All this week WCCO Radio is taking a look back at some of the top local news stories of 2023. WCCO's Laura Oakes has more on how employees working from home during the pandemic got back into the office.
Well, not completely.
The norm these days seems to be a hybrid model of work, where many companies are allowing employees to work from home a few days a week and come into the office a few days a week.
In downtown Minneapolis, Target, the region's largest employer, announced it will require workers to come into headquarters one week per quarter in 2024. That's welcome news to downtown business leaders who have definitely felt the pinch without those thousands of bodies milling the streets and restaurants over the noon-hour.
Minneapolis Downtown Council President and CEO Adam Duininck says they've been working hard to draw people back.
"Very few people are going to come back to work five days a week so how can we maybe add a fourth day," asks Duininck. "I think it's a combination of incentives and giving your employees an environment to come down here for, whether that's social, whether that's after work or other sort of things, activities to create that team environment. That's kind of what we've been kind of focused on and what our members have been focused on as well."
Those incentives "sound" like a good idea. But a recent poll from the University of Chicago shows only 13 percent of employers nationwide have actually introduced new incentives that would make employees more satisfied with coming into the office.
Furthermore, Three out of four human resources representatives say retaining employees who don’t want to work in the office is a problem, with 19 percent calling it a major problem.
But Duininck is optimistic anyway.
"I think there's an opportunity to think about the reason people come to work together in the first place," he says. "Which is to be creative, to share ideas, to have energetic collaboration."
Most employers are sticking to a three day, in-office routine. Duininck says they'd like to turn that into four trips to the office each week instead.
Other experts in workplace habits say flexibility is key, especially when companies can allow employees to set their own schedules.
SEE MORE: Part One of our year in review on the DFL trifecta and the legislative session here, the legalization of marijuana here, the Twins breaking their playoff curse here, and the persistent car theft problems in the metro here.