and training, especially for new hires. To address the need for socialization, it is important to organize team-building exercises and fun social events when staff return to the office.
To facilitate collaboration, it is important to consider how staff in the office work together with those who work from home. Employees who come in on different days of the week still need collaboration and hybrid meetings. To facilitate collaboration between staff in the office and remote, it helps to provide a virtual office environment, which puts both types of workers in the same field. In addition, it is important to increase audiovisual collaboration to facilitate effective hybrid meetings.
There is no substitute for face-to-face experience for in-depth training in soft skills, such as effective personal communication, mediation and conflict resolution, and ethical persuasion. My clients have found that when they provide valuable training on a regular basis after employees return to the office, there is a reduction in quietness and an increase in employee engagement and productivity.
Finally, it is important to help staff deal with burnout as part of their return to work, for example by offering mental health benefits. At the end of the Gallup 2022 survey, 71% of respondents said that compared to working in the office, hybrid work improved their life balance and 58% reported less burnout.
While an assigned return to the office will inevitably lead to layoffs and lost productivity, a focus on helping employees socialize, collaborate, and achieve professional development and good mentoring demonstrates the value of the office, which will reduce layoffs and improve performance. .
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., helps technology and finance industry executives drive collaboration, innovation, and retention in hybrid workplaces. He serves as the CEO of the business consulting boutique Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the best-selling author of 7 books, including Don’t Go With Your Gut and Hybrid and Remote Teams. His expertise includes more than 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and more than 15 years in academia as well as behavior. scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill and Ohio State.
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