Many employers are calling employees back into offices, trying to restore the workplace of pre-pandemic days. Along with filling seats, they're also looking to bring back another relic: office culture.

       Pre-2020, office culture was synonymous with the 'cool' office: think places to lounge, stocked pantries and in-office happy hours that went all out; or luxe retreats and team-building exercises meant to foster the feeling of 'family'. In past years, these perks drew many workers to the office – in some cases, entire companies defined themselves by their office cultures.

        The world of work looks and feels entirely different than just a few years ago – yet many companies are still intent on recreating the office cultures workers left behind as they abandoned their desks in 2020. While these companies are making some gestures to adapt – for instance, redesigning spaces to accommodate new preferences and hybrid-work habits – many are still set on bringing back what lured in workers before the pandemic.

         Yet swaths of employees simply aren't interested in going backward. Instead of trust-falls and cold brew on tap, employees are demanding flexible work, equitable pay and a focus on humanity in the workplace that transcends the perks they sought years earlier.

       Workers' shifting priorities are a natural consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, says Georgina Fraser, head of human capital for global commercial real-estate firm CBRE. "The pandemic gave us autonomy in a way that we haven't had previously," she says. "It gave us the opportunity to choose how we structured our working days."

         And now that workers have experienced that level of work-life balance, they won't settle for less. Fraser adds: "Post-pandemic, we saw a resurgence of people being very vocal about what they wanted and needed, not just from office culture, but from the wider world."

        Now, she says, workers aren't shy about "wanting to be seen as a whole human – and that filters down to their physical location, how [employers] manage them, what support they receive and how [employers] integrate technologies between home and office in order to support them".

      One major factor in this changing attitude is that many employees feel office culture simply isn't applicable in a remoteand hybrid-first world, where the physical office can feel superfluous. Now that the workplace doesn't serve as the culture hub it once did, "companies have really struggled to redefine the role of the office", says Lewis Beck, CBRE's head of workplace for Europe. Office culture that was once meant to get employees excited doesn't have the same pull when workplaces are only onethird full.

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240229-office-culture-isdead