Return to the Office: A Planning Checklist for Conversations with Your Manager (and Your Direct Reports)
By Audrey Roofeh and Emeizmi Mandagi
Empty office. Photo by Marc Mueller from Pexels.
As organizations make a return to the office (or other pre-pandemic worksite), you will need to prepare for the conversations and challenges that will come with this transition. In addition to surfacing concerns and creating norms and organization-level communication about re-opening, managers and their direct reports will benefit from candid conversations about their needs and expectations in this next normal. We've observed in our work with clients that there are widely varied opinions about what aspects of one's personal life or one's emotions are appropriate to share at work. What to share, how much, and when may vary from team to team, but something that became obvious to all in 2020 was, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen put it last month, "people’s work lives and their personal lives are inextricably linked, and if one suffers so does the other. The pandemic has made this very clear.” If we have one take-away for managers and businesses, it's that we can no longer pretend that personal lives and work lives are separate.
Before you have a workplace-personal life conversation, consider this one concept
If the idea of having a conversation about how your (or your direct report's) personal life impacts work life makes you nervous, we're sharing our advice on what makes these conversations possible, AND what both managers and their reports can prioritize in conversations about return to office. The place to start if you're not yet comfortable having these conversations - either as a manager or a team member - is understanding and using the concept of psychological safety.
What is Psychological Safety?
It's the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation. If you've ever observed a hostile response to an idea in a brainstorm meeting, you know the chill that follows — it's now a space where someone is afraid to offer an idea for fear of being shot down. The flip side is a team with psychological safety — one where a person can share an outlier or non-traditional idea, or concern, whether about a project failure, an experience of workplace harassment, or just that they're experiencing pandemic stress.
How do we build psychological safety? One very powerful way of making people feel safe to share is emotional acknowledgement - the act of verbally acknowledging someone's fears and stress. This gesture goes a long way in building trust between you and another person. In the workplace in particular, this can look like supervisors who show concern for the emotional state of individuals on their team, and a readiness to provide support signals that they care for and can be trusted with the well-being of their colleagues. Many leaders struggle with simultaneously being task-oriented and people-oriented. Research suggests that many managers see emotional support as falling outside of their formal job expectations. Some may only be celebrating wins or amplifying positive emotions more than they are acknowledging pain or distress because it's easier for them. But during a time when hybrid working and work from home practices pose additional challenges, there is a need to establish and maintain psychological safety and acknowledge the struggles and emotions your colleagues may be feeling right now.
Recommendations for Managers on Talking about Return to Office
We're starting with recommendations for managers because managers and leaders have an outsized impact on workplace climate and psychological safety on teams. Creating an environment that encourages employees to share aspects of their personal life relevant to their work schedule or location is a skill built on psychological safety, empathy and self-awareness. If you are looking to take steps towards establishing and maintaining psychological safety, here are four recommendations from Amy Edmondson and Mark Mortensen:
Frame the issue. Clarify that the goal of this ongoing dialogue on the challenges folks may be facing in the midst of transitioning back to the office is for the entire team to find new ways to work effectively. As a group, everyone must recognize that each person needs to be clear and transparent about the needs of their work and the team. This means taking joint responsibility for the success of the team.
You go first. It takes time to build trust so that your employees will have enough trust to share their personal and risky challenges and stressors right off the bat. Start off by sharing small challenges you're facing and express a willingness to listen to what someone chooses to share with you to demonstrate that sharing this personal information is not penalized. Being vulnerable and open about how you're managing your own challenges goes a long way in building trust with your colleagues. If you're not willing to be transparent and vulnerable with your employees, how can you expect them to do the same with you?
Publicly celebrate positive examples. Share with your team that the increased transparency occurring is helping the team create arrangements that are meeting the needs of individuals and the organization. The aim is not to share personal information others disclosed with you, but to simply express that these open and honest conversations allowed you and others on the team to collaboratively create a solution that serves their needs and the team as a whole. It's important to do this with care so as not to make folks feel pressured to follow suit. Rather, you want to show individuals positive examples of cultivating psychological safety on the team, so they will want to voluntarily engage in these discussions in the future at the level they feel most comfortable.
Remain mindful and vigilant. Psychological safety takes time and patience to cultivate, but it can be destroyed quickly by a hurtful comment despite one's intentions. For many people, their default is to hold back their thoughts, even if it is very relevant to their work if they are unsure of how well it will be received by others. If someone is shot down after sharing, then they and others around them will feel less inclined to speak up in the future. As a leader, you need to remain vigilant when you catch yourself or others making seemingly innocent comments that may end up making the recipient feel like they are letting their team down. Comments such as, "We want to see more of you" or "we could really use you" can end up causing more harm than good even if the genuine thought behind it is to express that they miss their colleague. Instead, help your team frame their genuine concern for their teammate in a manner that is thoughtful and positive. For instance, have colleagues frame their concern from a place of patience and understanding — such as, "We miss your thoughtful perspective, but understand that you are experiencing challenges. Let us know if we can support you in any way."
Recommendations for Team Members on Raising their Return to Office Concerns and Needs
Be honest about your big challenges and fears - first with yourself, then with your manager. Check in with yourself to understand your own feelings and possible anxiety, and then find strategies to tackle it. As Ron Carucci mentions in this mid-pandemic article about return to the office, "[t]o whatever degree you feel concerned about returning to work — regardless of your inclination to hide or broadcast it — pay close attention." Is it your physical health? Is it managing caregiving responsibilities or logistics outside of work? Now is the time for a candid conversation, so be honest with yourself.
Reflect on how you've been most productive and able to meet your work priorities - both before and during the pandemic. Talk about that, and you'll be making a strong case for having your needs met. During the pandemic many businesses were able to create accessible solutions for their workforce. If those solutions were key to your pandemic productivity, talk about it, and how it's going to continue your effectiveness going forward, too.
What are your return to office must haves, and your nice to haves? We've been hearing about employees hoping for various kinds of amenities for returning to the office, from parking allowances, or a relaxed dress code, in addition to continuing a partial work from home schedule. When you're having a conversation with your manager, highlight your greatest needs, and how accommodating those needs makes you more productive and better able to do your work.
What you can do to ease a transition into hybrid. If where you work is less the issue than when you work, establish clarity on timing and how you can be reached. A shared spreadsheet like this one can go a long way to communicating your availability to your manager and colleagues.
It's not the new normal, it's the next normal. Embrace, to the extent that we all can, flexibility, patience, and that this is what's next, not what's forever. A willingness to test out a new approach, check in on how effective the model is, and make adjustments, while being frank and honest, will support you and your manager. If this feels particularly high-stakes for you, identifying what your return to office goals are (and knowing what you'll agree to as a bottom line) and writing it down first can help.
The Takeaway about Psychological Safety
When we build a better workplace where individuals feel psychologically safe — safe to share with managers the challenges they're facing as they navigate a return to the office in the face of the deeply intertwined nature of one's work and personal life - we're lifting a burden that allows our teams to focus on the work they're here to do - whether it's at home or in the office.
