If you want workers to show up in the office, you need to give them a better experience than working from home.

By Matt Sturtz

The way we work keeps changing.

In 2019, in-person work was the standard, with fewer than 1-in-10 employees expecting to work remotely, according to Gallup. During the pandemic, that dynamic completely flipped, with 70% of employees expecting to work from home. Today, hybrid is the default choice for many knowledge-work roles, with 60% expecting a mix of in-office and work-from-home.

Still, some companies have struggled to bring workers back to the office, even in a hybrid model. Despite issuing return-to-office mandates calling for more time onsite, a number of organizations have quietly relaxed these policies to prevent the loss of top performers who want the convenience of working from home fulltime.

Part of the problem is that some employees actually have better connectivity at home than they do in the office. Think about it: Working remotely, most people only need to share their connection with a spouse, or maybe a couple of roommates. Compare this to the office, where dozens of devices may be competing for a single Wi-Fi access point.

Companies that want to encourage workers to come back to the office should follow these four steps to upgrade their wireless connectivity:

1. Shift to Wi-Fi First: If your office is still designed around wired ports, it’s probably not aligned with how your employees actually work today. Most employees now view hard phones and desktops as outdated, and they don’t need docking stations for their laptops and mobile devices. A Wi-Fi refresh might be the time to move away from wired ports. This makes it easier to support common hybrid work elements like hot-desking and shared spaces, simplifies future changes to office layouts, and frees up IT staff to focus on the wireless connectivity your employees care about.

2. Strengthen the Network Backbone: Adding newer and better access points won’t improve connectivity much if your network is built on 100 Mbps infrastructure, or if your cabling hasn’t been replaced in a decade. And if you’re moving away from wired ports, you’ll need to concentrate more bandwidth into a smaller number of connection points. Modern access points often require 2.5, 5, or even 10 Gbps backhaul to meet peak demand. If you install new wireless infrastructure without addressing switching, routing, and cabling, your employees may actually see worse performance.

3. Design for Density: A site assessment is an important component of any Wi-Fi upgrade. At Sanity, we offer software-based predictive surveys based on office floorplans as part of our pre-sales process. Or, we offer a more thorough onsite walking survey as a paid engagement. These assessments not only help ensure that wireless infrastructure will provide reliable coverage across the office, but also identify and help mitigate interference from overlapping access points (or even a meddling microwave(oven). For organizations considering the 6 GHz band available via Wi-Fi 7 access points, leaders need to be aware that the higher performance enabled by this spectrum comes with the tradeoffs of shorter range and weaker wall penetration.

4. Select & Deploy New Wi-Fi Infrastructure: After your design is complete, the next step is selecting access points, switches, and management tools that align with your environment and goals. By working with a partner like Sanity, companies can take a vendor-agnostic approach that allows them to precisely match technology to their specific needs, rather than sifting through messaging from competing vendors. Most enterprise environments now rely on cloud-managed networking platforms for visibility, control, and scalability—an enormous step up for organizations that are completing their first upgrade in years.

After an effective upgrade, your Wi-Fi network won’t just be faster. It will also reduce friction for your employees. For example, modern management platforms can drastically reduce the “time to innocence,” meaning that IT teams can quickly rule out the Wi-Fi network as the source of a bottleneck, allowing them to move on to solving the real issue. Also, users will see fewer interruptions during critical tasks like video meetings, file transfers, and real-time collaboration sessions.

Ultimately, a successful deployment will align your infrastructure with the real-world usage patterns of your employees, creating an environment where hybrid work can thrive.

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