The (Psychologically Safe) Recipe for Return to the Office

What can leaders do to support their teams if a return to the office has been mandated (either by someone higher in the organisation, or by a government body)?

Once again, focusing on a psychologically safe workplace through our framework of Respect and Accountability will help everyone make the best of what may seem to be a bad situation.?

But how? Why is this so hard?

First, let’s recognise that a return to the office is difficult for many of us. Remember how difficult it was to adjust to remote working? But we did adjust. And through the very stressful time of the worst of the pandemic, most of us felt more safe and secure at home than being outside.?

It became a protective haven. We made significant adjustments to the way we live and work to make it possible. We became comfortable there. And now we have to change?

No wonder it feels difficult!

What can leaders do to support their teams as they return to the office?

There is a lot that leaders can do to support their teams in returning to the office.

• First, show respect for the people involved and show your own vulnerability.
• Second, invest in care, just as you did at the start of the pandemic. Leaders also need to give as much autonomy as possible to their teams, at the same time respecting the work that needs to be done.
• Finally, to assure performance, leaders need to establish clear accountabilities.

Read on for the details of this “recipe for a return to the office”!

Everything here needs to be done with Respect and, primarily, with respect for the people in our teams. Leaders must acknowledge and, as best as they can, understand how their teams are feeling and thinking about the return to the office.

Turning weakness into strength

The first part of this is for leaders to understand that their own weaknesses are their greatest strengths. If they have some anxieties about the return themselves, the most powerful thing they can do is to express this to their team.

By showing their own vulnerability, they not only open up the conversation but become a living example of how to overcome these fears.

Investment in care

During the early days of the pandemic, many leaders told us how they spent extra time checking in on employees, listening to their concerns, supporting them, allowing more flexibility in the way that work is done, and working with HR to provide care for all.

HR leaders, in particular, went to enormous lengths to provide support for everyone, even arranging special online events, and in some cases shipping snacks or care packages to employees’ homes.

We need this investment in care just as much while we are adjusting back to working in the office.

Doing this shows respect for the efforts that team members are making. Leaders most likely need to work with HR to ensure that extra care is shown during this difficult transition time.

Autonomy whenever possible; Equity always

Part of the anxiety about compulsory attendance at the office is caused by the fact that it is, well, compulsory. This threatens our feelings of autonomy and sense of control. After the stress of the pandemic, this is particularly difficult for many of us to take.

So leaders, grant as much autonomy as possible to your team members. Perhaps they can choose their own start and finish times. Or certain days when they can work from home. Or the way that a job is done.?

Consider as many ways as possible to give back control to the individual. And if this is not possible, be open and honest about the reasons.

But be careful that greater autonomy does not lead to a perception that some team members are being treated differently from others, and threatens the sense of equity or fairness that the team feels.?

Again, open and honest communication is the key to overcoming this, and leaders have a great opportunity to improve communication in the face-to-face environment of the office.

Respect - and celebrate - the Work itself

Apart from respect for the people, respect for the process of the work itself - the ‘job to be done’ - can ease the return to the office.

Leaders can think about how - and ask their teams to do this too - working in the office benefits the performance of the team. What can be done more easily face-to-face than on the phone or Zoom calls?

What opportunities are there to spontaneously share ideas, help one another to learn, problem-solve or innovate? Can we learn to do our jobs better now that we have our colleagues around us??

Leaders can consistently communicate and celebrate the positive outcomes of being together again!

FACE Accountability

Even with all the respect in the world, a team cannot operate successfully, or sustainably, without accountability. So in our attempts to make a smooth and psychologically safe transition back to the office, leaders must not forget about accountability.

We have created the acronym FACE to show how accountability works in a psychologically safe team.

Freely chosen

No matter how much leaders order, cajole, persuade and command, team members themselves always choose to be accountable or not. Leaders need to recognise and acknowledge this, and stop trying to force people to be accountable.?

This threatens our team members’ sense of autonomy, produces (often hidden or invisible) resistance, and will not succeed in producing sustainable high performance. Accountability is far more likely to be freely chosen if we follow the other parts of the FACE acronym.

Aligned with meaning and purpose

A return to the office gives leaders a great opportunity to get everyone together and remind them where the team fits with the greater purpose of the organisation.

This is a perfect time to get leaders from other teams to come and talk about how this team supports and assists their own, or even to get a customer (internal or external) to come in and talk about the value to them of the work of this team.?

This helps to bring greater meaning to what may seem like the mundane task of working in the office together again.

Collective commitment

Seeing everyone in the team together can help build a sense of collective commitment to the performance of the team. And leaders have an opportunity to visibly celebrate the contributions of every individual to the team’s success.

Explicit and Understood

It’s much easier for leaders in a face-to-face meeting to check understanding and clarify any misunderstandings. If the collective and individual accountabilities of the team are clearly expressed and well understood, then everyone will know their part, and can freely choose to be accountable.

This is a journey!

Yes, this is a literal journey - from home to office. A journey that not many of us have taken for a while. And a journey that may be arduous, lengthy, and made with some fear and anxiety.?

But the return to the team successfully working together in the office is also a journey. It will not happen in one day, and it will have obstacles and setbacks. But it is a journey we make together, and a journey where we should leave no one behind.

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If you need help in boosting psychological safety in your workplace to ease the return-to-office transition for your employees, contact me.

BOOK a 30-minute free consulting session with me to find out how I can help.