5 Tips to Managing the Transition Back to the Office and Hybrid Work
Welcome!
I’m Susan. I help leaders and organizations increase their impact, confidence, and results through coaching and unique people strategies and programs that wow employees and boost business!
Now that vaccines are ramping up and more and more businesses are opening their doors, the return to the office has begun. But it won’t be the same as it once was. Most office workers will assume a sort of hybrid working scenario, where they do a mix of working from the office as well as their home or other remote location of choice.
The “remote work doesn’t work” theory was debunked by the pandemic and employees are not so eager to give up their newfound freedom and autonomy remote work provided. Employers are now left with figuring out the right mix that will benefit both the company’s needs as well as the employee’s desires. And that mix really will depend upon the individual employee, their personal circumstances, and the nature of their work.
Global Workplace Analytics, which researches work-at-home trends, projects that 25% to 30% of the U.S. workforce will be working from home at least part of the time by the end of 2021.
The transition to our “new normal” is defined by flexibility and the notion of working from anywhere. So, how can business leaders effectively manage this transition?
Start by talking to your employees about their current needs and desires.
Do they desire to return to the office exclusively, in part, or not at all? Where do they work best? What do they hope to achieve by working in an office or remotely? What benefits and drawbacks do they anticipate and how do they plan to mitigate the challenges? By first understanding the employee’s personal preferences and circumstances, you’ll be in a better position to ensure fairness in offering flexibility across your team. Be sure that any constraints you put in place are based on the nature of their job and not on lifestyle (i.e., parents, singles, etc.)
2. Set clear guidelines for office-required and office-optional circumstances.
Are you kicking off a new project? Does the team need to do more collaborative work like brainstorming or troubleshooting a more complex problem? Are you delivering performance reviews or need to have a difficult discussion? All of these things are much better done face-to-face, whenever possible.
If you’re simply having a daily or weekly status meeting where you’re jointly looking at a screen, that can easily be done remotely. Of course, more focused work is best done in blocks of time with minimal distraction. For some, that could be a remote work location and for others, the office space is that haven.
Consider rotating teams versus individual employees. Figure out who needs to work together and rotate entire teams in/out of the office simultaneously on certain days/weeks for greatest overlap and collaboration time.
3. Normalize online communications.
Whether working in an office or elsewhere, continued use of digital collaboration tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Suite, etc. will be key to ensuring everyone remains aligned on work product and tasks. As we have seen over the past year, it is critical that employees be provided with the right equipment, work space, and secure connectivity to work adequately whether from an office or at home. Videoconferencing will fail if participants don’t have the right resources to interact at the same level.
4. Take a remote-first approach.
When hosting a meeting that has a mix of employees in the office and others joining remotely, ensure that everyone joins the meeting online (even if it’s from their office desk) to level the playing field for all participants and minimize sidebar conversations that may occur with participants in a conference room.
5. Rethink your office space.
The real estate services company JLL predicts that flexible workspaces will make up 30% of office inventory within a decade. To get ahead of this, we need to start thinking of the total workplace ecosystem, allocating office space differently, and leveraging virtual office space in hubs and homes.
Once you have a sense of how many want and will need to return to an office with some regularity, you’ll need to rethink how your office space is utilized. First and foremost, plan your office space with employee safety in mind, following CDC guidance and protocols to minimize risk of infection, now and in the future.
Employees coming to the office a semi-regular basis for collaboration with others will need more group meeting spaces versus individual workspaces. As business trips become less common and replaced by video calls with customers and teams, space will need to be reconfigured to accommodate targeted virtual group meetings. Zoom-friendly conference rooms with larger screens and more cameras on the table will be critical to capture body language during sales meetings with customers or discussions with outside vendors.
Whenever navigating a big change like this, there are three critical areas for leaders to remember:
Eliminate communication barriers by communicating frequently and bi-directionally.
Be sure your organization’s purpose and vision are articulated and shared with the entire team in a way that they can understand.
Have visibility into not only what’s happening in your business, but also what’s happening with your employees. Stay informed on employee satisfaction through regular pulse surveys or other touchpoints.
Best of luck navigating this transition over the next several months and please comment below on what you’ve found has worked well for you and your team/organization!
Need help assessing your readiness for hybrid work?
I can help you assess where you’re at and develop an employee-centric plan to increase employee satisfaction while boosting your business results. Schedule some time with me to learn more.
Related Posts:
Empowering HR Leaders: Advocating for Change in the Workplace
Colleen McCreary’s recent LinkedIn post caught my attention. It highlighted a recent quote from Jennifer Aniston where she succinctly captured the essence of a pervasive challenge that many individuals, particularly women, face in the professional world: the struggle to assertively ask for what they want and deserve.
Aniston stated, "There was a time in my world, my career, where I realized it's not being aggressive or combative or bitchy or emotional to stand up for what you deserve and what you want. It's a tough muscle to build. And also be loved and respected. It's hard to achieve."