It’s been a long time since we’ve seen our creature comforts of the office. But, much like the stranded islanders on Lost realized after finally returning to civilization, “we have to go back.”
More than 48% of Americans have already been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, according to site Our World in Data. And all around the U.S., pandemic restrictions have begun loosening at a fast-increasing rate.
What does such headway mean for companies aiming to get their employees back into the workplace?
Firstly, it means determining whether returning to the office will be mandatory or voluntary for team members. According to a study by Microsoft, more than 40% of the global workforce said they would be willing to leave their current position after a failed negotiation in continuing remote work. It has become increasingly apparent that many jobs can be handled just as productively (or even more so) after lifting the Oz curtain that commuting daily to the office “is a necessity.”
Secondly, it means gathering employee opinions through surveys, and taking those stances seriously. By comparing productivity levels against employee willingness to come back into the office, organizations have been able to address concerns more effectively and create new guidelines adapted to this new method of working.
At Vistaprint, for example, providing employees scheduling and workplace flexibility has been crucial.
“We believe in making decisions backed by data,” Head of Remote Onboarding Kim Lanza said. “Our team members will continue to have autonomy to work wherever enables them to do their best work.”
Tell us about your current plans for returning to the office.
In summer of 2020, Cimpress and Vistaprint made the decision to embrace remote working and transition to being a remote-first company permanently. Based on our team members’ feedback and the trends and data we’re seeing externally, we believe giving our team members the flexibility to work how and where they choose will become a towering strength of our culture and a competitive advantage. During a time where there was so much uncertainty in the world, it was important to us that our team members felt heard and had certainty about the way we intended to work in the future.
As it becomes safe to do so, we also believe in the power of coming together in person in support of collaboration, events, team building and strengthening of relationships. We will have a number of office spaces around the world that our team members can use for focused individual work, collaboration and community building.
Any of our team members who choose to leverage the office spaces can do so as frequently or infrequently as they like. Our team members have and will continue to have autonomy to create their own schedules and to work wherever enables them to do their best work.
What were the most important steps you took to develop this plan?
At Cimpress and Vistaprint, we believe in making decisions backed by data. The decisions made in developing this plan were no different. First and foremost, there was the data provided by our team members globally. We conducted numerous surveys to get our team members’ perspectives and to gauge how those perspectives shifted over time. What we heard was loud and clear. Our team members preferred remote working, appreciate the flexibility it has afforded them, and they wish to continue to have the option to work remotely in the future.
We also had the data of our business results proving our teams’ continued productivity and ability to deliver the most important business outcomes while working remotely. So, we knew they wanted to do it and they had proven they could successfully.
Other important steps we took were creating and documenting a set of guiding principles to help us make decisions aligned with our goals, looking outward to experts for advice, creating an internal team to help manage our shift to remote-first, and staying informed on external industry trends and data as the work landscape continues to rapidly change.
We believe in the power of coming together in person in support of collaboration and team building.”
Obviously, there are still a lot of unknowns around when it will be safe to return to the office at full capacity. How are you adapting to and preparing for these unknowns?
With our shift to permanent remote-first working, we will not be returning to office at full capacity in the same way we would have worked pre-pandemic. That said, we will have office spaces in some areas available for our team members to work from or use as space to meet with their teams. Those office spaces are opening at different times depending on the location and regional restrictions. We have office site leads in each location who are partnering with our human resources team and our real estate team to make safe decisions.
To keep our team members informed, we created a central knowledge base called our “Remote-First Handbook” which serves as a transparent, single source of truth for how we work and what we expect from each other. It’s where our team members can look first when they have questions. Updates about each of our office spaces are one of the many things documented in the handbook and kept updated for our team members’ reference. Important changes are highlighted by our internal communications team within bi-weekly “Remote-First Updates” emails and within a #remote-first-annoucements Slack channel.
