Why leaders should embrace the returning workforce opportunity

As countries around the world ease lockdown restrictions, few in the workforce believe there will be a return to ‘business as usual’. At best, companies are hoping to settle quickly into the ‘new normal’. But as Blitz Studio CEO Melissa Hanley recently remarked, “Whatever the new normal is, it’s only going to be the new normal for a very brief period of time.” 

Rather than adapting to a singular new status quo, businesses will likely face a series of different phases as their workforce adapts, before being required to adapt again. Each of these ‘next normals’ will need to be adequately prepared for, as there will likely be a fresh set of challenges around every corner. 

The next major change for many companies is the return of furloughed colleagues. While identifying the upcoming challenges, business leaders should also consider how best to unite a potentially divided workforce and shape an environment fit for purpose. 

The upcoming period of change presents an opportunity. Organizations and people are currently far more accepting of change and have become accustomed to adapting to meet a need. Proactive organizations can now design and implement the operations they have previously only dreamed of having. By taking charge, leaders can design change that is done by people – rather than just to people.

Make an Informed View on Remote Working

The first question is whether returning staff to a permanent office routine is even necessary. Two in five Americans say they are now more productive in enforced remote working while 28% say they are as productive. 

However, there will also be plenty of workers who will want to get back to an office for the support and infrastructure it provides. Blind recently surveyed thousands of U.S. professionals who were now remote working. 53% reported increased loneliness during work from home, while 56% experienced increased feelings of anxiety. 

This period has highlighted the feasibility of remote working to many businesses. But it’s too simple to predict that the death of the office is imminent as we shift into the next phase of the COVID crisis. Recent research from Savills found that 89% of organizations still believe that physical office space remains a necessity for companies to operate successfully, but the office is set to change. Leaders need to use this time to decide what the office is good for, and how they can deploy a nuanced approach that maximizes these benefits.

Much of business can be boiled down to selling, and the people responsible are often reliant on the credit they’ve developed through relationships. Cultivating relationships through videoconferencing with either clients or colleagues is difficult – delays as short as 1.2 seconds can make people perceive the responder as less friendly or focused. Likewise, collaboration and creativity suffer from the neural multitasking required by group video calls, which challenge your brain’s central vision and force it to focus on too many people while ironically also making side discussions impossible. 

Leaders should consider how a carefully-planned return to office life can be used to revinent the role of the company headquarters, utilising physical space to develop the relationships that keep business running while accepting that many have proven they can get more work done at home. 

A Changed Workforce Returns

With the adapted work processes, practices and services, many of these employees are returning to a substantially different job. Johnny Hornby, founder of advertising agency The & Partnership, told June’s CEO Virtual Forum  “It feels like we’ve had three years of digital transformation compressed into the last three months.” 

It’s vital for organizations to recognize the fact that furloughed workers and non-furloughed workers have had fundamentally different experiences of the pandemic. Those that have been working throughout have learnt how to work in this new environment but many are likely to be completely exhausted. Returning furloughed staff may be fresh, but they haven’t experienced the often rapid changes their colleagues have gone through. 

For both sets of workers their priorities around life and lifestyle – from having more time to exercise and engage with family, to a newfound appreciation for avoiding a long commute -  may have changed. Suddenly returning to the office five days a week could be a huge source of friction. Businesses need to acknowledge these lifestyle changes and figure out how to best accommodate them. 

What Can Organizations Do? 

Companies should adopt a mixture of top-down and bottom-up strategy. Leadership teams should come together to reconfirm exactly what the organization needs to achieve in this new environment, and which elements of this are negotiable and non-negotiable. 

Once it’s agreed what an organization’s ‘win’ looks like, leaders should open a dialogue with staff to relay these expectations and ask what employees need to achieve it. This period of disruption is offering space for organizations to reshape themselves and there is certainly an opportunity to allow employees to effectively redesign their own lives. This does not mean wavering from staff expectations and there should be clear parameters set around output, delivery time and overall behavior. 

With the rapid changes that happen on a weekly basis, these conversations also need to be ongoing and the impact of changes should be tracked. A one-off discussion about a new work process will not offer enough information for either side and any decisions made could quickly become outdated as fresh COVID challenges appear. We may even see the annual appraisal evolve from its current form – often a retrospective conversation to justify or prevent salary increases or promotion – into a forward-looking discussion about what staff need from management to contribute towards the organization ‘win’. 

While there have been compelling stories of organizations successfully adapting to the COVID crisis, many of our most significant business challenges are still to come. As two divided workforces are thrown back together, leaders should be developing plans now to help not only smooth the transition but to also design an environment best suited for their team. Those who adapt best will be those who prepare now. As companies race towards recovery, they need to recognize that it’s not the marathon finishing line in front of them – just another corner they will need to turn.

 

This article was written by David Carry from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.