Have you ever faced the daunting task of navigating a company through a major policy change, especially when opinions are as diverse as the people themselves? I worked on a leadership team that was responsible for reshaping the office / work from home policy at our ~200 person organization. This experience offers a real-world blueprint for managing such pivotal transitions.
For context, this happened in early 2021 when people were still testing the waters of returning to the office. I worked at a consulting agency that had 6 offices around the US and UK. Some were long-term leases, and some were short-term co-working spaces. All of the offices were under-utilized as most people were working from home.
Some people would use the offices because they didn’t have a space at home conducive to focusing. Others would use the offices to stay connected with their co-workers. Some never went into an office because they had small children and didn’t want to delegate to paid childcare. There were others who just hated the idea of going back to a regular commute.
Needless to say, there was a large variety of preferences and the cost of the current solution (existing office overhead) was too large. Change risked turnover at a time where our company couldn’t afford that disruption. This was a difficult situation.
For difficult decisions that had broad employee impact, we would follow a blueprint to create understanding and outlets for feedback amongst the employee base. It looked like the following:
Step 1: Spend time framing the problem, the intended outcome, and the constraints
A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
We spent some time detailing the tensions felt by the current setup, but then also zoomed out and detailed the potential impacts of a best-case scenario outcome. We came up with this for our desired outcome: “Ensure a daily experience of connection and community through attitudes, actions, activities, and adjacency, anchored in shared purpose, shared interests and a spirit of conviviality.” Notice this outcome doesn’t specify any specific implementation of an office policy. It just details the intended outcome of whatever policy we go with.
We presented our framing of the situation to the entire company and invited everyone to provide feedback that would help the leadership team make a decision.
Step 2: Open the floor to private or small group listening sessions
People need to feel heard.
We emailed out anonymous surveys and sent out sign-up sheets where people could give feedback on the topic to an executive in a 1:1 or small group format. We didn’t make any decisions in these sessions. We only listened and asked probing questions. The time allocated to each individual ranged from 5 minutes (if they used the form) to 30 minutes (if they signed up for a 1:1 or a small group session).
Step 3: Synthesize findings and report back
Give your team the unfiltered context.
We synthesized the feedback we heard, outlining every unique perspective and highlighting widely held perspectives. Then we published an internal report covering this material (including feedback critical of leadership’s decision-making thus far). That way everyone could read it and ensure their feedback was understood and represented.
Step 4: Set a clear direction
Remove uncertainty and move forward.
By the time we collected all of this feedback a couple of options had become clear front-runners. It was time for us to make a fully informed policy decision. While the policy represented a decrease in the company’s investment in office spaces, it came with increases in investment in other areas that impacted our intended outcome (ex: travel budget increase, new co-working space policy, home office equipment budget, etc). While some in the employee base weren’t pleased with the new policies, the dissenters weren’t very vocal for long because everyone understood the business’s constraints and felt good about the decision-making process.