The vital role of internal comms in BTO, part 1

And, we’re back. But are we in the office?

A headline from Saturday’s FT: “Yoga, DJs and cash on offer as groups try to tempt staff back into the office.”

Hut Group will be playing dance music — a greater incentive to stay away I can hardly imagine.

Boston Consulting wants me to take up office yoga, because it imagines I really want colleagues to admire my downward facing dog.

Not for the first time, big companies are making wrong assumptions about their staff.

They are shocked to discover there are a large number of people, a significant minority at the very least, who hate the office.

Rather than ask themselves why this might be, why a return to “normal” is not welcomed by many, they are offering bribes, and not very good ones.

The problem with the office pre-pandemic was not an insufficient supply of warm lager on Friday afternoons.

Boss types have been surprised just how many young, single folk in shabby accommodation still prefer being there to flogging in to work.

There is surely a big role for the senior internal comms people here, to show their worth. To make the people happier and the company better.

They could say to the CEO something like:

“If we are offering all these perks and a large number of staff find the office so dis-tasteful they would still rather sit on their own in a one-bed flat every day, we are plainly doing something very wrong. Let’s start there.”

The corporate world is lately abuzz with references to Wellness and other fashions, and it still comes off like bullying in far too many cases.

Perhaps internal comms should ask us, anonymously, what we think. And report back with the truth, rather than with what they imagine management want to hear.

Internal PR has never looked more important.