If companies can safely bring some employees back to the office, it could benefit both employees and the bottom line. The challenge is effectively identifying who should return, writes Chuck Bean, partner, and chief marketing officer at The Martec Group.
Since the nationwide shutdown in March, states have slowly and carefully allowed businesses to reopen. But many corporations have opted to allow their employees to continue working from home.
While some employees view being able to work from the couch in sweatpants as a benefit, others are dealing with higher stress levels and difficulty focusing. Their productivity is paying the price. If companies can safely bring some employees back to the office, it could benefit both employees and the bottom line. The challenge that remains is effectively identifying who should return.
Can a Return-to-Work Survey Help?
A simple survey asking employees their feelings about coming back to work could result in some people feeling forced to affirm that they want to be at the office. Others may try to align with what they perceive to be the majority opinion and say they’re fine working from home.
Long story short, just asking employees what they want is not the best way to identify who should be working at the office versus at home.
The Martec Group performed an Emotional Intelligence surveyOpens a new window (email required) to identify how employees were coping with working from home and determine if it was a positive or negative side effect of the pandemic. 1,214 individuals across various industries, demographics, and seniority levels participated in the survey. The findings proved to be a powerful argument in favor of companies allowing certain employees to return to the office as soon as safely possible.
Working from home, it was discovered, was not the dream come true that many employees may have expected it to be.
According to survey results:
- A mere 16% of employees were classified as Thriving Employees who were benefitting from working from home.
- Overall, employees reporting good mental health fell from 62% to a mere 28%.
- Job satisfaction and job motivation also dropped. 57% of employees were satisfied with their jobs before the pandemic when working in a typical office setting, and 56% had good job motivation. During remote work, those numbers were just 32% for satisfaction and 36% for motivation.
- Productivity also suffered. 40% of employees said their productivity had worsened during work-from-home, and 31% said their performance had decreased. Only 19% of employees said they were more productive at home.
Now that many companies have had employees working remotely for six months or more, the reported decline in productivity could be impacting deadlines, profits, and the overall strength of the business.
Is It Safe to Assume Who Wants to Return to Work?
While merely asking employees if they want to come back to work is not an objective approach, neither is making blanket assumptions about who should return. Our survey divided employees into groups based on their responses.
Thriving employees
In the survey, Thriving Employees tended to be female (72%) in entry-level positions (40%) and they had the most introverted personalities. These employees were happy working at home, thought their company was handling the situation well and appreciated the extra time gained in their day by not having to commute.
Hopeful employees
The group that disliked working from home but thought their employers were doing the best they could in a bad situation were identified as Hopeful Employees. This group missed the office’s social interaction and found it hard to focus and be productive at home, but they were making it work.
One-quarter of people surveyed fell into the Hopeful Employee category. While the group was female-dominated, it was a mix of entry-level (31%) and senior (27%) employees and introvert and extrovert personalities.
Discouraged employees
The Discouraged Employees took the biggest hit to mental health, reporting higher stress levels working from home and a 40% decline in mental health.
Primarily, manager-level employees and above – this group was an even split between males and females, mostly ages 25–45 – were found to be the most extroverted group.
Trapped Employees
Also feeling the stress and dislike for working from home was the Trapped Employees group, who expressed increased stress and lack of productivity and disappointment in how their companies were reacting to the situation. These employees had the most overall negative feelings, and while they were skewed younger, they also held positions of manager or higher at their companies and were the most extroverted.
Identify Employees’ Emotions to Bring Them Back to Work
Employee responses to working from home can vary and do not trend solely based on age, experience, or position. The challenge for HR departments is to identify an effective method of categorizing employees to balance personalities within the organization’s overall function to start returning employees to the office to maximize productivity effectively. And that begins with tapping into their underlying emotions.
This can be accomplished by developing a survey that asks employees questions that do not make them feel like they are on the spot and have to take a stance about returning to the office. The goal of the survey questions should be to help reveal employees’ feelings about the current work-from-home situation, where and how improvements can be made, and what their ideal return to the office would look like. From there, HR can begin to understand what category each employee falls into, their overall sentiments about working from home, and how to best support that employee to facilitate their success whether that is at home or in the office. Above all, be transparent with employees. Let them know the company understands they have different perspectives/feelings about working from home/returning to the office and are working to find solutions that are personalized to their individual situations.
How are you identifying the most suitable employees to bring back employees to the workplace? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window .