Prepare Your C-Suite for Reopen Ready Status In 3 Steps

So you have been thinking about how you're going to return your employees back to work in the office, but you don't know where to start.

As far as I know, nobody I know enjoys the level of pressure we experienced in 2020. Usually people like a solid healthy challenge that invigorates their abilities and sparks innovation. All it takes is one wrong step amongst a group of people who are equally frazzled about the impact COVID has made in their lives, and you'll find yourself back in a position of managing a crisis. The negativity that streams from the news, social media, and political leaders doesn't help. All it takes to return your team safely to the office is some grit, wit, and patients. I truly believe any HR pro can influence the C-suite into leading a healthy return to the office as long as they work at it and have a good plan to present.

That being said, it's no big secret that anyone working in HR, doesn't always know how to look past their fear of idea rejection from the CEO and make the big career strides they desire. They end up settling for small money, long hours, little recognition, and a crap-ton of frustration. If that's you, don't give up on your career in HR just yet. Keep reading and I'll tell you how to finally break through the confidence and influence glass ceiling.

The first thing you need to know about selling your ideas to the CEO is to have a solid plan that meets his needs. You learn how to meet his needs by asking him directly what he expects and envisions when people return to work. It's that's simple. If you aren't asking these questions, you are going to have a very hard time selling your plan which must include the compliance and safety aspects regulated by your local, state, and the federal government. This is how you measure your effectiveness in meeting his expectations. What gets measured gets improved, and if you don't know the expectations you can't build a plan that will get 100% of the CEO's support. Now, I know many of the famous HR courses we take will tell you to align your actions to the company's long-term objectives. I'm here to tell you to the opposite. If you set your sights on impressing your CEO's long-term goals, you're going to be disappointed when you look back because you've exceeded his short-term goals.

That being said, the easiest objectives to achieve are the ones you need to obtain each day. Set your goals for your Reopen and Ready Plan and then break them down into what you need to manage and complete daily so you can focus on the bite-sized tasks you are capable of completing. Make sense? 

The second thing you need is a communication strategy that includes soundbites from the CEO.

You may be the one creating the schedule of what goes out and when.

You may be the one loading the e-mails.

You may be the one preparing the text blasts.

You may be the one setting up the team huddle talking points for managers.

But regardless, the message needs to come from the CEO. 

So how do you take this on? Incorporate the CEO's expectations into the messages you're developing. Believe it or not, most CEOs don't actually write the majority of their messages. It's delegated to someone else. As an HR pro, when you master the ability to draft messages that not only sound like the CEO wrote them but conveys the "commander's intent", you'll get a great deal of support from him. Why? Because you took his thoughts and put them into actionable communication, and that builds his trust in your abilities.

The third step is to create a mechanism to follow up with your employees. This means you have to make sure that you're not only accessible to employee questions and concerns, but are also actively looking for their feedback on the return to the office, even if they don't give it up on their own. You can walk the floor on a regular basis and talk to people about how they're doing. You can create a Reopen Ready FAQ page on your company intranet for your employees to a resource before they pick up the phone and call you. That's great, but you also need to present what feedback you're hearing and common questions and challenges back to the CEO so he knows how to steer the ship. Without you, he will only have the biased opinions of his management team providing feedback. Managers are not in the people business like you are, they're in the "getting sh*t done" business so the company earns money.

Now you can see that creating a Reopen Ready strategy can be accomplished in three steps, the transition should be much smoother, and you can move confidently through the process. Everyone is relying on you to have the answers to meet all of their needs. You may not have them all in this COVID environment and it may take time for them to be realized, but you certainly have the ability to influence the outcome. Now go out and crush it! I know you can do it!