2024: The year we didn’t go back to the office

2024 has seen many noisy stories of senior leaders mandating a return to the office. You’d be forgiven for thinking that our post-pandemic hybrid work trend was coming to an end.

It turns out that 2024 was not the year we all trooped back to the office full-time. In fact, hybrid work has seen a steady plateau. We’ve not budged. Return to office mandates have backfired, which has made many other senior leaders considering the idea, take stock and rethink. I’m yet to see an example of when a return to office mandate has delivered positive results. The research shows that it leads to high levels of turnover, with top performers and those with caring responsibilities being the first to leave, disengaged employees, lower financial returns and a damaged employer reputation.

If going back wasn’t the answer in 2024, how do we move forward into 2025?

Two things need to change. 

First, we need to make sure managers and teams have the tools and language they need to make good decisions about hybrid work. Doing the right work, from the right place, with the right people is the secret to success. It’s not about having a free -for-all, hoping that people coming and going as they please will accidentally deliver a good outcome. It won’t and it doesn’t. Hybrid work needs a new set of skills and knowledge, which many employers are waking up to and putting in place.

Second, we need to open up flexible work choices for the other fifty percent of the workforce who can’t work from home. Frontline flexibility for site-based work needs to be our focus for 2025. It is certainly what I’m making space for in my work programme next year. The persistent fact that half of our workforce has so many flexible work options while the other half have virtually none is entirely unsustainable. There is an important ‘relative deprivation’ in our workforce and it will drive a wedge within our teams, organisations and communities if we take no action. 

What is relative deprivation? It was first coined by sociologist Samuel Stouffer when he studied military experiences during the Second World War. Because we are social beings, we compare ourselves with each other. When we look at what we have, we don’t see it in absolute terms, we see it in comparative terms. I’ll use pay as an example. If I move from one company, where I’m paid the same as my colleagues, to another company for a 10% pay rise, you’d imagine I’d be happier. Not necessarily. In my new company, if I’m the lowest paid person in my team, I’ll feel dissatisfied. The fact that my income lifted by 10% in absolute terms won’t matter, because in the social hierarchy of my new company, I’m now at the bottom of the pile, rather than the middle of the pack. 

The same relative deprivation is going on between the hybrid workforce and our frontline. The frontline experience hasn’t changed or deteriorated in absolute terms, but in relative terms it has fallen dramatically. This matters deeply to us and to our cohesion with each other. 

2025 needs to prioritise flexible work choices for people in all roles, particularly those in site-based work, so we can reduce the impact of the relative deprivation. The research is clear that we’re not going back, so we need to make the coming year a story of moving forward together.