Is working in the office or from home (WFH) better for your business? Depending on what industry you work in, the answer will be different. It makes more sense for retail, hospitality, and manufacturing to be mainly on-site. Whereas, if you own an e-commerce company, WFH would make sense for your workers, except for order fulfilment roles.
Whatever WFH policy you choose, it’s important to make the right choice that benefits your business and your staff, so let’s compare your options.
The benefits of working from home
Working from home is becoming the norm, and working entirely in the office is becoming rare in industries where the majority of work doesn’t require on-site presence.
Here are some of the key benefits of working from home:
- More productive workforce: By eliminating commuting time and on-site distractions, your employees (and you) can dedicate more time to tasks. Your staff are less distracted, motivated and take fewer sick days.
- Fewer costs, better engagement: You save on costs, with your workforce taking less sick leave and logging on earlier. Fewer interruptions also mean they produce more work. At the same time, you save on office rental costs, which are a high ongoing cost for business operations.
- Talent retention: WFH provides wider talent pools for interviewing and retaining your own employees. Employees love the flexibility and work-life balance that WFH delivers, which provides a motivated and healthy workforce.
The advantages of returning to the office
As return-to-office mandates pop up in headlines, the discourse surrounding the decision is mainly negative. Most Aussie workers have experienced some form of WFH, and taking away those benefits is the difference between working for a company and not. But while there are legitimate reasons why returning to the office is unpopular, there are benefits to it for you and your staff.
- Better communication: In-office communication is far more streamlined than using virtual meeting or messaging applications. Face-to-face communication is effective, fast, and more efficient.
- Improved collaboration: An office or on-site environment enables better collaboration. You can problem-solve, innovate, and work more effectively in a close-knit environment. The social aspect of the office fosters collaboration, and as the team works together longer, it becomes more efficient.
- Fast learning and upskilling: In-office training and education are far more effective. When new employees start or upskill, hands-on experience enables high-quality interaction, faster learning, and a structured environment that online learning doesn’t provide.
Drawbacks of return-to-office and working-from-home policies
There are drawbacks to both policies—the main critiques of both, RTO and WFH, centre on limitations that are hard to overcome. RTO makes achieving work-life balance harder, but WFH can’t easily replicate genuine human interaction.
RTO drawbacks
- Inflexibility: Staff work-life balance is tricky to foster in an in-office environment. For in-office, you have strict work schedules and commutes that take far more than the face value 8-hour workday.
- Expensive: Getting to the office is costly for your employees (commutes and lunches) and for you (office space rent and operational costs).
- Attrition: Working in the office can exhaust your staff, leading to more sick days and more employee turnover, as WFH offers better work conditions.
WFH drawbacks
- Weaker cohesion: Where office environments thrive in communication and collaboration, WFH doesn’t significantly reduce your staff unit cohesion. Without the social aspect of working together, your workforce is more disconnected and less likely to be ‘creative’ in problem-solving (watercooler factor).
- Slower onboarding and learning: In-person onboarding and learning are at a disadvantage without the quickness of face-to-face interaction. Disengagement is a factor to consider, as is the need for discipline and monitoring when learning online.
- Operational setup: To set up you and your staff, you need a significant IT investment. These costs are lower after the initial setup, but ongoing maintenance and staff training are required, and your staff must have a decent internet connection.
Hybrid workplace policy
Neither policy is perfect; you will get a range of workers who prefer one over the other. This is where hybrid working policies win out over going 100% one way or the other. By choosing a hybrid workstyle, you get the benefits of both while sidestepping each policy’s drawbacks.
It’s not where you work, it’s how you work
It’s important to strike the right balance when implementing a hybrid work policy. One day of work from home yields mixed results, but 2-3 WFH days and 1-3 in-office days provide the greatest benefit to a workforce. For days spent in the office, focus on driving collaboration: look at outcomes, not hours spent, and adapt your leadership style to manage a hybrid team.
For businesses in the hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and other industries that can’t see how to implement hybrid policies, there are ways to do so. Frontline staff are obviously out, but what about support teams and finance teams? Do they need to be on-site? For hospitality, manufacturing, and retail, reducing office days offers cost-saving opportunities and better staff retention and productivity.
Hybrid workplace policy and your small business
Using a hybrid workplace policy gives the flexibility of WFH and the unit cohesion and collaborative benefits of RTO. To fully take advantage of hybrid’s benefits, focus on how you work rather than where you work, and enjoy a happier workforce and a stronger culture.
