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Office Culture
Companies are clawing to bring back pre-pandemic perks and that 'family'
feeling – but employees want something more tangible.
Many employers are calling employees back into offices, trying
to restore the workplace of pre-pandemic days. Along with filling
seats, they're also looking to bring back another relic: office
culture.
Pre-2020, office culture was synonymous with the 'cool' office:
think places to lounge, stocked pantries and in-office happy hours
that went all out; or luxe retreats and team-building exercises
meant to foster the feeling of 'family'. In past years, these perks
drew many workers to the office – in some cases, entire companies
defined themselves by their office cultures.
The world of work looks and feels entirely different than just a
few years ago – yet many companies are still intent on recreating
the office cultures workers left behind as they abandoned their
desks in 2020. While these companies are making some gestures
to adapt – for instance, redesigning spaces to accommodate new
preferences and hybrid-work habits – many are still set on bringing
back what lured in workers before the pandemic.
Yet swaths of employees simply aren't interested in going
backward. Instead of trust-falls and cold brew on tap, employees
are demanding flexible work, equitable pay and a focus on
humanity in the workplace that transcends the perks they sought
years earlier.
Workers' shifting priorities are a natural consequence of the
Covid-19 pandemic, says Georgina Fraser, head of human capital
for global commercial real-estate firm CBRE. "The pandemic gave
us autonomy in a way that we haven't had previously," she says.
"It gave us the opportunity to choose how we structured our
working days." And now that workers have experienced that level of work-life
balance, they won't settle for less. Fraser adds: "Post-pandemic,
we saw a resurgence of people being very vocal about what they
wanted and needed, not just from office culture, but from the
wider world."
Now, she says, workers aren't shy about "wanting to be seen
as a whole human – and that filters down to their physical location,
how [employers] manage them, what support they receive and
how [employers] integrate technologies between home and office
in order to support them".
One major factor in this changing attitude is that many
employees feel office culture simply isn't applicable in a remote and hybrid-first world, where the physical office can feel
superfluous. Now that the workplace doesn't serve as the culture
hub it once did, "companies have really struggled to redefine the
role of the office", says Lewis Beck, CBRE's head of workplace for
Europe. Office culture that was once meant to get employees
excited doesn't have the same pull when workplaces are only one third full.
Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240229-office-culture-is dead
If stocked pantries (2nd paragraph) are available in the office,
peckish employees will have a place where they can grab a(n)
