Employee communications is part psychology and part sociology, and you will need both when communicating the decision of where your talent will work in the post-pandemic normal.
Will they be empowered to continuing working from home or directed to return to the office? Or, will it be a hybrid model that includes some of both? For everyone? For some? How should you choose? Should you? Will your choices cause you to lose employees? Recruits? And, if your workforce includes Essential Employees, what message are you sending them?
It would be a mistake to assume you can simply return to “the way things were” without hearing from your employees first. Feeling respected and “heard” remain important components of employee engagement.
If you are a business owner, executive leader or manager, it should be painfully obvious to you that everyone in your operation has been touched mentally, financially and physically by the historic events of the past 13 months. The range of hardship spans an incomprehensible spectrum of scenarios - from personal grief and chronic illness to a lost year of schooling, unemployment, added debt and added weight. People are rethinking their lives, their goals and their priorities at all levels of your organization.
There are no cookie-cutter templates that make it easy and painless to communicate the decision of where you want your employees to work in these unprecedented circumstances. There is, however, a framework of principles that should guide your communications strategy.
Listen: To start, you need a good sense of what your employees have gone through since March 2020. A companywide survey may be awkward in these circumstances unless it’s very carefully constructed. Talking to managers offers a good alternative, since they are often the most trusted communicator and connection in any workforce. Human Resources data on sick leave, vacation time, bereavement absences, etc., can offer hints as well.
Empathy: Without empathy, everything you do or say will be ineffective. Acknowledge that everyone has been affected in different ways and that you cannot truly know what they have gone through. Your employees have had to deal with their own hardships, plus those of their immediate families and friends. The stress, fear, anxiety, bitterness and depression should be taken seriously and reflected in your verbal and written communications.
Equity: Employees accept that everyone plays a role in your organization but that doesn’t mean they like it. The workplace caste system – white collar versus blue collar, executive versus frontline – has been brought in sharp contrast by a public health crisis that defined everyone as essential or not. The world has learned how subjective and circumstantial the concept of “fairness” truly is. Equity will be the primary lens through which employees view decisions.
Truth: Tell employees the truth about the state of your business. Their positions, compensation and careers depend on the success of the enterprise. Your workplace environment is a contract founded on what you offer your employees and what you expect from them in return. Set frank and realistic expectations for the road forward in what will be a significantly different business environment.
Talk: Give workers ways to talk about what it’s like to be back. Whether through team meetings, town halls, or one-on-one check-ins with managers, it will be important to understand how your employees are handling the transition and to listen to their concerns, complaints and ideas. A hallmark of the pandemic has been a fundamental loss of control over health, safety and security. That’s just the start of a long list. More than a few of your co-workers may be experiencing what psychologists call “re-entry fear” after a year of being safe at home.
It’s no accident that these are the basic traits of a good human. In the aftermath of a virus that killed, injured and scared billions, don’t be surprised if people are more aware of how they are treated—and more likely to act on it.
I haven’t even gotten to the part where you have to decide whether all returning employees must be vaccinated.
In the end, business have never been a democracy. Employers will do what’s best for their business, hopefully with appropriate consideration of how it impacts employee engagement and satisfaction. Back-to-work decisions will be an alchemy of finances, forecasts, competitor behavior, operational needs and workplace culture. Even the personal pandemic experience of an organization’s executive leaders will come into play.
Amid all the uncertainty, one thing is guaranteed: Not everyone will be happy. Even the most thoughtful employee communications will not be wildly embraced. Employee priorities going forward will reflect greatly changed perspectives.
It’s too easy to forget that the pandemic began during what had already qualified as a historic recession. Now, as things re-open, there are 8.4 million jobs that no longer exist compared to a year ago. The light has been bent in ways that will alter the trajectory of generations just as the Great Depression and World War II altered the destiny of generations before.
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