What employers see in returning to the office that employees don’t: Opinion

A young human resource executive is handling his first workplace grievance case. He knows the relevant policies and procedures. But knowing the rules is only part of the job.

To his relief, an experienced HR manager invites him to sit in on discussions involving another case. Observing how the manager navigates difficult conversations teaches him more than any online session. The young executive sees how to balance empathy with organisational considerations and help both the employee and supervisor reach a constructive outcome. 

Such tacit knowledge is difficult to document because it is accumulated through experience and passed on through human interaction. 

This is why physical presence at work matters – not simply because people work alongside one another, but because it creates opportunities for learning, mentoring, collaboration and innovation. These capabilities underpin business growth and, ultimately, better employment outcomes for workers.

However, since the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees have become used to working from home and delivering results remotely. Flexible work arrangements suit many, enabling what some see as a better work-life balance. 

Calls to return to the office, such as Amazon’s decision to require corporate employees to return to the office five days a week from 2025, generated some unhappiness. Many companies in Singapore and around the world are requiring staff to return to the office or spend more days there, citing benefits such as creativity, collaboration and workplace culture.

Recent commentaries have suggested that workplace arrangement decisions are increasingly shaped by tensions between employers’ needs and employees’ expectations. Some have suggested that employers are asking workers to return to the office because they want to exercise greater control over employees. 

But as artificial intelligence, demographic change and economic uncertainty reshape work, fostering collaboration through in-person connections has become hugely important. Singapore’s long-term economic success depends on anchoring higher-value jobs locally and achieving sustainable growth through innovation and collaboration – outcomes that are harder to achieve through remote and asynchronous work. 

Balancing individual and organisational needs

In Singapore, employers generally do provide flexible work arrangements where operationally feasible, recognising their benefits, including talent attraction and retention, and enabling employees in different life stages to balance work and personal commitments.

Even so, not every job can be performed remotely. Many front-line, operational and essential services roles require employees to be physically present to perform their work. 

Organisations simultaneously face more complex challenges today. Employers are operating amid economic uncertainty, rapid technological disruption and demographic shifts. Their focus is not on where their employees work per se, but on how work as a whole should be organised to nurture innovation, develop future leaders and strengthen competitiveness.

So workplace arrangements should support not only employees’ needs, but also organisational performance. For organisations to grow in a volatile and uncertain operating environment, workplace arrangements must enable people to perform at their best while strengthening collaboration, innovation and long-term organisational capability.

Why physical presence still matters

A junior software engineer can complete technical assignments remotely. But becoming an effective team lead often goes beyond possessing technical skills. The knowledge gained could come from sitting in on customer discussions, watching experienced colleagues navigate competing priorities and observing how difficult decisions are made when there is no obvious right answer. 

We have all experienced such informal and unstructured learning opportunities. They emerge through impromptu discussions and everyday workplace interactions that play an important role in developing judgment, confidence and leadership.

Physical workplace presence also creates opportunities for cross-functional learning and spontaneous chats that are hard to replicate virtually. Many of us know of ideas that emerged from an unplanned conversation between colleagues from different teams who happened to meet after a meeting or while discussing a different shared challenge.

A marketing executive struggling with customer feedback may discover a solution after a chance discussion with a colleague from the product team.

An operations manager may learn about a new technology application from an IT teammate during an informal conversation.

These everyday moments rarely appear on performance dashboards, yet collectively, they shape how organisations tackle more complex responsibilities.

Thus, many employers continue to value bringing people together, reflecting a longer-term emphasis on growing capabilities, transferring knowledge from more experienced employees to newer ones and preparing people for more complex roles.

Research supports this. A 2020 study of more than 61,000 Microsoft employees found that the shift to firm-wide remote work made collaboration networks more static and siloed, reducing connections across organisational groups.

And a 2023 study of 20 million research articles over 50 years by the University of Pittsburgh and University of Oxford found that geographically distributed scientific and invention teams were less likely than co-located teams to produce disruptive or breakthrough discoveries. 

AI is changing how organisations compete

AI is raising the stakes. AI lowers the barriers to performing many technical and knowledge-based tasks, making these capabilities more widely accessible. As a result, competitive advantage will increasingly depend on how effectively organisations bring people together to solve complex problems, combine diverse perspectives and translate ideas into new products, services and business models.

It is therefore even more critical to bring together new and experienced talent for mentoring, collaboration and solving complex challenges. 

Such interactions will strengthen analytical, leadership and collaboration skills while building organisational resilience. Over time, they will also create a leadership pipeline that will help organisations harness AI effectively, grow and remain competitive.

Trade-offs to stay competitive

Navigating the trade-offs between employees’ preference for flexibility and organisational needs for learning, knowledge transfer, leadership development and innovation requires openness and transparency.

Seen in this light, return-to-office decisions are less about status or control and more about how organisations develop people, transfer knowledge and remain competitive over the long term. 

Different industries and business models require different workplace approaches. And every employer must grapple with broader organisational questions such as: How do we develop younger employees? How do we ensure knowledge is shared across teams? How do we foster innovation? How do we maintain fairness across teams when not all roles or employees can benefit equally from flexibility?

These are not questions with universal answers. Responsible employers will arrive at suitable workplace arrangements depending on their workforce, business model and operational needs. Still, transparent communication of these decisions can help employers cultivate trust and encourage greater employee alignment.

Employers could explain why employees need to spend more time in the office and how it contributes to innovation, learning and organisational success, dispelling the idea that attendance is required for its own sake.

In addition to purposeful engagements such as team collaborations, mentoring, coaching and problem-solving, informal conversations in the office could also lead to innovative and breakthrough ideas.

Employees, in turn, are more likely to support workplace arrangements when they understand the broader organisational purpose behind them and can see how these arrangements contribute not only to business success, but also to their own growth and development.

Don’t make it a contest between boss and worker

Hybrid work arrangements are likely to remain an important feature of many workplaces.

However, their application should continue to be guided by the nature of the job, operational requirements and business needs.

The flexibility to work from home should be understood as an arrangement suited to certain jobs, and there should be no expectation that the same arrangement can apply uniformly across all roles.

Singapore’s tripartite approach provides an important foundation for navigating these evolving workplace expectations.

The Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests recognise that flexibility benefits both employers and employees, while acknowledging that operational and business considerations remain paramount. 

More fundamentally, the guidelines reinforce an important principle: workplace issues are best addressed through dialogue, mutual understanding and practical solutions, rather than being viewed as a contest between employers’ and employees’ interests.

Hao Shuo is chief executive officer of the Singapore National Employers Federation.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

ADV: SAL Annual Lecture: The Rule of Law as a Foundation of Representative Democracy Nominee directors need a stronger exit framework: Forum