A workplace shift: Office redesign, mental wellness and the growing preference for office return – Anne Rutledge
Many South African companies are re-evaluating their remote work policies, favouring a return-to-office approach. However, Anne Rutledge, Executive Director-Talent Solutions from Resourgenix says the concept of hybrid work, which allows for a blend of office and home-based work, is a lasting trend. In this interview with Biznews, Rutledge maps out how companies can carefully transition their existing staff back to the office to find a balance between remote and in-office work. She suggests a redesign of the office space to encourage collaboration and provide flexibility, noting the prevalence of hot desking in South Africa. It does not need to be a huge revamp, she says. For a new generation of workers, she says an office environment is important for support and guidance from their peers to progress. Hot desking, she says, is popular in South Africa. Acknowledging the global talent shortage, particularly acute in South Africa, Rutledge recommends rethinking work practices and possibly supplementing permanent staff with flexible, contingent workers. She also observes a gender disparity in the desire to return to the office, with more men than women expressing interest, and underscores the need to prioritise mental wellness initiatives given the blurred boundaries between work and personal life. As for the future of what people wear in the office, she says suits and ties have been pushed to the back of the cupboard, with individuality and a relaxed dress code coming to the fore. – Linda van Tilburg
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Highlights from the interview
Careful transition is needed to bring staff back to the workplace
(02:20:01) For companies with staff who have been working remotely for a long period, it's important to transition carefully. It's crucial to have policies in place that support the model you're looking at, as well as the individuals. Many roles or tasks can still be done remotely, so it's about finding a balance between productivity in the office and remotely. Companies are seeing the value of having individuals return to the office for collaboration. There's been an erosion of culture within companies, so bringing them back into the office can help rebuild that culture and reinforce certain practices. However, it's not a case of being hybrid or remote one day and back in the office the next. It's a transitional period. You have to consider where your employees have been and understand that they may need to make lifestyle changes. It's about being able to manage that transition effectively.
Visibility is important for the younger generation entering the workplace
(03:49.65): With the younger generation entering the workplace, it has played a part in companies wanting employees to return to the office. Many Generation Zs have never been in an office environment and need support and guidance from their peers to progress. It's not so much about visibility, as the pandemic has shown us that we can all be productive remotely. It's more about engagement with individuals, having coffee breaks with peers, being able to collaborate, having in-person meetings rather than virtual ones, and being able to make decisions quickly when you have individuals within the office environment. Being back in the office allows for more innovation when you're together as a team. It's about immersion into the office culture and being able to talk to individuals. We are social beings, after all. We need to be able to talk to people, not just virtually all the time.
Strategies around requiring talent need to adapt to those who don't want to come back to the office
(05:36.019) You will always have those individuals who don't want to come back to the office and they want to be remote. That's a choice that people have made and that's also fine. So, I think from a recruitment perspective, it's definitely changing the strategies around talent attraction. You need to find, it is more difficult to find the individuals, the right individuals to match those roles. But at the end of the day, there also needs to be a compromise.
So, it's not necessarily just everything that the candidate wants or everything that the company wants. You've got to find that compromise and that balance. It's got to be attractive for the individuals to come back. So, things like proximity to their homes, commute times, flexibility. Even though I am coming back into the office, am I able to start later, leave earlier? Can I still take time out for personal errands that I need to run? It is about being able to compromise around those little things.
They make a big difference in people's personal lives, and go a long way in terms of attracting the talents as well. While you're still achieving the same thing of having the individuals back in the office with you and building on your culture and building on your engagements and your collaboration and all of that.
Redesigning office spaces for 'collaboration areas'
(07:05:10) While it's costly to reimagine offices, it's about making them as comfortable as possible. This includes having more collaboration areas and chill areas where people can talk and engage. It's not so much about sitting at your desk when you're coming into the office anymore. It's about who you can speak to, who you need to collaborate with. If you're just going to sit at your desk, you might as well be working remotely.
Reimagining the offices doesn't have to be a huge revamp, but it's about redesigning it in such a way that people can meet together as teams, have that coffee meeting, or make a quick meeting request. It's about being comfortable in what they're doing. Many companies have also downsized their offices over time, so they have an opportunity to rethink the layouts and how they put people together. It's about finding a balance that suits both the company and the employees.
