Office vs home

We’ve got a large office in Jackson Square in San Francisco. It’s a lovely space with great views and lots of room to work and conference rooms to meet. Unfortunately, only about 25% of local employees are coming in on a regular basis.

Almost all of the ones who do not come in on a regular basis have a longer commute as they live in the greater Bay Area versus the city. It seems like the biggest thing holding people back is just pure convenience. Driving 30 minutes or hopping on BART for a 45 minute commute seems like too much to overcome for most folk. Whereas those who live in the city will gladly walk or commute in under 30 minutes to the office.

We have a relatively full house today as we have some leaders visiting the office and we are all going to dinner afterwards. I believe the only way we are going to get people to come into the office full time is to mandate it or make the benefits outweigh the inconveniences.

For us, mandating office work will not be in the cards anytime soon. So we have to find ways to incentive people to come into the office. Lunch right now is not good enough. I suspect we’ll start with more team events and regular happy hours, and look to expand there. We’ll see how it goes.