Long before any data showed it, I warned of the folly of back-to-office mandates. Wall Street may laud “decisive” leaders, but change is not something we DECIDE on our own; it must be workers’ idea (at least in part), or it’s sure to be mocked in the hallways. Such is the case with “decisive” return-to-work mandates.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data shared by Smart Brief, 17% more people now work from home vs. last year. Mandates aren’t working. And as we’re learning, they’re also forcing additional burdens on managers.

You probably already have witnessed “Coffee Badging,” where employees meet their organizations’ mandates by showing up long enough to badge in and have a coffee with a colleague.

Now witness the newly coined phenomenon called “Hushed Hybrid.” According to Smart Brief research, this is where “workers collaborate secretly with their managers to come to the office less frequently than the C-suite wants. Essentially, the managers undermine company policies because they recognize it would be a lot of hassle to enforce them, and not worth the resentment this enforcement would cause. Thus, many workers come in once or twice a week, even if the requirements might be three days a week.” This was not the intention!

Here’s another way to think of this topic: What kind of people stay at a place that says: “You have to!”? Is it the creative types who need freedom to innovate for us, or the rule-following stay-within-the-lines people who will keep us where we are today? (We need both, but can’t lose the former!)

Bottom line, we can’t mandate change. We must get employees to “want” to change. They must sincerely think of it as “their” idea, at least in part, or it can backfire on us. (Shhhh!)

I look forward to keeping in touch. Let me know what you think.

Al Comeaux