Hot desking are big in South Africa
(08:26) Many of our clients are adopting the concept of hot desks. In some instances, large corporates have designed booking spaces where you can go online and book your desk for the day. We've also adopted a hot desk policy, which operates on a first-come, first-serve basis. This approach often leads to employees sitting with different people all the time, fostering collaboration with various individuals. It's not just about your space, it's about our space and how we collaborate together. This shift in office dynamics is not just about individual workspaces, but about shared spaces and collaboration.
Talent shortage in South Africa more acute than overseas, supplementing with contingent workforce
(09:14.325): Like many other countries, we are experiencing talent shortages, perhaps more so than most. Despite this, we are seeing a lot of South Africans returning, particularly to the Cape Town area. However, we will always face a shortage of skills. This requires companies to rethink how they work. While you have your core South African team in the office or working in a hybrid model, you might need to supplement that with a flexible workforce from a contingent basis, which might be based anywhere to do specific projects or certain development work. For organisations, it's not just about having a permanent workforce or a flexible workforce, it's about a blend and finding a balance between the two. This is crucial in addressing the talent shortages.
Ensuring mental wellness for your staff, productivity can be affected
(11:12:69) Mental wellness has been a topic of discussion for quite some time. With us being so removed from the offices and not being sociable with everybody else, we have found that the mental wellness of individuals has played a big part. People have felt that their schedules, possibly being remote, have rolled over into their personal lives. When you're at home, you just carry on working and there's no time you are 'never off'. It impacts people's mental illness. That is also one of the reasons why a lot of companies are looking at this coming back to the office. It gives you an opportunity to interact with different individuals. How are you doing? What are you up to? Those kinds of interactions that we used to have before and now with the virtual world, it kind of fell away. That did impact people's mental wellness. It's important that mental wellness does affect productivity.
So, if an organisation is not looking at measures around that or doing a check on employees from a mental wellness perspective, productivity will be affected at the end of the day. It's important that leaders look at that and look at their temperature within their teams and understand there might be certain issues that might be coming out of it. It does make it easier when you're in the office to kind of judge if somebody is okay or not okay, rather than virtual, you could put a facade on. But again, mental illness coming back to the office if they've got long commute times, that's also going to affect their mental illness. So how do you balance that?
It is indeed a fine balancing act. Leaders are learning as they go with individuals and new generations coming into the workplace bring a different dynamic to it as well. For them, mental wellness is very important. They really want to feel that they're giving back and they're being productive within the workforce, but they also are receiving. It's about finding a balance and giving them some sort of flexibility around it. It's not just about a permanent workforce or a flexible workforce, it's about finding a balance between the two. This is crucial in addressing the talent shortages.
More men are coming back to the office than women
We have seen that the trend has been more towards men coming back to the office. You probably find 60% to 70% of men are quite open to coming back to the office, whereas women, 30% to 40% of them, find it difficult to come back to the office. There are various reasons for that. Their lifestyle changed around the family dynamics, picking up their children from school and things like that. So, it definitely has impacted women as well.
However, it comes back to flexibility. I don't want to be the person to say, give women more flexibility. That's definitely not what I'm saying. But it comes back to everybody's personal lives. What can we do for you as an organisation and what can we as leaders help you with so that we both achieve what we want to achieve with a bit of a compromise in between. I think that is very possible. If I look within our teams, we do have a predominantly woman-based organisation and we do have that flexibility as well. It's not to say that the men don't get the flexibility, they do get the flexibility, because they also want to go watch the sports events and things like that as well. So, it's just about the conversations and having that trust element with your employees to be able to have that flexibility in their work schedules.
Ties are becoming a rarity for men, shift towards more relaxed dress code
(15:29:45) The work environment has become a lot more relaxed. People are expressing their individuality more, they like to bring themselves to the office. That's not to say that people are coming to the office not looking neat and tidy, because neatness is still important. There is an element of individuality. What one wears on the outside doesn't necessarily reflect what they're capable of doing and what their productivity looks like. It's about being comfortable in who you are, being yourself, and bringing your best self to work every single day.
It's been a long time since I've seen a gentleman in a tie. These days, it's more common to see nice collared shirts or a shirt and maybe a jacket. It's good to see because it seems a lot more relaxed. When you have this, with a tie or if you're a lady and you've got these jackets on, it can seem a bit unnatural at times. It kind of breaks that trustability. It's not so much about the dress code, but about the comfort and authenticity of the individual. The shift towards a more relaxed dress code is reflective of the changing dynamics in the workplace.
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