After years of working from home during the pandemic, employees are slowly returning to physical offices.

But employees are different now than they were nearly three years ago, and the offices they return to need to be different.

I think of the future workplace like Disneyland. No one likes the journey to Disneyland with the traffic, the stress, and the screaming kids in the backseat, but everyone loves Disneyland when they get there.

There is always tension in the journey. But the destination is worth the stress.

It’s the same with workplaces–there may be an adjustment period for leaders and employees, but the result is a workplace that encourages and empowers employees.

Part of that journey or adjustment period is learning how employees like to work. Research has found that over a typical day, employees perform up to 21 different types of activities, such as meeting with clients, collaborating with colleagues, and focused work on their own.

To reflect that, the most successful organizations give employees multiple workplace options. Instead of putting everyone in the same station for the entire day, there are areas for group work, areas that encourage creativity, areas for quiet work and relaxation, and more. These options help employees find the space that best matches their current activity.

But do these workplaces even matter in the future of work? Absolutely. There’s still a place for in-person work. Over the last few years, we’ve seen that people can still be productive working from home, but research found that creativity and innovation stall when working remotely.

If we want to get ahead and grow, we need to be together at least some of the time. And the best work happens in flexible and varied offices.

I put together a video which talks about this in more detail. Please check it out below and if you want more content like this you can subscribe to my Youtube channel.

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This episode is sponsored by Hibob.

HiBob is on a mission to help multi-national companies overcome the complexities of the modern workplace. Bob, the company’s flexible HR platform, offers a robust, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface. With Bob, business leaders gain visibility into the people aspects of their business, managers lead more effectively, and employees develop professionally and build meaningful relationships that keep them connected.

Discover what 2,500 modern, mid-size, multi-national companies such as SmartRecruiters, Monday.com, Fiverr, McLaren Racing, and VaynerMedia already know: HiBob enables you to drive productivity, collaboration, engagement, and retention. Get a copy of their free guide at  www.hibob.com/fow.


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In case you missed it, I just launched a subscription version of my podcast. Get ad-free listening, early access to new episodes and bonus episodes with the subscription version of the show The Future of Work Plus. To start it will only be available on Apple Podcasts and it will cost $4.99/month or $49.99/year, which is the equivalent to the cost of a cup of coffee.

Fast-track your path to leadership success with The Future of Work Plus. I can’t wait for you to hear all the content we have in store!

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