Return to the Workplace: The Transition Back Starts Now

“It takes less than a minute to get passengers off a plane in distress, but it takes hours to get them all back on the plane.” John Henning, Chief Client Officer at Granite Solutions Groupe, uses this analogy to capture what organizations worldwide did when COVID hit. Organizations like yours shifted all employees to working remotely within one or two days. It will take much longer, however, to bring those same employees, as well as new hires who have never worked in your office, back to the workplace.

The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine has businesses and their employees contemplating a return to the workplace. During our discussions with multi-national organizations, not-for-profits, and small/medium size businesses in many industry sectors, we discovered that a number of C-suite executives believe returning to the office will be BAU (business as usual), “with of course, the need to wear a mask.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our Return to the Workplace (RTW) series is designed to provide leadership teams insights into considerations required for effective decision-making to successfully transition back to the office, campus, factory, and beyond.

“We worked fine before COVID we can do the same when everyone returns to the workplace.”

•  The world has changed. People have changed. Business has changed. Ignoring these significant new realities will negatively impact employee engagement, productivity and retention, sales, marketing … basically, all aspects of your business. We’ll be exploring these changes and their impact in upcoming articles.
• Adaptability, flexibility and moving to meet customers where they are is critical to ongoing success – just ask Kodak if that’s true.
• Beyond navigating government/public health restrictions and continuing fear of COVID-19 transmission, understanding employee sentiment – particularly, resistance to returning to the office – will impact your organization’s RTW. (Upcoming article highlights the use of Prompta AI to accurately gauge employee sentiment.)

Share Your Thoughts Now! Will your organization’s culture/workplace be as it was before COVID when you RTW and why?

Next Article: Get Started. Be Agile.

Trish Gregory and Lisa Sorge, Change Management and Communications consultants, are helping organizations develop an on-target Return to the Workplace strategy.