Before You Come Back, Take a Look at Where You've Been
Yay! It’s time to get the team back together. The rate of COVID-19 cases is decreasing. Soon, local staff can get to the office more regularly. Expat staff are seeing more flights and can return to the project soon. You are eager to get the team together. In a month or two, all of this will be behind you.
Not so fast! What has been going on with your team while they were away? Even though they may have continued working and you “saw” them virtually, do you have a good grasp of what they are feeling? I spoke with two people last week who said, “I don’t ever want to go back to the office.” Are they on your team?
Six months ago, people – including you – were thrown into a situation they likely never anticipated, and a transition to the new way of working. For some, the transition was easier than for others. Some struggled initially, some continue to struggle, and some thrived. Depending on their location, their household make-up, their connectivity, and their access to privacy, your team members may have experienced the pandemic very differently from you and from each other. Their perceptions of their own situations and those of others will vary widely as well. Why is this important? Team members may be having any number of unexpressed feelings about how things are going (resentment, excitement, anxiety, frustration) related to how they perceive their workloads, responsibilities, time constraints, and risk factors. These are likely to be magnified as you try to get the team back together.
People on your team will have different risk tolerances for returning to the office. Some will require all to wear masks, maintain distance, and limit the time of exposure in order to feel safe in the office. Others will bound into the office and hug everyone they’ve missed. No one should feel afraid to go to work, so how will you balance everyone’s preferences?
Not everyone will face the same challenges coming back to work. Some may have kids that cannot yet go back to school. Some may have health issues that mean they have to continue to remain at home. Some may have cars, but others may take public transportation, with all of the personal exposure and interaction that requires. Even the same method of transport may be experienced differently by one person than another.
On an international team, expats returning to the office will create another set of considerations. Those who left may have faced family separation, paying the expenses for two apartments, displacement, concern they will lose their job or receive a poor evaluation because they left, and anxiety around the risk of international travel as they try to return during a pandemic.
Depending on the circumstances for their colleagues leaving, those who remained may feel they were abandoned. They may have shouldered the workload of the evacuees while they were away and disrupted their lives to accommodate the new time zones of others, while also facing the pressures of working from home. And, if those who stayed are in a place where the “lock-down” really meant being “locked-down,” they may be feeling some resentment toward those who left to weather the pandemic in an easier place and are now back.
How do you make sure that the whole team can come from their various places of stress, anxiety, relief, grief, resentment, and excitement to a place where they all feel safe and happy to come together? If you don’t explicitly talk about the experiences people have had and the feelings around returning to work – the good and the bad – your reentry may go from awkward to acrimonious. Make sure they feel heard before they come back.
Find out:
While they worked from home, how did they feel about their workload, the flexibility of their schedules, additional stress?
How do they feel about those things now?
What are their biggest concerns about returning?
The best way to get this information may differ by team. A one-on-one conversation with each team member may be the best way if people faced widely varying experiences and workloads. A team meeting may make the most sense for your team if the team is comfortable sharing and discussing feelings. The critical thing is that everyone has a chance to tell their own story and voice their own concerns. Then, the team can plan together the best way back.
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