Returning to the Office after Covid
There is a Luis Bunuel film, Exterminating Angel in which guests find themselves unable to leave a dinner party. They want to leave, and seemingly, only have to walk through a door to do so, but for some reason, nobody can.
I was thinking about it this week as it felt like a metaphor for the end of lockdown and the return to, well, whatever life was before. Like the dinner party guests, taking that first step over the threshold feels unexpectedly difficult.
Whatever mix of home and office based working your organisation has settled on, the move back to face to face working is a transition and change is always difficult. Here are a few things it might be helpful to bear in mind.
The team you had before may well have been a cohesive group, already at the performing stage of development, but whilst the same personnel return, their experiences over the last year will have impacted them, and your team will need some re-forming time.
127 thousand people are known to have died form covid in the UK and many more are grieving as a result. And it is complicated grief; we have heard of sudden deaths from those who appeared to be rallying, and deaths alone in hospital, with no chance to be with loved ones or say goodbye. Even those who had not lost any one close to them have lived with the idea of death for twelve months or more. Grief takes it own time, and ebbs and flows. Because someone was laughing yesterday doesn’t mean they are “over it”, and they may need to cry tomorrow. Given them time and offer support.
In my work with clients over the last year, I have often heard how the physical separation seems to have led to many more meetings. I have a sense of employees spending all day in zoom meetings, with increasing anxiety about how or when they are going to be able to get any actual work done. The return to a casual chat with a colleague about nothing in particular, whilst making coffee or in the lift is going to be a vital part of easing people back into work, and should be encouraged, rather than dismissed as unproductive.
The extent to which work has invaded the home space means that there has been almost no separation between work and personal life. Physically leaving the office at the end of a day gives staff an opportunity to mark the end of the working day; a chance to switch off mentally and retune to the personal. Re-gaining a work life balance should be one of the upsides, going to the office, means you can leave it again.
We’ve rightly applauded the medical teams and volunteers, but let’s remember the parents who were holding down jobs and home schooling their children. I’m willing to be that they feel more like a holiday, than re-joining the morning commute. Be kind and manage expectations of what is possible, yours and theirs.
