Olly, Olly, Oxen Free

Culture, Contagion, and COVID - HOW we return to work matters more than WHEN we do

@Trish Martinelli and @Chris Armstrong

Olly, Olly, Oxen Free – The Return to Work

As a kid (Trish) growing up in Colorado, outdoor play was a part of every fair-weather day. Tag, hide and go seek, and king of the hill were some of the simplest games that allowed us to have good clean fun. When the games were over, someone would call “Olly, Olly, Oxen Free”. The phrase had several meanings.

●       Players who were hiding could come out into the open without losing the game.

●       The position of the sides in a game has changed.

●       The game is over.

And as business leaders contemplate or actualize return to work protocols, we may be experiencing the ultimate “Olly, Olly, Oxen Free” of our lifetimes.

Coming Out Into the Open Without Losing the Game

“Is it safe to leave my house, let alone go to work?”

“I am scared of contracting the virus.”

“What increased measures will be put into place to guarantee my safety?”

These real questions and feelings are in the atmosphere. With the death toll of COVID-19 rising and no sign of a cure, people are not shy to ask these questions.

The Positions of the Sides Have Changed

Pre-COVID-19, there were longstanding debates about the efficacy of work/life balance and remote work options. Leaders struggled with extending trust towards their workforce who were communicating a desire and ability to work from home while increasing productivity and morale. Unsurprisingly, in today’s workplace, high-volume, high-stress industries that have struggled with adapting to working outside of a traditional office and they are fighting to find the right way ahead.

Then COVID-19 came. Now, what was difficult to face has become necessary to accept. What is more, business leaders are catching on to the reality that the current normal may be the new normal. Going back to normal (of February 2020 and earlier) may be a delusional pursuit. Meanwhile, employees are seeing the challenges of working remotely, with many expressing they are working more while working from home. How do you avoid working longer when work is happening at the kitchen table all day long? What is the criteria for taking a phone call or Zoom meeting on occasion outside office hours? This is a tangible challenge of working smarter, not just harder.

The Game Is Over

The back-and-forth between leaders and employees about work schedules, locations, and needs has be can be seen as a game… COVID-19 is a game changer.

Let’s Play Trivial Pursuit

●       When does return to work happen?

●       Will workers feel safe coming back?

●       Will there be a cure for COVID-19?

●       Will organizations require that their employees and visitors wear masks and gloves?

●       Are there enough masks and gloves for the 157 million people employed in the United States?

●       Would you like me to stop asking questions that have no easy answers?

Let’s Play Monopoly

As a colleague shared with me earlier this week, with COVID-19, feelings become fiscal.

How employees feel about their work and their leaders will impact an organization’s bottom line in a way that has never been seen before. In order to make workers, customers, and managers feel safe, protocols for reopening may very well include

●       Gloves and Masks for all people on company property

●       Temperature checks each time an employee enters a facility

●       Increased cleaning

●       Increased building inspections

All of these aspects of a safe workspace will come with complications and (not infrequently) consternation. How do you protect an employee’s health privacy if everyone is lined up to enter a building through a temperature check, and the person in front of you has to turn around and leave while dozens of employees are lined up behind that person? Am l (especially managers in places like Intelligence Community secure facilities) well versed enough in managing a distributed workforce to get employees to deliver in the same way they did when everyone was under the same roof? Will evaluations and performance reviews take on a new honesty when they are based more on deliverables than of office interpersonal dynamics? To quote Jules Winnfield “Personality goes a long way” and employees will have different challenges in the dog-eat-dog virtual world.

TRUST IS A MUST – Employees have to trust that leaders will have their best interests in mind when developing new office policies. Likewise, leaders need to trust their employees to come back to the physical workplace when they feel safe to do so. Any small seed of mistrust between the workforce and management prior to the orders to stay home will still play a role in both sides' perspectives as they return to work. Leadership will never truly know if employees are requesting to remain on telework because they are concerned about health issues, or because employees have enjoyed the newfound work-life balance developed since March 2020. Leaders must trust employees to be candid. Employees must trust that companies will do everything possible to make the workplace safe from the spread of COVID-19. Personnel must trust that leaders are thinking through this in a way that puts the employee first. For many workplace cultures, this will be an inversion of the power dynamic present before the pandemic.

IT WILL HAPPEN – When we return to work, someone will be infected with COVID-19. That fact is inevitable. Likely, another person in the same office will get ill as well. Is everyone at work entitled to the information that these employees are sick? What about liability…. Was it the employee who came to work while sick, without the tell-tale signs of COVID who the other employees hold at fault? Was it the fault of the distancing or disinfecting practices of the organization? Will we ever really know? And is our workplace culture about finding who to blame, or is it about protecting our most valuable resource. Reactions to infection will matter. The line between the public good and the privacy of employees will be one of the most important things to get right when we return to work.

HOW TO MITIGATE RISK – Leaders in all sectors of the economy will be having discussions that they have never had before. These discussions will be about what is the corporate responsibility at both the MINIMUM threshold and the OPTIMAL threshold. These discussions will be heavily influenced by the culture that currently existed the day the National Emergency was declared, as much as it is about culture we want to have “life after lockdown’. In a way that is more tangible than ever before, getting the new policies wrong can be a matter of life and death. How much risk can an employer assume, and how much can their business model endure before they can no longer make a profit? 

Government offices will be in a different boat, but the same ocean. They will still be making tradeoffs about how money will need to shift from one line of operations into new COVID protocols. In the power shift from employer to employee mentioned earlier, how will 30 Million unemployed Americans temper that balance? If employers find employee demands unrealistic to feel safe as a risk to making a profit, will they turn to the unemployed to find workers with a higher tolerance for their personal risk when it comes to the virus? The disproportionate impact of COVID on African Americans may prove to be a double bind for the community as we return to work may pack a secondary blow. The disproportionate danger to an African American employee of contracting the disease in a centralized workspace, brings  and of social justice to the staid world of personnel policy. Swapping risk averse for risk tolerant employees, adds a secondary danger to African Americans. A healthy workplace culture allows these first and second order effects to be considered, and for social justice issues to get an open airing. Culture at work is a matter of life and death now, it is no longer a “buzz word”.

NEW WAY TO OFFICE –  Gone are the Silicon Valley days of the best perks being free snacks, the 2020 gold standard will be free refillable hand sanitizer and abundant toilet paper. As lighthearted as the previous example may be, we can all realize that there are things we used to take for granted that have become really important since March 2020. The slogan for Kinko’s in the 1990’s was “A New Way to Office”, and it really couldn’t be a better slogan for the weeks and months that lie ahead of us. Health concerns will be a top line consideration for everyone in the workplace for the foreseeable future. Employees who are immunocompromised, and those who have members of their households that are, will not look at office space in the same way for years. Managing a distributed workforce will be on everyone’s mind. Emotional Intelligence will take on a 2.0 upgrade as body language, tone of voice, and eye contact all move into a digital space.

As the American economy prepares to emerge from its pandemic posture, remember that phrase that means “those in hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that the position of the sides in a game has changed, or alternatively, that the game is over”. We are no longer staying home, because our position has changed, with states lifting stay at home orders. Some stay home to preserve their health. The game is not over, because avoiding COVID-19 is not a game and there is no end in sight. With the right corporate culture and smart policies as we return to work, we can emerge, with the same sense of relief as that childhood call of “Olly, Olly, Oxen Free”.

Comment below with the thing that gives you the most concern about returning to “work life” as normal.

The views expressed are those of the author(s)  and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Navy, the Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Defense or the US Government.

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