Promise of socialising would lure four in five Aussie workers back to the office

Australian workers are more likely to return to the office with one key ingredient to increase their productivity. Have our say in our poll.

Aussie workers are more likely to return to the office to socialise with colleagues than to increase their productivity, research shows.

As bosses grapple to get workers back to business premises, Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index reveals 83 per cent of employees would be motivated to go back to the office by the promise of socialising and rebuilding team bonds. Seventy-eight per cent say they would go to the office more frequently if work friends or direct team members were there.

However, similar numbers say going back to the workplace just to meet company expectations is not reason enough.

Seventy-eight per cent of Australian workers say they would go to the office more frequently if work friends or direct team members were there.

Loneliness expert and clinical psychologist Michelle Lim is not surprised that social connections play a key role in getting workers back into the office.

She says work relationships have a significant effect on wellbeing, even for those who have developed strong friendship bonds elsewhere.

“Generally, people benefit from a variety of different types of social relationships,” says Lim, the chair of not-for-profit organisation Ending Loneliness Together.

“The more diverse interactions and relationships we have, the better – it means if something goes wrong in one (friendship area), we are not going to crumble because there are other parts that we can rely on.”

She says bosses should embrace the social connections made at work, which have just as many benefits for the organisation as they do for individual workers.

“People who have more social connections at work are more likely to be creative, less likely to leave (their employer) and they’re more likely to have low rates of absenteeism,” she says.

Michelle Lim Scientific Chair, Ending Loneliness Together.

Microsoft Australia modern work lead Jane Mackarell says socialising provides a reason for workers to come into the office, given that most duties can be successfully carried out remotely.

“For (employees) to hop on the train for one-and-a-half hours, or get in the car for two hours, (to get to the office) it’s got to be worth it,” she says. “So they’re more likely to come in for (the social interactions with colleagues) than they are for a work meeting because they can do (the meeting) from home … but they can’t connect with their colleagues quite as well.

“People have realised that it’s lonely to work from home.”