America’s return-to-office has been a “lagging return,” reports the Washington Post: Even with millions of workers across the country being asked to return to their cubicles, office occupancy has been relatively static for the past year. The country’s top 10 metropolitan areas averaged 47.2 percent…
Just to point out, latest research shows productivity is a wash. Essentially, experienced workers saw productivity boost, while new hires since WFH have shown low productivity growth over the last 3 years. The leading theory is experience sharing that happened in person, in a casual manner, had a much larger impact in growing the company talent over longer terms.
Firms need to adapt to keep their talent competitive. Some firms choosing to go back to office is just one strategy.
That reads to me like it’s demonstrated to be superior for employees who understand their work and how to do it, but training employees to that point is not occurring. I don’t think this problem is inherent to the format - every place I have yet worked has de-facto replaced most or all of their training program with an on-the-job copying of tasks and routines from more experienced employees. That crutch has been removed and the absence of quality training programs is further highlighted. Understandably, this will vary wildly with field and firm, and developing an analogue to that type of informal information sharing is already occurring from what I’ve read.
Doubling down on what the other guy said, the answer is structured training instead of mashing people together hoping they learn by osmosis