Managing Re-entry Syndrome

I had my first vaccine last week. Apparently what I'm going to say now gets on some people's nerves, so how can I not? The staff were lovely and the queues were indeed short. The experience caused me to reflect on how well we are all going to adjust as greater numbers are vaccinated. Would I have re-entry shock to whatever life is going to be like in the next months? I discovered that I am not alone and this thought process even has a name.

It is "re-entry syndrome."

My own private fantasy, to be in a room of 1000 total strangers, preferably with glass of bad wine and a soggy canapé, will be a long time coming, I suspect, with many interim steps. COVID 19 has been catastrophic, but it has also offered organisations a unique opportunity re-imagine the future of their workplaces and cultures. There is no doubt we are going to see significant changes. If the endless stream of polls on pretty much everything is anything to go by, we should also expect discord, as opinions start to diverge and existing tensions become visible. Business leaders are going to have to manage re-entry syndrome for everyone, with a range of needs and expectations. Challenges will be significant.

Driving re-entry

Many businesses which can align their business strategy with a #WFH model may continue to do so. Hybrid and more tech driven models of working will predominate, meaning that firms will have to upgrade their technological capabilities. Employees are looking for flexible working patterns, connectivity and both psychological and physical safety. These will be key drivers for most organisations, and early indications already suggest that if businesses don't get it right they will lose top talent.

Talent Retention

Research conducted by Morning Consult in March 2021 for Prudential suggests that 34% of Millennials, now the dominant group in the U.S. workforce, intends to look for a job at a different company once the pandemic has subsided. We forget that older Millennials are no longer kids who have Walkmans, CD holders and Gameboys. They have mortgages, their own children and more importantly senior corporate roles.

Organisations will need to make a more concerted effort to improve their workplace cultures to ensure these key people are not tempted to jump ship. Highly skilled employees always find jobs easily and are difficult to replace. Millennials are now re-thinking their skill sets and the lack of career growth is the main reason for 80% to look around. Nearly 50% feel disconnected from their organisations.

Employee retention, succession planning, consolidating remote and inclusive workplace cultures will become more important in the next months. A key challenge post COVID-19, will be to avoid the creation of a two tier workforce with remote workers becoming second-class citizens in a hybrid workplace. The same research indicates that 2 in 3 workers believe that in-person contact is necessary for career advancement, which is probably why over 40% are anxious about job security if they continue to work remotely. Certainly, feedback from my clients is that many managers have not been trained to lead hybrid or remote teams, which is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

Impact on job seekers

In my launch newsletter, we discussed how many jobs that required an office location can be done from anywhere. This means we need to integrate the notion of a "portable career" into our recruitment transformation and lose the idea of specific locations. LinkedIn take note.

For job seekers this could be a doubled edged sword. On the plus side it means that distant roles you may not have considered before, are now an option. The downside is that plum, local roles can be "offshored" for exactly the same reasons. But whichever way you look at it, all indications suggest that there will be a spike in opportunities. Be prepared!

Pandemic and women

Businesses also need to factor in the needs of a significant demographic. Women. Research from the ILO suggests that in relative terms, employment losses were higher for women (5.0%) than for men, and for young workers (8.7%) than for older workers. Organisations should strongly consider alumnae or boomerang schemes to rehire lost female talent and to adopt less presence-based cultures, if they haven't done so already.

LinkedIn very considerately came up with an idea to support this group of COVID casualty women and have created a special title in their drop down section of "Stay at home Mom/Dad/Parent/Homemaker." Because if you wanted to create an option not laden with embedded societal stereotypes and unconscious bias - that is what you'd choose... right?

Parenting is one of the most undervalued roles in our cultures and economies and deserves the correct nomenclature to reflect the added value these job holders create. Salary.com analysed the typical job functions of a stay at home mother and pulling the market compensation data for those same roles, determined that the median annual salary or 2018 is $162,581– rising nearly $5,000 from 2017 calculations.

Re-frame parenting

I created a profile and came out with a title of Head of Domestic Operations, but am flexible. The key point is to be strategic around your next steps, you can call yourself whatever you want. See some of the ingenious, maybe even better suggestions from my network here. They are also not location specific.

It's hardly surprising that men are 1.5 x more optimistic than women about their financial well-being and 1.2 x more optimistic than women about their professional careers.

Health, Safety and Well being

For those returning to a physical office, the primary consideration is physical safety, with 44% of remote workers having concerns about returning to a work site. This is going to set in motion increased discussions around mask wearing in offices, in-house track and trace operations and mandatory corporate COVID testing systems, plus the contentious vaccine passport conversation. In a recent poll I ran on "No jab. No job" on LinkedIn, the reaction against these measures was significant.

Organisations looking at a return to a physical workplace will have to factor in in 3 considerations:

• infra-structure - offices will need to adapt for higher hygiene standards, looking at desk positions, bathrooms, elevators, people flow and improved air quality.
• workflow changes will be required in some sectors.
• accepted behaviours and the way we interact - meetings, greetings, water cooler moments, coffee machines, staff kitchens, break rooms and mask wearing etc. will all have to change. Some of these matters are already contentious as we observe different interpretations of social distancing protocols, causing conflict between co-workers.

This is going to open a Pandora's box of headaches for HR and leaders, as well as potential litigation issues. I already know of one situation where 19 out of a key production bubble team of 23 contracted COVID19. It seems that "Person 0" had broken both corporate and local guidelines. One of the team is sadly still in ICU. Where does that place an organisation's duty of employee care in the event of disability or even death? That organisation now does mandatory twice weekly testing and others will surely do the same. Legal and compliance departments are going to be busy.

Communication and re-entry

All experts indicate that re-entry will be difficult for many. The Pulse of the American Worker survey also highlights the need for clear and regular corporate communication to emerge from this crisis, with 73% expressing a need for time to feel comfortable and to adapt.

Factor in all the nuances of polarized opinion around some of the key elements, managing re-entry syndrome is going to be one of the greatest leadership challenges for many years.

Footnote: If your organisation wants to strengthen its talent pipeline to create gender balanced, diverse and inclusive workplaces in a post COVID world reach out for more information: [email protected]