After a long period of working remotely, employers are asking workers to return to the office. Some employers (Microsoft, Apple, Google etc.) will embrace a hybrid workplace, requiring workers to be in the office 2-3 days a week. Others (Spotify, Amazon, etc.) have decided to make the office optional.
Since returning to the office, there have been different reactions:
But why should you care?
At least some of your patients are in this return transition phase. Even if perceived positively, it’s still a big change. We’re not the same workers as 2019. Our work schedule is more fluid and office walls no longer bound us from running errands.
Your patients will consider changing companies, especially if they are going to experience change via either path they choose.
Those offices that require your patient to move back near headquarters, they will feel forced to start interviewing elsewhere. Leaving a job you love and good at is a stressful decision.
Advice to consider during sessions.
Since returning to the office, there have been different reactions:
- Hugs and Coffee: People saw each other in person for the first time since the pandemic. It was a happy and celebratory moment.
- Same Zoom, Different Desk: Others found themselves at a desk doing the same exact thing they were doing at home: On a zoom call with earphones.
- Covid Anxiety: The fear of contracting Covid has not waned for many. For some, going back to the office during a pandemic seems crazy.
- Silence: The cohort of workers who were excited to return found themselves in a 10-20% occupied silent office. The office hustle and bustle seemed like a relic of the past.
- Panic: People that moved out of the city to work remotely found themselves in a bind. They’ve established a new way of life in a different city and do not want to go back an expensive city.
But why should you care?
At least some of your patients are in this return transition phase. Even if perceived positively, it’s still a big change. We’re not the same workers as 2019. Our work schedule is more fluid and office walls no longer bound us from running errands.
Your patients will consider changing companies, especially if they are going to experience change via either path they choose.
Those offices that require your patient to move back near headquarters, they will feel forced to start interviewing elsewhere. Leaving a job you love and good at is a stressful decision.
Advice to consider during sessions.
- Embrace Office Spontaneity: Dressing up and commuting to an office might seem like a big inconvenience, but the relationships that form in the office are more lasting than virtual ones. Many great company-changing ideas have originated from simple banter in the office kitchenette.
- Use the Office for Visibility: Even if the office is never more than half full, encourage your patient to use that to their advantage. Rubbing elbows with leadership in the elevator/hallway constantly places your patient on their radar. It is much easier to speak to C-level individuals casually than over emails or in meetings.
- Embrace Tough Decisions: For those patients contemplating moving back near headquarters, perhaps if they aren’t willing to move for their jobs, maybe that signals they actually don’t have the perfect job. It’s a healthy and needed reflection point that can help break your patient's inertia. It may lead to bigger things.
- Rationalizing Virus Fears: Exposure to more people will increase likelihood of contracting all sicknesses, Covid included. Covid is also not going anywhere. Have your patient consider their risk profile (health/age/vaccination status) rather than assuming 100% doom.
- Rationalized Virus Fears: Assuming your patient is at a serious risk or in proximity to a high risk individual, have them consider an open conversation with their manager. Highlighting their accomplishments in the last 2 years will instill the manager's confidence in extending the remote work sitution.
- New person Perspective: If your patient is adamantly against returning to the office, have them consider another point of view. Imagine they were a new hire starting remotely. Would they not ramp up faster if everyone were in the office? Being able to swivel your desk chair to ask a question rather than email someone is a lot easier. They will one day be that new person at their next company and will appreciate the office culture.
- Hybrid Compromise: Have your patient see this as a win for the employee. Companies (not all of them of course) are realizing that working in the office 5-days a week is overkill. Employees used to try all sorts of incognito ways to work from home on Fridays. Now employees can do that without any guilt. They can turn off their laptop Friday afternoon and immediately start the weekend. No commute time.