Will We Return To The Office After COVID-19?

The coronavirus pandemic has had an indelible impact upon many of the habits and customs that underpin our society, with few places as disrupted as the workplace, where legions of us have been confined to our homes where we’ve attempted to maintain business as usual to the best of our abilities.

I’ve written a few times about the virtues of offering staff flexible working options, and it’s interesting that it’s largely taken a pandemic to force the hand of managers who have so often resisted such approaches out of hand. Will this transition endure? Indeed, what is the workplace likely to look like when we move out of the lockdown procedures in place around the world?

Firstly, how has work changed during the pandemic? Data from software company Box highlights that one of the first casualties of the shift to home working has been the traditional 9-5 office hours. With many of us juggling home and family responsibilities, especially with school closures placing expectations of home schooling onto working parents, Box found that lunch breaks are a luxury many can no longer afford, with work done outside office hours growing by 20%.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, their data also reveals that digital collaboration is growing, not least in the public sector, where collaboration has risen by 142%. This digital workflow has seen growth in the number of apps we’re using, including services for videoconferencing, chat and messaging, cloud storage and sharing tools.

Enduring change?

Are these changes likely to stick when we’re no longer confined to our homes by government regulations? A survey of corporate real estate professionals by CoreNet Global suggests the industry believes that workers will return to offices, albeit in waves rather than all at once.

The survey found that 84% of real estate professionals were planning on staggering the return of workers to the office, beginning with those who have the greatest need to be office based. This is likely to coincide with a longer work period to allow for thinner numbers to be in the office and maintain social distancing.

This return is likely to be met by changes in work patterns. For instance, 72% of respondents said that additional cleaning protocols will be in place, with a continued emphasis on hand-washing and limited group meetings. Some workplace managers said they would limit the number of workers in the office at any one time.

These are largely continuations of policies already in place for those people who must report to an office, with social distancing, hand-washing requirements of staff, and expanded cleaning protocols all strategies deployed in workplaces today.

Forced back

Interestingly, given the cultural challenges surrounding remote work from the pre-pandemic era, it was perhaps telling that just under half of respondents said that remote working would remain an option for those people who felt uncomfortable returning to the office.

Such flexibility does appear to be being offered for those with day-care challenges, but this leaves an inherent feeling that remote working is the preserve of women who have childcare responsibilities rather than something for all to utilize.

The survey goes on to reveal that around 2/3 of respondents had a better impression of remote working than was previously the case, which perhaps highlights some of the outdated thinking that was prevalent in the sector.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming working practices, with huge ramifications for the property market,” Andrew Roughan, managing director at Plexal, says. “Remote working has become a necessity for the majority of workers, and it’s shown businesses – some of which might have been sceptical about allowing staff to work from home – that it is possible to maintain productivity and communication.”

Leading a virtual team

It’s perhaps a reasonable assumption that this period of forced remote working will normalize the practice sufficiently that it will become a more consistent part of working life. As such, it’s perhaps important to understand how to effectively lead a virtual team.

“The COVID-19 experience has changed the way we have worked and will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for the way we work and manage in the future,” Mark Smith, Dean of Faculty at the Grenoble Ecole de Management, told me. “While there are many advantages for employees to be able to work from home it also presents a challenge for both employees and managers.”

Working in such a way is a distinct break from the norm for many, and so it’s important to establish new heuristics and ways of working. It’s likely that virtual teams will need a lot more nurturing than face-to-face teams, in large part because the norms that emerge during face-to-face encounters take much longer to establish online.

It’s important that teams know what’s expected of them, how decisions will be made, how communication will work, how progress will be tracked, and so on. It’s also vital that roles are clarified and lines of accountability set.

This clarification should extend to various aspects of working life that are often taken for granted or unsaid when working in a physical office. Communication should be clear, expectations explicit, and feedback and mentoring given frequently. It’s important that your remote workers feel just as much a part of the team as those in the office.

“An important part of the way an organisation works is its culture and the norms of how people work together,” Smith continues. “The COVID crisis has placed greater emphasis on trusting our colleagues and perhaps providing some with new levels of autonomy that some traditional managers were resisting (i.e. limits on teleworking). At the same time the norms and rituals that create and underpin an organisational culture are challenged – for example integrating new colleagues and socialising them to the organisation.”

An individual approach

There is a risk with virtual management that you take advantage of the various tools that allow you to scatterbomb messages to an entire team. Given the difficulties in communicating effectively, and the ease of sending blanket statements to all, it’s a temptation that must be overcome.

Instead, try and ensure that communication is both predictable and clear so that everyone in the team knows the situation and what’s expected of them.

It’s also likely that your management style will need to adapt to get the best out of your virtual team. Research suggests that virtual workers operate best when working in bursts. As such, maintaining a constant stream of contact and information can be counter-productive.

Instead, try and alternate between periods of contact and periods of leaving people to get on with their work. This requires managers to display a high degree of trust in their team, which is hopefully something that comes as standard.

It’s far from clear quite what normal will look like after COVID-19, but it seems likely that our desire to trek into the office will be tested after a prolonged period of acclimatization towards remote working from both workers and managers alike.

It’s equally likely that people won’t want to work remotely all the time, but rather have the option to pick and choose, so the ability to successfully manage remote teams will be a key skill in the arsenal of any modern manager.