Jan was recently featured in the Boston Business Journal feature “The return to office is losing steam. Here’s how to make your office a magnet.”

Here is a link to the article, however, if you don’t have a subscription we’ve supplied a snippet of Jan’s key points below.

But, as employee habits and desires become ingrained, and cost-of-living and inflation have workers questioning the value of coming back to the office, companies need to act to set a flexible hybrid work policy that gets workers back at least part time.

Jan Lehman, founder of CTC Productivity, said companies need to be intentional about what happens when workers come back. One of the best practices she recommends is designating a “connect day” where everyone at a company or on a specific team will be in the office.

“We can work hybrid, but everybody be in the office on Wednesdays,” she said. “So you know everybody’s going to be there, and those are going to be your collaboration days versus days you might focus on more concentrated work.”

Lehman said adding that little bit of structure can be effective and allow employees to take full advantage of being in the office. Experts say that type of strategy can avoid common stumbling blocks that occur when a lack of coordination leads to sparsely populated offices and defeats the purpose of coming in.

Avoiding a scenario where employees see no point in coming to the office is important, because the Work from Home survey found employees are often not facing consequences for working in the office less than they re mandated to.

In fact, 35% of respondents said nothing has happened to the employees for not coming into the office as much as requested.

What do you think? Do companies need to be strategic in how they offer and implement the hybrid workplace? How is your company doing so or how do you wish they would?