The ROI of the RTO Trend
A Return to the Office Could Benefit Everyone
In a mid-September, Amazon announced that, beginning with the new year, all employees will be required to be in their Amazon workplace five days a week. According to a memo from CEO Andy Jassy posted to the company’s website, this overarching Return-to-Office (RTO) order was driven primarily by a belief it will “make it easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice and strengthen our culture.”
Since Amazon’s announcement, several other major employers including UPS, JPMorgan Chase, Dell and Boeing have also called at least some of their employees back to the office full-time.
We sat down with Modern Impact CEO, Michael Priem, and COO, Rick Adams, for their thoughts on how this trend could impact brands, their marketing teams and their future.
Modern Impact CEO, Michael Priem
Modern Impact COO, Rick Adams
Amazon has cited operational efficiency and preservation of their culture as the primary reasons for their RTO order – but could there be broader economic or financial factors behind this move?
Michael Priem:
If you were to poll the Fortune 100 C-suite, I don’t think you’d find a high degree of resistance to the idea of remote work environments. The reality is they were a big factor in allowing many businesses to survive the pandemic and the last few years. So, the economic impact of the work-from-home movement hasn’t been terrible. I think any negative economic impact has been more a matter of decay.
And it’s going to take time for that deterioration to fully demonstrate itself through a lack of innovation, product design, and all those things that are harder to produce in a remote setting’ things that don’t show up immediately in your latest quarterly report.
So, where the Fortune 100 likely feel some frustration is in the speed of recovery and an inability to bring employees back much sooner. Many would like to take a harder line with employees on this policy but, aside from potentially negative PR, there’s the matter of potential staff attrition. That’s one of the big inhibitors and why you’re seeing this slow roll.
Is employee attrition a significant threat for brands who demand a return to the office? Are today’s employees that committed to working wherever they choose?
Michael Priem:
Is Amazon going to lose a chunk of their employees? Maybe. Or will enough employees who feel detached working remotely recognize the benefits and welcome the change? Amazon may have enough clout to retain most of its employees due to the economic and emotional benefits that come from being part of that brand. Other organizations might not be as lucky.
Banking and financial services have already made RTO a mandate and are terminating people who don’t comply. Not every industry has the ability to move their human capital quite as quickly – or attract more high-caliber human capital quickly – so it’ s a very nuanced situation. Which means each company is going to have to evaluate its needs and prospects honestly and make decisions independently of “what everyone else is doing.”
So, is this a real trend? Is it a case of ‘As goes Amazon, so goes America?’ Or are most companies likely to continue with their current polices?
Michael Priem:
My present thoughts circulate around some sort of hybrid of both remote and in-office environments. I don’t believe we’ll ever go back to pre-COVID levels of in-office presence, but the need for team members of most organizations to return to the office is significant and can’t be overstated.
Will it be exactly like it was before? No. That’s not likely. Working from home has helped alleviate some of the financial burdens we’ve felt from skyrocketing costs of things like gasoline and childcare. So, unless you can afford to give everyone big pay raises to spend 40 hour a week in an office, they won’t be coming back. But having your team together more than they are now will benefit both the company and your employees.
What do you believe is really driving the current RTO trend? What are the biggest operational advantages?
Michael Priem:
Some people want to resist the RTO trend, but there is no doubt – and historical proof – that not everyone performs well in a remote, autonomous work environment.
Many of us are working in an environment that’s constantly changing so fast that part of the process of remaining agile and adopting new approaches and remaining relevant or up to date is accomplished through Socratic learning; by joining the discussion, asking the right questions and divining the best answers together.
You could argue that if you’re working from home, some of that can happen through Zoom or Teams, but you sacrifice the benefits of the full experience that comes from being face-to-face. And many people who work remotely for long periods of time also attest to feeling less connected to the enterprise. So, I do believe that if companies are going to create great work, then working together in closer proximity to one another will need to come back.
Rick Adams:
I think Michael’s point about a lot of the best work happening face-to-face – particularly in a marketing organization – is a critical one. The ability to have conversations by walking down the hall to someone’s office and asking, “What do you think about this?” can mean the difference between good and great. When everyone’s working separately on their piece of the plan, the process devolves into task-based project management and you lose the benefit of synergy.
So, if I’m the CMO of a brand or otherwise leading a large marketing team, how do I know when it’s time to call them back to the office? What’s the best approach to managing that change?
Michael Priem:
If you’re a creative shop or SEO firm, the scope of your work is fairly finite and integration of your team in a remote environment is much easier. But if you’re leading a full-service marketing division or agency, you have cradle-to-grave responsibility that demands you not only craft smart brand strategy and creative content, but plan and optimize media, track and measure performance, then report results and refine the approach. It’s a complex ecosystem that includes support of marketing infrastructure and requires constant vigilance, communication and collaboration.
That’s difficult if 90% of your team are on their own 90% of the time. Collective learning becomes stilted, information travelling across the enterprise becomes fragmented and organizational growth becomes stunted.
Rick Adams:
And that’s when everything is going according to plan. In a marketing organization, there are always exceptions, always surprises, so you’re never sure what each day will bring – and you have very limited means of measuring employee contributions in meeting those challenges.
