The recession is well and truly upon us. This usually means a return to an employer-driven market in most employment sectors. However, with such a lack of available qualified talent in the tech sector, that will not happen in the foreseeable future. So if you’re an employer with skills gaps and you want staff to work in the office full time, you’ll need to seriously consider how to tempt employees back to the office.

Most companies that want staff to return to the office have already called them back. However, the tech jobs market is still candidate driven despite the recession, and 55% of workers want to work from home.

The result of this combination left some tech organisations with more empty seats than they had to fill when remote working was more the norm. So how do employers encourage employees to want to work on-site?

A team of tech workers huddle around a table to generate new ideas — Your teams are more likely to come to the office to spend time with each other than their managers.

Five Fantastic Ways to Tempt Employees Back to The Office

Social Events

According to tech giant Microsoft, 84% of employees say that their main motivation to go into the office is the promise of socialising with co-workers. Of course, if you make it compulsory for all staff to work on-site all the time, then their coworkers will always be there to socialise with. But that’s beside the point. What workers want is hybrid working models, at least.

To tempt your employees back to the office, how about getting the team together for lunch once a week or having an office bake-off?

Provide Training

Over half the workforce thinks there are insufficient opportunities for growth within their organisations to make them stay long-term. However, 76% of employees say they would remain with their current employer longer if they had access to training and development.

Given the above, providing on-site training sessions should be a no-brainer for all businesses. They allow organisations to upskill their workforce and encourage team collaboration.

Empty desks wonder how to tempt employees back to the office — All it takes is a little clever thinking to encourage your people to want to spend more time in their seats

A Four-Day Working Week

100 UK organisations have recently committed to a four-day working week without making pay cuts. A further 70 companies have signed up for a trial to test how well this would work in practice. So far, 88% of those companies report that reducing working hours works well for their business.

With the cost of running a business increasing, many employers offer a four-day working week instead of salary increases. Reduced working hours might also be enough to tempt employees back to the office.

Make it Convenient

Employees love working from home so much because it makes their lives so much easier. They can attend doctor’s appointments during their lunch break, they don’t have to get dressed up, they’re always home to accept deliveries, it makes the school run less stressful and generally assures them a better work-life balance.

So what can employers do to make their employees’ lives more convenient? Ask them! Talk to your staff and find out what’s important to them and work out how you can make their return to the workplace more manageable.

Below are some of the things companies are doing to make people’s lives easier and increase staff willingness to spend time in the office are:

A working environment that beats their home set-up
Ditch the office dress code
Flexible working hours
A local garage that will collect employee’s cars from the staff car park to carry out MOTs and servicing while they work
Offer house cleaning services as an employee incentive
On-site childminding/creche and gym facilities
In-office catering facilities providing delicious, healthy food

Hire Locally

Before the pandemic, it was a commonly quoted statistic that one in four employees would quit a job with a long commute. Post-pandemic, one in five people say they will never commute again.

Hiring employees who live locally removes the barrier of a long commute to work and encourages people to spend more time in their office teams.

A Few Final Thoughts on How to Tempt Employees Back To The Office

For as long as the tech jobs market remains candidate-driven, demanding employees work in the office because their boss says so just won’t work. Your people need a reason to leave their homes and endure the daily commute.

Making your office the most convenient place for your staff to work is the only way to tempt employees back to the office. We hope that adopting some of the above tactics will help you entice your teams back on-site.

Why not speak to our team for more ways to make your work offer more appealing to tech talent? Shring their wealth of expert knowledge of the tech market has helped many of our clients achieve their recruitment goals. It’s all part of our consultancy style service!