Ask HN: How do we “return to the office”?

[graham1776]

I've been asked to head up the "return to the office" project for our company (~50 employees, 2 offices).

This includes making a reccomendation to senior management on all topics including:

- WFH vs. in person (how often in office? in office at all? etc) - Office space requirements (lease is up this year) - What does the office look like (how are we using it? what is office for?)

The project seems to encompass everything and I have the opportunity to reshape the culture of our company for years to come.

Where do I start? How do I solicit feedback? Do I copy another company (Basecamp/Dropbox?) or start from scratch? How have you approached this project at your company?

[nof1]

I would start with going back to what has and has not been working for your company during the pandemic. Check with your employees on what their feelings are. Try to distill that into what you want culturally. We were an almost entirely local company before the pandemic and have now embraced remote. So returning to the office for us means being very mindful that over half of our company will always be remote and making sure that they are still involved in decisions, team building, etc. as opposed to an ad hoc office culture where bonds and decisions are made in hallways.