If your job is to produce a certain number of email blasts every two weeks, that’s easy to measure. But a lot of the work – even in the execution phase – can be so variable that it’s hard to benchmark reasonable expectations. When you have people outside the office, it’s difficult to understand how hard they’re working, how they might be overdelivering and the overall value they’re providing. In a situation like that, it’s the employee who ends up being shortchanged.
Michael Priem:
In a dynamic organization there are also times you’re presented with a challenge that requires you to collaborate and architect a solution quickly – and that’s not always a linear process. Sometimes you have a great idea that requires you grab the right people, put them in a room together and let them do some brainstorming. Anyone who’s been on a conference call when more than one person is talking knows Zoom isn’t the right room for that kind of collaboration.
Those are just some of the factors that impact marketing teams. So, I think the work environment is going to continue to evolve. A return to the office isn’t just good for companies in terms of efficiencies, but actually good for their people when it comes to professional and personal growth.
What are some of the benefits of the RTO trend to employees?
Michael Priem:
Rick made the comment that when everyone’ s working remotely, it’s very difficult to measure progress in a multi-faceted way. You can track hours and make sure that work that was assigned got done, and that’s about it. But there isn’t a lot of team interaction or observation, so you don’t really get a chance to spend time with people, realize all they’re doing or appreciate the nebulous, ethereal things that contribute to the team or culture. Spending time together helps ensure they’re recognized for those things.
Rick Adams:
The fact is, it’s in the best interest of employees to have more time in the office collaborating with their colleagues. It’s also in their best interest to be mentored in person. There are so many times I’ve thought, “If I had whomever sitting here, I could just show them what I’m doing” and they might even have an idea on how to do it better. Then down the line, I can delegate that work, which is going to be better for both of us. So much of being mentored successfully comes from watching someone else, so mentoring over Zoom is almost impossible.
Michael Priem:
There’s never going to be a magical tool or piece of software that can replace the power of human chemistry. I’ve talked about it forever. It’ s been in my keynote speeches for years. Customer satisfaction data for most categories indicates eye-to-eye communication changes our perception of an experience. These are the kind of interactions that are difficult to replace with a screen. Advancements in augmented reality mean it may be possible in the future, but it’s not going to happen right now.
Don’t get me wrong. Everyone knows I’m a lifelong advocate of technology. But I also recognize that even in a world where we continue to innovate and automate, more and more, we still need humans.
Rick Adams:
I think that helps illustrate the difference between using technology to increase productivity and building real connections. Collaboration in project management is easy to coordinate through apps and software, but emotional engagement is an entirely different thing.
Quantitatively, the most immediate benefit to any organization is probably greater productivity. You can simply get more stuff done. But qualitatively, creativity is also amplified. If you could snap your fingers and have all your people together in the office four days a week, can you imagine how that would feel? What you could accomplish? The collective creativity and quality of ideas grow exponentially.
Michael Priem:
It'd be off the charts. It's a testament to ingenuity, how organizations have been able to adapt and can get by since COVID. But are we okay with just getting by? Or should we putting ourselves in a position to maximize talent and opportunity?
Speaking of emotional engagement, are there more personally rewarding benefits of RTO to employees beyond increased productivity or quality of work?
Rick Adams:
The other thing that’s often missing in remote environments is a simple sense of empathy among colleagues. When you’re working in the office, you’re more aware, you can easily see that someone is busting their butt on whatever task is at hand. That visibility and context promotes a natural sense of empathy you don’t have in a remote environment because there’s that digital distance between you.
Michael Priem:
To your point, Rick, when you’re all working in the office together – maybe pulling an all-nighter because you have a presentation the next day – there’s a spirit of camaraderie and empathy with everyone in the room.
But it also points out the importance of being present. Think of all the good ideas that never came to light because no knew they existed. When you’re together, you might notice something on someone’s desk and ask, “What’s that?” And they might say, “Oh, that’s just a thing I thought of but decided to toss.” And then someone else will say, “No, that’s it. That’s the idea we’ve been looking for.” It’s not just more collaborative but personally validating.
Rick Adams:
That doesn’t just apply to matters of creativity, but to any kind of creative problem solving. If your role is more tactical, let’s say it involves a high volume of reporting, remote environments create disparate workloads. But if somebody sitting next to you says, “What if we did this?” you not only expedite the process of identifying solutions but can dig in to complete the work and share in the outcomes.
Michael Priem:
I think one of the other results you’re seeing from the work-from-home era is a lack of ownership and self-esteem. Even among younger demos, there’s always been a tendency to feel like the work we do helps define us. Not wholly, but at least partially. You’re part of a particular team. You’re an unofficial brand ambassador. But working from home has a way of making you feel like an independent contractor and making the work feel like just a job.
When you’re working from home, things become more task based. “I have to do this work for this period of time in order to fit in everything else on my plate.” Feeling like a cog in a big machine does little to promote a sense of value or self-worth.
I have a strong belief that, as humans, we all need other people, and a big part of our social identity comes from the bonds we’ve built through work. So, I also think there’s eventually going to be some fatigue from this remote scenario. Think about the friends you’ve made in your life. A big chunk of those friendships was formed through work. Not just because you worked on a specific piece of business, but because you spent time together and had a chance to get to know each other.
Those relationships and the rewards they provide might be the most important “employee benefit” of all.
