It’s becoming a regular topic in organizations of all types and sizes – when are employees coming back onsite? After over a year of many employees working remotely, there’s a growing push to return onsite. Some reasons are related to data and science – vaccines are available to anyone 16 years of age and older and over half of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Then, there are reasons more related to “normalcy,” routine, familiarity. If we’re being honest with ourselves, those are probably the driving reasons. Then, we use data and science to try to back them up. That’s not a bad thing. It just helps us better analyze the best next steps.
Cathy Merrill, CEO of the Washingtonian, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which she strongly advocated for the return to the office. She makes a lot of fair points. There are benefits to in-person interactions and difficulties in sustaining a strong company culture virtually. However, she also uses almost threatening language toward her employees, outlining interest in changing WFH employees to contractors. She ends the article with, “Remember something every manager knows: The hardest people to let go are the ones you know.”
As you can imagine, this didn’t go over well. In fact, her employees went on strike for a day, and it’s all over Twitter.
It went so badly that there’s an article in Forbes about it titled “The Cautionary Tale…” and Merrill issued an apology.
If anything, one of the biggest lessons we learn from this is how complex the topic is. There are a lot of perks to working from home but also a lot of challenges. Some of this is eased by normalizing the concept of working from home, but it still requires a lot of effort to have a successful remote team. In addition, executives and employees can easily have different opinions about how things are going now vs. how things need to be in the future. How do we think about this push to return to work? What do we need to take into consideration? What questions do we ask ourselves?
Determine the “why.”
Why do you want your employees to return onsite? What are the benefits you’re hoping for? Drilling down to the specific reasons helps you analyze the working arrangements that will be beneficial. In January, PwC published findings from a remote work survey. I highly recommend reading that early on in your discussions. They found a lot of interest in hybrid arrangements as employees tend to expect more remote work than pre-pandemic. They also found that employees expect a slower return to the office than executives.
Define how it benefits your culture.
Merrill talks about the difficulties of maintaining a strong company culture virtually. And that’s a fair point. When you have everyone in the same building, you can create visuals and experiences that build your culture. You can hear laughter down the hall or pop your head in your coworker’s office to ask a quick question. It’s hard to duplicate in-person relationships.
One thing to remember, though, is that employees experience a couple of different versions of the company culture. There’s the overall company culture that you experience during company meetings, announcements, etc. Then, there’s the culture of your particular department. Depending on the department size, it could then be further broken down into smaller departments. You could even have smaller teams within those departments.
Yes, you hope that all the versions reflect the overall company culture. But it’s really the culture of the team/department closest to you that drives your experience. This is even more true if your organization has employees in various buildings. So, a big part of the conversation needs to be department-specific. I’ve worked with teams that didn’t do well remotely and others that had successful, high-trust cultures. It takes intentionality and creativity, but it’s possible!
Involve employees in the discussion.
According to the PwC survey, over half of employees want to work remotely at least 3 days per week. Executives and employees tended to have some differing perspectives on how well their company had supported employees working remotely. Employees who were newer tended to want to work onsite more. There are a lot of variables to consider.
Involve your employees in discussing various work arrangement ideas. Find out what’s working well remotely and what isn’t. Rather than looking to automatically go back to a pre-pandemic arrangement, talk about what would work best for employees and the organization.
Even before the pandemic, a lot of employees I know wanted more remote work. Providing more flexibility could be a huge help to working mothers, both now and in the long-term. This is the time to start a discussion about what a long-term successful working arrangement looks like.
Try to get an idea of which employees you might lose by going back onsite. Depending on the job, there could be a lot of remote options now. Or options with more flexibility than you’re looking for provide. You want to know which star performers you’re likely to lose. It may change how you want to approach this.
Don’t threaten.
First, the DOL outlines the rules for employee vs. contractor. It doesn’t go the way that Merrill outlined.
Second, saying that, “The hardest people to let go are the ones you know” isn’t a good reflection of your management team. Is it hard to fire friends? Absolutely! But good managers treat everyone fairly, friend or not.
Avoid any kind of threatening. You won’t get to helpful solutions that way. Ultimately, performance management applies just as much remotely as it does in-person. Managers of remote teams need training to help them be successful. It’s not an employee’s fault if the manager doesn’t know how to manage.
Outline expectations.
If your employees have been working remotely during the pandemic, I think it’s going to be hard to develop a future arrangement that isn’t a hybrid in some way. Be prepared to clearly outline expectations. Are there certain meetings or events that employees need to attend in-person? Will employees rotate days in the office? Does anything change about schedules for remote days? Employees will have lots of questions.
There will also probably be a lot of vaccine-related questions, especially in light of the CDC’s new guidance today about vaccinated people not generally needing to wear masks. What are your mask policies? What about employees who aren’t vaccinated for medical or religious reasons and aren’t comfortable returning onsite? What about employees whose children can’t yet be vaccinated and aren’t comfortable returning? Will you provide PTO for getting the vaccine or recovering from it? Be prepared for a lot of individual requests for accommodations and flexibility – both short-term and long-term.
Go slow.
Remember, the PwC survey found employees expect a slower return than executives. Plus, your first working arrangement may not prove to be the best. So, avoid a big announcement that, “such and such is happening by X date for everyone.” Be willing to take the time to explore options. (And keep in mind that, with going in-person, you’ll need to be prepared to deal with COVID. A lot of people still aren’t vaccinated. You’ll need safety measures and policies along with cleaning protocols. Positive cases and contact tracing will become part of your job.)
Do a trial period of an arrangement, or ease into it. Give everyone a chance to start adjusting to it, and then get feedback on how it’s going. It’s much easier to make tweaks this way.
Returning to work right now is a lot of work in and of itself. For your organization or department, the benefits may be worth it – especially if it’s some kind of hybrid arrangement. But I would make sure the benefits are worth it.
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