It’s high time for companies’ management to deliver the message – when, how, and WHY should employees be coming back to office. Tons of opportunities and pitfalls become apparent when thinking of return.
Potential Mistakes – Obvious but Crucial
A “come-back-order” today may be no less disruptive than the “stay-at-home-order” was a few weeks ago.
An office space has forever lost its function of a place where people come and sit with their computers. Those who do “head-down” type of work requiring concentration and minimum distraction are probably going to be much better off continuing to work from home. Over the past few weeks or – for some of us – months of lockdown, people have set their new routines, and a “come-back-order” today may be no less disruptive than the “stay-at-home-order” was a few weeks ago.
There are certainly categories of workers who want and need to be in an office, though not all the time, as it used to be. Those who do come back would prefer to be in a less crowded environment. Therefore, a staggered approach to transitioning-back and giving people choice, is a win-win situation.
No matter how good a certain office building is run and how robust its cleaning protocols are, employees get exposed while commuting. Even if their office feels like a safe bubble, their anxiety might still be growing, especially so if they have vulnerable people at home. Hence, all the efforts of winning employees’ loyalty by providing them with a top notch workplace might deliver quite the opposite results, namely growing dissatisfaction.
A chaotic transition-back process would probably create more stress and disruption rather than a sense of relief and the long awaited “back to normal” or, better said, “sort of normal.”
Giving deliberate thought to how the new routines will look is an essential part of the comeback process. The best approach to tackle it is probably a collaborative one, which would give people a sense of ownership and being part of establishing new corporate culture. From the management’s and HR’s perspective, collaborative construction of new routines would mean sharing the responsibility of potential mistakes, which are unavoidable over this long journey. Shifting blame is the last thing companies are willing to bring onboard while building their new team culture and values set.
Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity
Companies’ leaders have been handed a unique opportunity to reset the system.
If there is a silver lining in the COVID crisis, then this is the one: companies’ leaders have been handed a unique opportunity to reset the system. If there is a message that management would find it hard to pull through at normal circumstances, then now is the high time to deliver it. Initiatives that might have failed to withstand a backlash from the team, now could be received differently.
Top-down decision making is generally an unwelcome approach in normal times. But today’s overwhelming fluidity and uncertainty in all spheres of work and life opens up a limited window of opportunity for managers to set and lock in certain policies and procedures.
At a time of crisis team members are relying on their leaders like never before, waiting for guidance and inspiration. It is up to the management to quell anxiety across teams and reestablish confidence about their future. While leveraging the opportunities delivered by the crisis, the leaders must not forget about accountability for consequences. Just as collective co-creation of new norms allows managers to share the burden of responsibility, one-sided imposing of new rules leads to carrying the responsibility in full.
Photo by LYCS Architecture on Unsplash