Escape rooms, dogs: How smaller firms draw staff to the office
Employee perks such as arcade games and pet-friendly policies are more effective in smaller companies than bigger ones at getting staff back to the office, a new report by CBRE shows.
Smaller organisations tended to foster tighter-knit cultures because they have flatter chains of command, visible leaders and clear rules surrounding flexible work arrangements, the commercial agency’s head of Pacific workplace consulting Felicity Marshall said.
“They’re more connected to each other, more connected to the organisation vision, which can then feed into those attendance patterns,” she told The Australian Financial Review.
The findings point to why Australia’s larger employers are struggling to get workers back to the office in greater numbers. While few expect a return to the pre-pandemic five-day-a-week routine, many corporate leaders are frustrated that they cannot boost office attendance rates to at least three days a week.
Some smaller firms, by contrast, have achieved a standard five-day office attendance for all staff.
Mortgage brokerage firm My Mortgage Freedom operates an office in South Melbourne, Victoria and all 23 staff – the majority of whom are either Generation Z or Millennials – abide by that policy, chief executive Anthony Alabakov said.
While its office attendance requirement may seem unusual in the age of working from home, Alabakov said it was a decision he made after consulting his entire team who all agreed with the arrangement.
Staff appreciated incentives including monthly lunches and regular team-building activities such as booking an escape room or a basketball game. Facilities on offer included a barbecue on the rooftop that staff used to cook lunch, arcade games, NBA Jam and Duck Hunter, he said.
“We [also] have guest speakers and lunch-and-learn sessions where we have industry experts come into the office and upskill them,” he told the Financial Review.
One of their biggest incentives is their employee benefits program where the company provides rebates for anything from a gym class to a sauna session, capped at $50 a week, Alabakov said.
Staff responded positively to the measures, he said.
“We’ve got staff that drive an hour and a half to come into the office,” he said. “I’ve just found, especially in the last two years, that’s been instrumental in getting the team not only back in … it gives them motivation.
“All these little things, when you put it together, we find fosters a really strong culture and a workplace that everyone feels part of.”
The CBRE report, based on the responses of 52 organisations, shows smaller organisations averaged a higher rate of employee office attendance at about 3.1 days a week than larger organisations – those with more than 1000 employees – which averaged about 2.6 days.
About 50 per cent of organisations surveyed were not enforcing office attendance policies, while just 19 per cent were.
The survey also found the average office utilisation throughout the week was 52 per cent, increasing to 67 per cent on peak days, showing a concentration typically between Tuesday and Thursday.
Marshall said three key strategies were most effective in driving office attendance.
“There’s setting clear expectations, the value proposition of why the office is important, and the leadership modelling of desired behaviours,” she said.
“Smaller organisations do tend to have flatter structures or flatter hierarchies and more visible leaders.”
