When news of Target’s “core weeks” strategy for 2024 made it to the media last week, the first angle raised was: Can bringing employees back to headquarters four weeks a year help revive downtown Minneapolis? While that might be most salient to restaurant owners, the mayor, and other downtown boosters, work culture expert Jody Thompson says it’s the wrong question to ask.

The better question, said Thompson, founder of Minneapolis-based CultureRx, is how does a core weeks strategy actually improve employees’ productivity or sense of belonging?

“I envision thousands of Target corporate employees doing a collective eye roll,” Thompson said. “Target is following right along the global macro trend that says people need to be in the office a certain number of days per week, quarter, month, or year. That’s no different than what we’ve been doing the last 75 years.”

To be fair, Target did not issue a press release, institute a mandate, or claim that its plans would be a boon to downtown coffee shops. The company seemed a bit surprised—perhaps naively so—by the level of interest in what amounted to an internal email encouraging corporate teams to plan their schedules around being in the office for the weeks surrounding quarterly earnings reports. One of those key weeks falls in September, which traditionally has included a giant company pep rally and holiday season kickoff.

“Target remains committed to a flexible, hybrid work model for our global headquarters team,” said Target spokesman Brian Harper-Tibaldo. “Together, managers and teams identify when work needs to happen onsite, and when it can be accomplished in a hybrid way. We see our hybrid model as a strategic advantage that makes our team stronger, helps us attract and retain top talent and supports our culture.”

Harper-Tibaldo could not say how many Target employees now live outside of the Twin Cities, but the company’s post-2020 policies have made it convenient for employees to move away or get hired while remaining based in another state. Still, more than 7,000 Target corporate employees live in the Twin Cities area and work in Minneapolis, and on average, Harper-Tibaldo said 35% of them visit headquarters at least one time per week.

^{Source: Robert Half}

Target remains committed to its “flex-for-your-day” schedule, he emphasized. The core weeks are not a mandate, and team leaders will evaluate whether or not to bring in out-of-town employees, which would include covering their expenses like any other work trip. But the company does plan to incentivize being on site for those four weeks. “We’ll host enterprise events in Minneapolis to drive connectedness, celebrate our team, and build our internal culture. While large team moments like this aren’t new, we’re being thoughtful about selecting the specific weeks well in advance, and we’ve communicated them early to help our remote and flex-for-your-day team members plan for the year ahead.”

Mandating two or three office days per week has become the hybrid standard. “Ninety percent of the roles we fill on a project basis are requiring some sort of office presence two to three days,” said Jennifer Carlson, a Minneapolis-based regional director for talent firm Robert Half. But Target is not alone in implementing a core weeks strategy. Smucker’s also operates on a “core weeks” schedule at its Orville, Ohio headquarters, but theirs includes 22 core weeks per year, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. The requirement of being in as little as six days per month has opened the opportunity for a growing group of employees to relocate out of town, but it’s also created highly productive time in and around headquarters, WSJ reported. “During core weeks, workers log additional hours, scheduling back-to-back meetings and dinners with peers.”

Whether core weeks or mandatory days, Thompson—who wrote the book on the “results oriented work environment” (ROWE) and helps companies implement it— believes managers should spend less time trying to direct where employees work and when. “They’re leading from a 20th Century playbook that says employees’ time and location need to be managed to foster collaboration, build relationships, and support local business.”

According to a recent Robert Half national survey of professional workers, only 7% of managers favor being fully remote while 22% of employees said that’s their preference. Among managers, 53% prefer a hybrid schedule—part remote; part office time—while 44% of employees said the same.

But Thompson isn’t advocating for Target or any other company to give up its headquarters, either. “The office is one of the tools employees can utilize if it makes sense for the work they do. Giving people the autonomy to make that choice on a daily basis says, ‘I trust you to make this decision because I am managing the outcome of your work; therefore, I don’t need to manage you.'”