Amy Lindgren
Is the honeymoon over? After nearly tripling during the pandemic, the number of employees working remotely has been leveling off, with more companies now mandating a return to the workplace.
We’ve gone from perhaps 10% of employees working from home pre-pandemic to a high near 30% around 2021 to somewhere between 20 and 27% today.
The numbers themselves are surprisingly difficult to correlate, as some studies count only fully-remote workers, others track the jobs themselves, and others include hybrid positions. Despite the variances, the trend seems consistent: The work-from-home peak occurred during COVID, with a slow decline in the years since.
What’s next is anyone’s guess. Although a number of companies and government entities have begun to limit remote work, it may be awhile before they disallow it altogether — if they ever get that far. Whatever their motivations for requiring a return to work (RTW), employers are running into resistance from the workers themselves.
While some employees may welcome the chance to reunite with co-workers, others want to maintain the flexibility or better productivity gained from remote work. And still others have built their lives around home-based work, giving up cars and day care or moving their families to the far exurbs. For people with disabilities, remote work may have opened doors they (literally) couldn’t go through before, making RTW an unlikely prospect.
Clearly, employees receiving such an RTW mandate need a game plan. Everything from relocation to changing jobs might be on the table, depending on how difficult the new work arrangements would be.
For those willing and able (reluctantly or cheerfully) to come back to the workplace, a few survival tips can help.
• 1. Leverage the RTW advantages. Every working situation has pluses and minuses. For on-site work, the pluses include bonding with colleagues, mixing with co-workers you wouldn’t see in your Zoom meetings, accessing casual mentoring and networking, playing see-and-be-seen with your boss … even the free coffee and company gym can make the list of pluses.
• 2. Control the disadvantages. If the commute is onerous, try to adjust your hours. If co-workers are noisy, ask for sound-cancelling headphones or a seating change. By taking a proactive approach, you may be able to lessen some of the minuses the situation presents.
• 3. Enjoy your commute. Or at least try not to hate it. It may have been awhile, but remember these oldies but goodies: Audio books, carpooling, biking to work, journaling while taking the bus, stopping by a favorite park or the gym on the way home. Yes, commuting to work steals your time. But if you can steal some back and convert it to something pleasurable you might strike a reasonable balance.
• 4. Don’t eat lunch at your desk. But do eat lunch. Skipping breaks is bad for you, especially if you’re used to changing the laundry or walking the dog every couple of hours. Rather than restarting bad habits, take the opportunity to “do it better” this time by taking your breaks, brown bagging it with a coworker or just getting outside for a walk.
• 5. Choose a new outfit. A new outfit, even from a consignment shop, can provide that back-to-school vibe you need for a mental boost. If you want to simplify things, create two or three outfits to keep as your primary “uniform.” Dressing in the morning will be a breeze and hybrid schedules mean that others won’t notice if you wear the same thing twice in a row.
• Bonus tip: Give the new arrangement time. If your first reaction to an RTW mandate is to change jobs, take a deep breath. It’s difficult enough to adjust to returning to the office without adding job search as an extra puzzle to solve. Not to mention, you may find the job market in your industry has tightened, adding extra stress to the search.
Instead of bolting from the company the first chance you get, consider putting job search on the back burner for three to six months. This lets you adjust to the situation while improving what you can.
Staying a few months also provides time for parts of the mandate to relax if they’re going to, and for positions to open internally if other workers decide to leave. If that happens, you could be in line for a new role. And if not, you can always revisit the decision and jump into job search after all.
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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.
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