Over loud protests, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the powerful men behind the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, insist that federal employees who have enjoyed working from home for years, return to the office full time or lose their jobs.
This heavy-handed approach may work in Washington, though one suspects the move is temporary while the efficiency experts decide how many, and which, federal jobs are truly necessary to do the work of serving the American people.
Whether the federal return to the workplace mandate accomplishes its goals, however, is not the concern of private employers, as they too survey the challenges and opportunities (and weigh the benefits of) bringing their employees back to the office.
According to Smartbrief.com’s Gleb Tsipursky, many organizations are quietly adapting to employee preferences for flexibility rather than rigid mandates that are difficult to enforce and often counterproductive. Rigid policies often result in driving away top-tier employees – an outcome hardly desirable.
August data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 22.8% of workers reported teleworking for some or all of their jobs, up from just 19.5% in August 2023, with about half working part-time at the office and half working remotely all the time.
Some companies have initiated employee tracking, often a requirement for “secure” facilities, but a Harvard Business Review study indicates that electronic monitoring leads to performance declines.
Let's face it - Employees who feel trapped, rather than free, in their workplaces rarely perform at their highest levels. And in a competitive jobs market, such rigid policies tend to make recruitment of quality employees more difficult.
A better way to ensure that quality employees return or arrive at the office is through “cool office amenities” that boost employee productivity and morale. These may include fast connectivity, natural lighting, ergonomic furniture, on-site gyms and childcare facilities, pet-friendly areas, healthy on-site food options, shuttle services, quiet rooms and collaborative spaces, and even shuttle services.
Employees find that such amenities enhance their workplace environment, leading to increased productivity from a positive workplace culture that lowers stress and reduces absenteeism. Providing an employee-friendly workplace contributes to a more vibrant, engaged, and motivated workforce, as employees sense their overall well-being is important to their employers.
The best employers may also provide mental health-oriented amenities alongside gyms, hiking paths (for larger campuses), and other physical activity opportunities that keep employees sharp during working hours. Personal lockers, high-tech meeting rooms, and healthy cafeteria food, and even opportunities for social interaction (from chess to pickleball) during breaks and even after hours can add to employee satisfaction with leaving home to “go to work.”
The office management company Yarooms has suggestions for introducing new amenities at a workspace. They recommend choosing amenities that align with the company’s culture, values, and employee work styles and designing adaptable spaces for multiple purposes.
One key element is involving employees in decision-making to ensure the new amenities resonate with their expectations.
SteelWave is a privately held, full-service creative life science, creative office, and industrial real estate management firm that has as one of its primary focuses acquiring properties and adapting them into campuses with extraordinary spaces that enable extraordinary advancements with unparalleled visibility and access.
Their Infinite project in Colorado, for example, has transformed a 26-acre next-generation life sciences laboratory campus with five acres of curated lush outdoor collaborative workspace, a bespoke treehouse bar and restaurant and a vibrant market hall featuring a variety of local food and beverage offerings. The facility also has a 30,000-square-foot spa-quality fitness club, a tranquility terrace, and a 500-person-capacity conference facility.
Discovery Station is another SteelWave life sciences campus where cutting edge research meets community life. This transit-oriented, mixed use campus spans a 14.5-acre site along the El Camino corridor in South San Francisco. Three research buildings total 840,000 square feet of custom-built laboratory space, and 75,000 square feet of diverse retail shops, including a 24-hour grocery store, together with contemporary residential units all lie within this integrated community.
Discovery Station was designed to be an innovation hub and its state-of-the-art laboratories are equipped with the latest technology and sustainability features to create an environment for pioneering scientific research that attracts even those who spent the past few years sequestered in home offices.
The synergy that only comes from working side by side sharing a common mission has brought together a scientific community working to drive breakthroughs to revolutionize human health and wellness – a major focus of the incoming Trump Administration – while staying closely connected to their families and friends who inspire their work.
SteelWave founder and CEO Barry DiRaimondo has overseen the acquisition, design, development, and management of over 61 million square feet of industrial product and over 51 million square feet of office product, plus nearly 8 million square feet of life science research and development facilities at a combined cost of over $18 billion in his 35-year career.
Today, SteelWave is focused on seven major markets working with life sciences research and development firms whose real estate costs are only a fraction of their total operating expenses, but which have had to innovate to lure highly paid research scientists and other life sciences personnel back to the office from the sheltered home offices they occupied during the COVID pandemic.
His philosophy of creating attractive research campuses is simple - Create a space that he and his family would find attractive, rightly noting that “If we wanted to live and work there, then lots of others would too".
