The Future Workplace is Being Built With These Three Leadership Values

One year ago this month the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. It’s been 12 months of remote work and still most companies don’t have the answer for when people will return to the office. Although some leaders are hoping it’s soon. Three-quarters of executives surveyed by PwC anticipate at least half of office workers will be back onsite in July.

Maybe? It could be possible if the vaccine rollout continues to improve and more workers receive their doses. But before we start rushing to get employees back in their desks, leaders should tune into what their people say they need right now. They may be surprised to learn that it’s not always aligned with their ideas. For instance, in that same workplace study, only 61% of employees said they expect to spend half their time in the office by July vs. 75% of executives. 

How we work, where we work, and when we work will never go back to normal (what about the way we were working a year ago was ‘normal’?). We’ve seen throughout history how health crises reshape societies and workplaces. For instance, the flu pandemic of 1918 contributed to the creation of employer-based health insurance, which helped to improve health and working conditions for workers. It can also lead to less desirable outcomes like more restrictive cultural norms and practices. Today’s moment is calling on leaders to completely re-envision their corporate purpose and be courageous in how they design new work structures and culture. 

Knowing things need to change is one thing. Making decisions that drive real transformation is another – and it’s rarely easy. There are three leadership insights that have consistently come up in my conversations with executives at nonprofit, startups and Fortune 500 companies over the past year. And if we are going to have any success in building healthy, inclusive cultures in Year 2 of the virtual workplace, we will need to lead with these values.

Vulnerability Helps Rebalance Expectations and Find New Work Schedules 

The reality is we’re looking at another year of leading remotely. There is no leadership manual out there to give executives guidance.  Yes, there are leadership resources/models  (Dare to Lead, The Culture Code and Working with Emotional Intelligence  and others), but demonstrating and communicating vulnerability is arguably the most important aspect of today’s remote work culture.  Saying to your teams, “I don’t have all the answers” is an invitation for involvement. It also models how we all can better balance empathy and expectations right now.  We’ve experienced the conflict of these two ideals for the past year. Everybody in some sort of way has been impacted by Covid-19. Maybe you’re managing someone who had Covid and is dealing with the long-term effects or lost someone to the virus. Maybe you’re now in a multigenerational home or are dealing with intensified social anxiety because you’ve been navigating the last year alone.  But now is the time for corporate America to use genuine empathy and adjusted expectations to create better cohesion in its workplace culture.   

If we don’t, we might start to see employees take themselves out of the workplace. Employee burnout is rampant. It was before the pandemic and has only accelerated over the past year. A new global study in partnership with Harvard Business Review found that 89% of workers surveyed said their work life was getting worse. This is not an employee problem; it is an organizational problem. If boundaries are not better defined and work expectations are not adjusted, managers may start to see their teams drop like flies. 

As we head into the second year of remote work, leaders should more intentionally and openly work with teams to define what their workday needs to look like to be effective in their office work and present in their home life. Some of the executives I’ve been coaching over the past year have decided to keep summer hours year-round. Others are incorporating flexible job work schedules where employees take a certain number of days off during the week or hours during the workday. Some executives are encouraging job swapping or job sharing, and others are making personal time off and PTO plans a critical part of their performance review.  

Today’s Boundarylessness is Shifting Budgets & Resources

Not only is the boundarylessness of work exacerbating employee burnout, it’s also having costly impacts on people’s mental health and engagement. And if we don’t make organizational changes we may just have a new mental health crisis on our hands. Forward-thinking leaders will see this future and strategically shift finances and budgets to support mental health services, professional development online and quarterly virtual retreats for their people. Perhaps even more importantly they will model behaviors that respect employees’ wellbeing and boundaries, like not initiating work conversations after working hours. 

Investing in physical structures that support remote working should also increase. Corporate leaders will need to more proactively ask about the physical and ergonomic resources that can help their teams who may or may not have a proper workspace in their homes. Do they need Wifi upgrades, better lighting, more comfortable chairs, or stress-relieving scents? And it goes without saying that leaders will need to redirect resources to establishing a safe re-entry office plan. They will need to define the health and social norms as well as the regulatory process around the vaccine. Will they require everyone to be vaccinated before returning to an office? How will they track this process? These larger questions will need to be addressed before anyone returns to the office. 

A New Perspective Emerges on Inclusive Virtual Teamwork

Over the past 12 month, I’ve seen the capacity to build a culture that fosters healthy, safe virtual teamwork emerge as one of the most critical components of inclusive leadership today. These kinds of leaders will make a point to learn more about how to best interact with all levels, all people, all genders and all perspectives.  As businesses continue to navigate the post-pandemic workplace, the most inclusive leaders will guide their staff to focus on how teams can listen with respect and generosity and elevate new voices in their decision-making. This is key to creating safe, inclusive engagement that drives real success.

Working from home has meant that all communication among peers and executives has been handled through digital platforms. And leaders are recognizing the drawbacks of these channels.  Take Zoom for example, this isn’t always experienced as a “safe work environment” for everyone. Now more than ever it’s important we are conscious of how introverts, extroverts and ambiverts engage virtually. Studies have shown that conflicts can escalate more quickly with virtual teamwork compared to face-to-face collaboration. In this environment, it is harder to discern social and emotional cues from colleagues and unless structures are put in place to safely share concerns it can go unnoticed and unresolved for far too long. 

This is a time where corporate culture is being reset. The culture of leadership itself is changing. And it’s calling on every manager, office leader and C-suite executive to develop the capacity to better define their vision as organizations. Ask yourself how your corporate vision and purpose might need to be clarified, enhanced or deconstructed? How well you re-envision your organization’s mission, provide the necessary resources, and design inclusive cultures that take care of your staff will determine your impact as a leader in the future workplace.